Passing Over Boulder Beach

Faithful readers of Lessons from the Trail will know that it has become a tradition since 2015 for Judy and me to spend a week in the summer hiking on the Appalachian Trail, gradually working our way south from the trail’s northern terminus in Maine. Our time on the AT has taught us many leadership lessons and life lessons, but this year (with the U.S./Canadian border closed) we were forced to find a terroir in our own country for the generation of that kind of emotional renewal and personal growth.  And so, on August 1 we drove 1000 km north from London, Ontario to Lake Superior Provincial Park in order to hike a section of the Coastal Trail that we had last visited in 2003.

The 65 km Coastal Trail traces the eastern coastline of Lake Superior from Agawa Bay in the south to Chalfant Cove in the north. By default, the trail runs without any markers along the water’s edge—over glacier-scoured granite rockfaces, along cobble, boulder or sand beaches, across rivers that rise in the Algoma Highlands, only following blue trail markers inland through forests of cedar, white pine, yellow birch and maple out of sheer necessity when the shoreline becomes impassable to hikers. One may be briefly out of sight of the lake but never out of sound, as the sound of waves beating on the shore is a constant reminder of the immense power of the great inland sea called Lake Superior.

Carved by glaciers over the course of millions of years from the sedimentary and volcanic rock that filled an ancient rift valley (rock softer than the granite, gneiss and basalt of the surrounding Canadian Shield), Lake Superior contains one-tenth of all the Earth’s surface fresh water. There is enough water in Lake Superior (3 quadrillion gallons) to flood all of North and South America to a depth of one foot. The beaches that we crossed on the Coastal Trail, comprised of everything from fine white sand to multi-coloured pea-sized pebbles to cobbles the size of ostrich eggs to boulders the size of a small car (a boulder being by definition anything the size of a basketball or larger), are all the product of the relentless activity of wind driving waves and ice against the shores of this vast lake for millennia.  Today, when you cross a pebble beach, you can hear the stones at the water’s edge tumbling over and over against each other in response to the slightest wave action, continuing the transformation of rock to sand that has been going on since the lake as we know it was formed at the end of the last Ice Age. 

Of all the shapes and forms that the shoreline takes, perhaps none requires more skill to navigate than a boulder beach. You cannot attack one boulder at a time; the beach needs to be approached as a maze that you solve in one continuous effort. The boulders are often so large and so closely placed together that stepping down from one before climbing up and over another is next to impossible. Hopping or leaping from one boulder to another is often the only option and the fastest way to pass over the beach. And yet, this is a precarious and risky venture, especially when carrying a backpack and never more so than when the rocks are wet—whether it be from rain or from waves crashing over the boulders. The risk of wrenching an ankle or breaking a leg while boulder-hopping is real.

Boulder-hopping calls upon the body’s sense of proprioception. Proprioception, sometimes called the “sixth sense”, is the “sense though which we perceive the position and movement of our body, including our sense of equilibrium and balance, senses that depend on the notion of force.” When I jump with my right leg fully extended in order land on top of a boulder and at the same time establish with my eyes that my next hop needs to be 120 degrees to the left with my left leg, I will begin to lean with my upper body to the left even before my right foot has fully landed. This is proprioception. A long sequence of boulder-hops smoothly executed can take a hiker across a boulder beach at a speed close to a running pace, as fast or even faster than may be possible on a level surface. The risk of injury only adds to the exhilaration the boulder-hopper feels at completing the passage safely.

Passing over a boulder beach has become for me a metaphor for overcoming obstacles in life, whether it be in career, relationships, physical or emotional health, memories of the past, or just life in general. Like boulder-hopping, the steps we take to get through a hard spot are only temporary landing spots, not destinations in themselves. When jumping from boulder to boulder, you sometimes discover that the boulder to which you’ve entrusted your weight is precariously situated and begins to roll underfoot. Move on as quickly as possible! The course you pick from one side of the boulder beach to another unfolds in real time. You keep your eye on the goal of reaching the other side, but the placement, size and shape of the boulders may require you to take one step to the left and one step to the right for every two steps you take forward. When confronting challenges in life, be prepared to break them down into smaller pieces, while always keeping the end objective in sight.

Fear of fear is a better motivator than fear itself.

As with many things in life, fear is your biggest enemy when passing over a boulder beach. Like Pi says in Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, fear is “life’s only true opponent”. Fear “has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind always (178).” For aging hikers like Judy and me, our weakest spot is our mind, which tells us that our bodies may fail us, the stiffness in our joints or our deteriorating sense of balance may lead us to misjudge the step to the next boulder and suffer a fall. But fear can also be a motivator—as it was the time when Judy and I rushed to cross a bald mountain on the Appalachian Trail before an approaching thunderstorm reached us. Fear will sap the body of the fluidity of movement needed to effectively utilize our proprioceptive sense. Limbs that are rigid with fear cannot adapt to the quickly-changing requirements of joint position, muscle force, and effort prompted by the unstable surfaces underfoot. Fear of fear is a better motivator than fear itself.

When that fear which is intrinsically our adversary is held in check, it becomes a friend, leading us to modulate effort between recklessness and rigidity, and thereby mitigating the risk that is inherent in boulder-hopping and the many far-more-serious challenges of life. As you hop from one boulder to the next, keep the two voices of fear in balance, one on each shoulder. Courage is not the absence of fear; courage is the readiness to move forward confidently in the face of fear.

All photos and text © 2020 Ed Wilson.