Trail or Trek? — Long Range Traverse, Gros Morne

Trail or Trek?

The Long Range Traverse is kind of like life. We all start and end in the same places, but there is no one "right" way to get from one to the other. There is a lot of advice on how to proceed and a lot of examples to follow, but it is up to each of us to set a course. As it turned out, we heeded some advice and ignored some other advice, followed some paths and forged some of our own, celebrated our triumphs and rued our mistakes. There is a roundness to this mixed bag of experiences that mirrors the human condition. So on the question of whether the Long Range Traverse is more accurately described as an unmarked but singular trail or a self-directed trek, we must say it is both a shared event and an individual effort.

As a trail: Between the Dock campsite and the Ferry Gulch campsite there are no official trail markers. There are occasional cairns of mercy or whimsy, swatches of surveyors tape and of course hundreds of thousands of boot tracks, but at no point on the entire Long Range Traverse is there an authoritative guide. Throughout the journey, as described in our recollections, we traveled in the footsteps of those who had gone before. Though we encountered no other hikers on the plateau, we felt we were part of a community of travelers. We measured ourselves on the vast scale of tracks: how fast, how far, how straight. The Long Range is a rugged wilderness, but we were continually reminded of the fact that we shared our struggle with thousands of other people. Wondering what they saw, heard and felt in those same hills and valleys made the trip richer than it would have been otherwise.

As a trek: Despite the deeply worn paths, there is something fundamental about the Long Range Traverse that can not be shared. In a very real sense, no two days on the Long Range can ever be the same. The weather changes to its own call, mixing its elements in new patterns and proportions. Animals ranging from black bears to black flies may chance to cross our path, showing us and sharing with us a drama of nature not performed before. And at the center of each experience, a new brand of human wit and wisdom trains itself on a new scene, remembering and reasoning differently than any other. As we discovered daily, paths split and joined and even disappeared, and it was left to us to choose each step. In the end, the constellation of points we marked in our journey was wholly our own. Indeed, for us they were the only stars in a night sky that has set and will never rise again.