The Hermit Trail

Curiosity, whether it leads to reward or pain,
is the guiltless quality of the everyday explorer.
Aristotle never mentioned curiosity,
but I think of it as his 13th Virtue.
Curiosity.
Inquisitiveness.
Is not a search for understanding a virtue?

From my tiny temporary abode in the village of Chemainus on Vancouver Island,
I frequently walk up the hill and across the railroad tracks to reach the Great Trail,
once known as the Trans-Canada Trail,
currently the world’s longest path.
The Great Trail extends from Victoria on the Pacific
to St. John’s on the Atlantic
to Tuktoyaktuk on the Arctic Ocean.
It’s 17,000 kilometers between these three points,
but including all of the side trails,
the Great Trail extends to 24,000 kilometers.

For this story, however, I cover a mere 400 meters of the Great Trail,
a wide gravel-covered path that parallels the local railroad tracks
on one side and skims along the edges of forest and farmers’ fields on the other.
But those 400 meters lead to something amazing –
the Hermit Trail.

If truth be known,
I had already walked the ten-kilometer stretch of the Great Trail
in and around Chemainus many times in the last month,
but my brain,
which spends most of its time pondering solutions to problems
and pining for the past or the future,
seemingly fearfully avoiding the beauty of the present,
never registered what my eyes must have seen many times –
a well-manicured hiking path leading off into the woods.

But on a particular day, I stopped and looked at the path.
Had it always been there?
To where did it lead?
The main highway was in that direction,
but was there a Chemainus subdivision up there too?
Was this a path that schoolchildren took as a shortcut to school?

I checked my watch,
saw that there was still a half hour before sunset,
and wandered up the path.
Within a few seconds, I was delighted
to arrive upon a giant fallen tree that had a piece cut out of the middle,
creating a gateway of sorts along the trail.
A gateway into a magical realm?
I was excited to see what adventure awaited.

Inside the gate, parts of the trail were lined with stones,
which had been buried in the soil,
guiding me like garden lights along a darkened pathway.
A short section of stone steps led
to a portion of trail lined with a stone wall.
I stopped.
What was going on here?
It seems the trail-maker had cut a flat path through a sloped hill
and reinforced one side with a wall of stacked boulders.
Moss gripped much of the exposed stone.
What kind of trail was this?

I followed first one and then a second side trail
that led up stone steps, around trees, and then back down to the main trail.
These small side trails seemed to serve no useful purpose
but to delight the inquisitive wanderer.

Soon, the trail ended at a Chemainus subdivision, where I turned back
and retraced my steps through the twists and turns
and enchantments of this little path. I was
exceedingly happy in this place and,
for once, my brain was right where it needed to be –
in the present.

But what was this place?
Who built these trails?
And to what end?

By chance, a group of locals wandered by me
that first time I visited the trail. When I inquired,
one of the gentlemen explained that a hermit had built these trails
back in the 1980s. He had been a homeless man in Victoria
and had found his way to Chemainus, where he settled
in the woods and began to create the paths,
hauling stones up from the debris by the railroad tracks using his bicycle.

The locals learned about what he was doing and embraced him,
often visiting him to talk and to bring him food. One local man
donated a trailer, which he dragged up to the forest,
so that the hermit, who was already in his eighties,
could live more comfortably.

The hermit took great care of his trail,
brushing the snow off in winter and sweeping away
the debris in the other seasons. After nearly
a decade in the Chemainus woods, the hermit
became ill with age and was taken to a home for his final days.
“The original bicycle,” explained my fellow hiker,
“is located by the gate to the Pacific Rim Artisan Village in town.
There’s a public mural dedicated to him downtown as well.”

On my way home, I stopped at the
entrance to the artisan village. True enough,
there was the bicycle, upright beside a life-sized likeness of a man
who I can only assume represented the hermit.
I studied the bicycle.
It was a pedal bike, the type where one would brake
by easing the foot counter-clockwise on the pedals,
painted black with black handlebar grips
and black mudguards. The seat was worn through,
right to the metal, which would have made
cycling quite uncomfortable, although it’s possible the hermit
didn’t ride the bike at all, given his age, the terrain, and the bike’s condition,
but simply pushed it to help him transfer boulders
from place to place.

What was most interesting, however, is that
the wheels had no tubes or tires. Instead, the hermit
had wrapped an inch-thick coil of rope around the inside of each rim
and secured them with what appears to be electricians tape.
Of course! Why wouldn’t that work?
The rope itself had the texture of a tread.
I wondered to myself why I so easily solve problems with money,
buying new things to replace broken old ones,
when a little creativity could bring an object back life. We think that
the most creative people are the artists and the wealthy,
but the poor often display amazing problem-solving abilities.

From the artisan village, I wandered
downtown along Willow Street, looking around corners,
admiring the famous Chemainus murals, until I found
“The Hermit”.

The attached plaque reads as such: “After a life of living rough,
Charlie Abbott wandered into Chemainus and settled into a wooded area nearby.
Living in the forest he loved, he slowly began to
transform it. Old and bent with age Charlie created
flower beds, walled pathways, trails and secluded corners.
Charlie’s solitary sanctuary, the ‘Hermit Trail’, was a
masterpiece of garden and wilderness which he shared
with visitors until his death in 1989, at the age of 87.”

The mural depicts the hermit on the trail
with his back to the viewer, hunched over slightly,
perhaps leaning on a cane that is not obvious, surrounded by
forest on both sides of the path. He wears an
overcoat, baggy trousers, and a hat that resembles a fedora.
The trail in front of him gently curves away, leaving
the curious viewer to wonder what is around the corner,
or to wonder if these are the final moments for the frail man and
that he will round the corner and never return.

I found the mural mesmerizing in its simplicity.
The hermit was alone,
in life
and in the mural.
Was he lonely?
Or was solitude his friend?

One neighbour believed that Charlie had been in the war
and suffered from shell shock, what we think of today as post-traumatic stress,
and that the mental-health injury caused him to become homeless.
I sensed the truth of it, knowing that I have ex-military buddies
right now suffering from PTSD and struggling to integrate back into society.

Today, I wandered back up to the Great Trail,
where there were a few other hikers rambling about.
We gave one another smiles as we passed.
On the Hermit Trail, however, I was alone
and was delighted to find a side trail I hadn’t noticed on my first visit.
It led downhill, around trees, through a blanket of ferns
to a series of stone steps, and finally flattened out at a small creek.
At one point, the path was blocked by a giant fallen cedar. Noticing a
partially-worn looping side trail, I discerned that
others had walked around the obstacle.
But the Hermit Trail had enlivened me again, so I grabbed
the stub of a branch and, with more effort
than I thought it would take, hauled myself over the trunk.
Landing on the other side, with bits of moss and cedar
stuck to my hands and clothing, I thought,
it’s good to be alive!

By the creek, the hermit had arranged
flat rocks to create a patio of sorts. Beneath a fallen tree,
which was dead but not valueless to the forest given
that its surface was covered in ferns and other foliage, stood an
old sagging wooden bench.
I sat on it, and stared into the creek.
I never realized that a simple creek could be so musical.
It wasn’t that it was gushing with voluminous waterfalls,
but it moved quickly enough to create varying sounds as the
water rounded moss-covered boulders,
flowed overtop of slippery rocks,
sped through the narrows between two stone pillars,
swirled around eddies,
and gently lapped up to the bank’s edges.

Our brains always search for patterns,
so it seemed that there were distinct differences in sound
depending on where the water flowed, all working
together in a kind of symphony.
Yes, I liked that.
A symphony!
When I return to this place, as I intend to do
frequently when I would rather be embraced by Mother Nature
than compete with her as I often do on my hard, fast hikes,
I shall believe that I am going to the symphony.
Such is the magic of this place!

Questions still troubled me as I sat on the bench.
Did Charlie the hermit feel like he had completed his trail before he died?
Or did he want to develop it further with stones lining every inch of the trail?
Or did he have even greater ambitions to develop a larger,
more complex trail system?
And why did Charlie build the trail in the first place?
Was it his nature to create?
Or did he discover it was good treatment for his war injury?

I imagined myself ritually hauling stones up to the trail,
placing them in holes along the edges,
gently sweeping snow away from the path in winter,
and ceremoniously clearing off the debris in spring, summer, and fall,
year after year after year.
I sighed.
It was the most relaxed and serenely productive existence I could imagine.