Little Green Tracs

Vancouver Island Spine Trail

The Vancouver Island “Spine” Trail is a proposed trail from Victoria in the south to Cape Scott at the northern tip of the Vancouver Island in British Columbia Canada.

The route is an inland path that passes near many communities, yet retains its wilderness character, follows historic routes and uses some existing trails.

Approximately 700km long, the “Spine” is an adventure opportunity that will provide a recreational route for residents and tourists through the beautiful backcountry of Vancouver Island. Although it is primarily a hiking trail, some sections of the Spine are suitable for other non-motorized use, e.g. mountain bikes, horses, and skis. The route traces mountain ridges, passes through forests and alongside lakes, and is similar to other successful long-distance routes in North America.

The Vancouver Island Spine Trail Association (VISTA), a part of “Hike BC” the BC wing of the National Hiking Trail (NHT), is developing the project. Over the past 30 years, the NHT has incorporated such significant trails as the East Coast Trail in Newfoundland, the Bruce Trail in Ontario, the Alexander MacKenzie route, and the Nuxalk/Carrier "Grease Trail" from Bella Coola to Quesnel.

To learn more please visit their website at http://www.vispine.ca/home

The Path to Rome - Guided Walking Tour

Join us for an extraordinary opportunity to relive the religious and spiritual importance of the Via Francigena as a Christian pilgrim trail while enjoying the unique cultural and traditional culinary diversity of this special region of Italy.

Our guided walking tour will start in Siena September 24 and finish in Rome October 8. During the next 14 days and nights, we will visit significant religious, cultural and spiritual monuments of the Middle Ages. We will walk on old stone and gravel paths, along rolling hills of vineyards and wheat fields of the Val d’ Orcia, past medieval hilltop towns, and through the prehistoric Etruscan empire before arriving at the Vatican and the “Eternal City” of Rome. Each night we will enjoy fine foods that this particular region has to offer, eating in local ristoranti, trattorie and osterie.

Our guides will be Roberta Ferraris, Italian author of numerous walking guides of Italy, and Neville Tencer, Canadian author of An Italian Odyssey. La Compagnia dei Cammini (The Fellowship of Walks), an Italian eco-friendly organization that promotes walking and slow travel throughout Italy, will be hosting and organizing this special tour.

To learn more about the tour and the itinerary including costs and booking arrangements, please visit The Path to Rome website.

Please note: Registrations for this tour are only being accepted until July 31 2011.

Walkabout to Wanderlust

For centuries, humans have always been on the move. 

They have been walking, hiking, tramping, rambling, marching, and scrambling, even running at times. Other times they simply stroll, wander and slowly saunter along. 

Their reasons for moving from one place to another are varied, as the days are long. Some were simply traders taking goods for sale to another town; soldiers marching to confront and conquer their enemies, and just plain ordinary folk wandering in search of work and a new life. Still others were in search of something; maybe a religious or spiritual journey, or wanting an better appreciation of the world that surrounds or a deeper understanding of themselves, or answers to questions.

Male Australian Aborigines used to undergo a journey during adolescence, a rite of passage, whereby they would venture into the bush for a period of up to six months; following in the footsteps of their ancestors took before them. They retrace paths or “songlines” as they are called, imitating the heroic deeds of those before them. 

On the other side of the globe in Europe, Celtic tribes and later Christians made long arduous dangerous journeys to places of religious importance; Santiago de Compostela in Spain, Rome in Italy, and Jerusalem in Israel.  These travelers were pilgrims; from the Latin word “peregrinusm” meaning stranger or foreigner and their journey that took called pilgrimages - journeys into the strange and the unknown.

Later the English coined a word called “wanderlust”; meaning “a crave for travel", derived from the German words for “wandern” (to hike) and “lust” (desire). Today, some of us call this “itchy feet,” an irresistible impulse to travel.

The routes they took were called by different names; paths or ways in England, camino or ruta in Spain, via or cammino in Italy; chemin in France and wanderweg in Germany and Austria. Back in Australia, those young Aborigine males followed tracks, a term still used today in Australia and New Zealand for modern day trampers. In North America, the routes are called trails, probably named after the legions of horses and wagons that crisscrossed the continent in the previous century, and now sometimes used by modern day hikers.

In the days ahead, we will discover several of those fascinating routes and learn about a few of the inspirational journeys taken by others.