August 7
End: Churchville
Miles: 36.1
Total: 4901.3
I didn’t wake up to my alarm, but I got packed up and left before the other campers were up. I sneaked out of the campground and got on the road headed for Pictou. I walked through town and got off the trail to go to the grocery store, where I got a little trail food as well as some junk food.
After eating some ice cream, I left and got out onto the trail, which was an ATV trail for a few miles. Rain threatened all morning, but never hit hard. I got drizzled on a few times and looked around for a house to stay at. I must have been feeling lonely, because the rain really was not bad.
On the bright side, the clouds kept the temperature down to a very reasonable level, and I didn’t have to drink as much water as on a hot day. Soon I needed to get onto the Rogers Hill Trail, but couldn’t find it. After asking some locals, I managed to find it hidden just below the road.
The Rogers Hill Trail wasn’t too bad, but it wasn’t spectacular either. I didn’t really have any special desire to get off of the road, but it was nice to switch things up a bit. The foot trail was only a few miles long, and I was back on the road again.
The road walk was beginning to become a bit tiresome, and the sun had come out to heat things up a bit. I stopped at Greenhill Spring to sit and rest. While I was there locals came and got water from the spring. If it was good enough for them, it was good enough for me.
After my break I continued on. I was soon wishing someone would offer to let me wash my clothes and take a shower. It had been weeks since I had washed my clothes, and I hadn’t showered recently either. I didn’t usually mind these things, but it had been unusually long, unusually hot, and I was growing weary of Nova Scotia quickly.
The road walk from Pictou to Antigonish made no sense. I walked far to the south of the Trans-Canada Highway, which is the most direct route. I also wasn’t seeing anything incredible, just a lot of rural land and old decrepit houses and out buildings.
I went through all sorts of small towns and hoped that someone might stop and talk to me, but that didn’t happen. As clouds dominated the sky I realized that it was going to rain overnight, and hoped to find someone to stay with. I was definitely feeling the mental effects of walking for over seven months.
I finally arrived in Churchville and decided I wouldn’t go any farther. Since no one had talked to me, I decided it couldn’t hurt to knock on a door and see if I couldn’t get lucky.
The first house I tried had a ‘Jesus’ license plate cover and a stone with the word ‘Faith’ engraved on it. “Perfect!”, I thought. I knocked on the door and a man in a wheelchair opened the door a half an inch and said, “Whadya want?!” in an annoyed tone. I tried to explain the situation and asked if I could do some work to sleep in the garage, to which I was immediately rejected and had the door shut in my face. “Welcome to Churchville,” I thought as I turned to go try another house as the rain continued.
At the next house a woman eventually opened a window to reject me, and at the house after that the person wouldn’t respond to my knock at all, though apparently they called the police. I talked to a kind Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman, and ended up setting up my tarp in the community lot across from the cemetery. It was actually a decent night, but I was definitely disappointed with my experience in Nova Scotia.
