River Glade to Moncton   |   Accommodations: Motel 6, 1905 Main St, Moncton NB

4:00 is when I begin preparing for the day. I am chasing an early start in order to arrive in the city of Moncton as early as possible. The morning is again near-perfect: cool, silent, with little traffic. I love days in which I am walking into a city—these are major milestones of the walk. Everything has been planned for the day: the distance to be walked into the city is reduced as much as possible, with reservations at a hotel awaiting me upon arrival. I check in sometime around 10:00, accessing my room easily. I set up the tent to dry, soak some garments, and then walk toward downtown to get a sense of the city. I eat shawarma, then find some cold pints with which to return to the room. The city is elegant—small, full of great restaurant culture downtown, with many pubs and microbreweries. A Sobeys store is less than two kilometres from the hotel, so restocking the bag with food will be made easy. For the remainder of the evening, clothing is washed by hand, hung to dry, and TV is watched as I recline into rest and passively look over maps of the walk ahead. Nova Scotia is less than 65 kilometres away, and Prince Edward Island 112 km.

Today’s distance walked: 26.80 km    |    Total distance walked: 1,856.92 km

“Still, being fragile creatures, humans always try to hide from themselves the certainty that they will die. They do not see that it is death itself that motivates them to do the best things in their lives. They are afraid to step into the dark, afraid of the unknown, and their only way of conquering that fear is to ignore the fact that their days are numbered. They do not see that with an awareness of death, they would be able to be even more daring, to go much further in their daily conquests, because then they would have nothing to lose—for death is inevitable.” – Paulo Coelho, “The Pilgrimage,” p. 123.