Berthierville to Louiseville   |   Campsite: 46.25226° N, 72.95067° W

The morning is close to perfect—waking refreshed into a sunny morning under a blue sky is the best motivation to get the day started! I was thinking about how the daily process of putting up and tearing down the tent, of inflating and deflating the ThermaRest mattress, and of unpacking and repacking again, and again, and again might become monotonous, but it hasn’t been that way at all. When the tent is up and the mattress is being inflated, an almost giddy sense of excitement begins to build, knowing that sore bones will soon be relaxing and healing within the warmth of the quilt and sleeping bag liner. Each morning as the pack gradually fills and the tent comes down, the act of getting out into the day to walk fills me with a sense of curiosity and excitement, and with it all of the wonderful surprises down the road that I will experience. And so as I walk the five kilometres into the town of Berthierville for coffee, the internet, posting content to the blog, and some transcription of notes, I feel excited at how the physical act of walking is fuelling multiple forms of creative production, and how in turn that creative production is inspiring me to get out into the world to see, collect, document, and play with even more material. This walk is a type of perpetual motion machine, each aspect of the experience fuelling the other, and so far I have been loving every minute of it. By 9:00 I am preparing to get back out, with the town of Louiseville as the destination for the day, a comfortable 29 km distance down the road. I will stop for fruit at a grocery store to pick up a tasty snack before leaving town. The scenery is lovely for the entire section of the highway, bordered by nice small homes and big views of the river. Sometime around 10:30, the road crosses the fast-moving Highway 40, and everything becomes very big! Big views, big skies, big farmhouses, barns, and fields. This stretch of highway runs a full 15 km to Louiseville straight as a nail, not a single turn, as it runs through massive farm fields organized around 90-degree angles of each other. The air smells sweet, and while no crops are visibly growing, the sweet scent of corn or canola hangs pleasantly in the air. At almost exactly 12:00 I arrive at the crossroads of Highway 138 (the road I’ve been walking) and Montée St-Laurent.  At this crossroad is a small restaurant with picnic tables set out in the sun, a gas station, and a dépanneur. I buy two pints, boil water at one of the tables, and enjoy the sunshine as I eat lunch, journal, and familiarize myself with the road ahead to Louiseville. A beautiful day, as the sun and a blue sky light my way through a lovely 14-degree afternoon. The walk to Maskinongé begins at 1:15. It is an incredibly straight line, cutting through large but beautiful farm fields. When I reach the next dépanneur, a man filling up his vehicle with fuel motions me to approach the truck window he has lowered. He must be a contract painter as both his and the clothes of his partner are covered in white paint. We talk about the walk, the beautiful province of Québec, and my plans to be in St. John’s by August. His name is Julien, speaking excitedly between pulls on his cigarette hanging at a precarious angle from the corner of his lips. We say goodbye, and I enter the air-conditioned interior of the dépanneur to buy a few large pints. When I exit, I meet a very polite man outside wishing to know what I am doing when he sees my pack. We speak briefly at the entryway of the store. He seems impressed that I’ve come all this way. He lives just outside of Montréal: his work brings him here often. He wishes me luck and we shake hands. I ask him his name—Eric, he says. A very nice, soft-spoken guy! Louiseville is now only a 7.8 km walk in a nearly perfect straight line from the town of Maskinongé, as it is surrounded on all sides by farming operations. The view is profound as I am able to see towns dozens of kilometres across flat, dark, rich soil. By 4:15 I am walking into Louiseville where I aim for a coffee shop and the internet. A post is written up for tomorrow’s addition to the blog, with additional transcription for two more days of written notes. I also spend some time looking for a suitably hidden spot to set up the tent for the night, mapping out where good green spaces are located. Even though the staff filled up my water bottles at the coffee shop, I want to use as little as possible due to tomorrow’s 37 km walk into Trois-Rivières which will see very few opportunities to refill throughout the day, other than at a few spots in its surrounding suburbs. I start a conversation about the highway northeast toward Québec City with a man named Gaston who is working at a dépanneur next door to the cafe. He was very approachable, and he was patient with my bumbling questions. He described the upcoming route northeast along the St. Lawrence River as scenic and quite close to the water—so close, in fact, that I’ll be able to reach over and touch it. He reinforced his description with hand gestures that mimic the scooping up of water from the surface of a stream. He said that the landscape is beautiful, composed of small towns set amid beautiful farm fields. I say thanks and goodbye, walking to a public park ten minutes toward the centre of a residential neighbourhood. Within 15 minutes I find a hidden and very comfortable spot in which to pitch the tent. I eat first at a bench where I boil water to cook a ramen dinner. By 7:45, the sun is much lower in the sky, entangled in the trees surrounding the park, with the ensuing dark providing ample cover to set up the tent. Today, 40 kilometres have been walked, and I am satisfied with the distance. I am also delighted with the three nice conversations shared with people met over the course of the day! A day of good progress and connection.

Today’s distance walked: 40.1 km   |    Total distance walked: 749.76 km