Back at the keyboard to share this last day of the expedition with you. Well, technically, we still have 8 km to go tomorrow, one last night at Pine Grove, and then the return to Montreal, but tonight was our final night at a campsite, so I’m allowing myself to introduce the idea of closing this adventure. A way to help us (you, them, the team, and even me) prepare to go back, return home, reconnect with you, get back to normal life, you know?
Before telling you about today, I’d still like to share a few elements from last night. After the collaborative writing of the blog post, the team (coordinators and volunteers) also chose to open their high and low bag. Inside: candy, chocolate, freeze-dried blueberries, and other treats, but also rainbow-colored fire powder.
Everyone gathered around the fire, I threw the pouch into the flames, and the fire became a beautiful rainbow of colors that delighted everyone. We laughed, we sang, and the evening around the fire ended with Jimmy performing a song and dance from his engineering undergrad at the University of Toronto. Everyone was invited to dance. A grand finale to the evening, you think?
But no! It continued, more quietly, sitting on the rocks next to the tent of Vincent, Mathieu, and Jimmy, watching the stars as a group, with Caroline, Mylène, Lysianne, Manu, and Quentin. The Milky Way was visible, and we saw four shooting stars. Each time, we all let out pure joyful exclamations, like children. Catherine even had to step in and encourage us not to stay up too late.
What a magical end to the night.
This morning started with a solo canoeing lesson with Hippolyte, at 5:30 a.m. A few early risers received his teachings: Jimmy, Quentin, Manu, and Vincent.
Breakfast. Cleanup. Boarding. Eight kilometers under the bright sun, barely a few knots of wind, it was t-shirt weather. Mylène and Quentin were in the canoe leading the group. The pace was gentle. You could feel that everyone had mastered paddling, both at the stern and at the bow.
It went so smoothly that we chose to continue all the way to the campsite, instead of stopping on the way for lunch.
Several participants asked Catherine and Marie-Michelle for another introspection session. Marie-Michelle took the opportunity to explain how Mario Bilodeau, the Foundation’s founder, ends an expedition. There’s a moment for introspection, one for sharing, and one for celebration (hi Mario, we miss you!). This silent moment was the perfect opportunity for reflection. Marie-Michelle invited everyone, both team members and participants, to think of one word to define their experience. This word would be shared later tonight, back at the campsite.
This moment of silence, all of us anchored to one another in our canoes, gently drifting in the wind, lasted long enough to fill us with a deep sense of peace.
The rest of the way was paddled with joy, gently, effortlessly.
The task distribution was different this time: it was the volunteers and the team who took on the regular duties—cooking, dishes, toilets, water, and fire. It seems to be a tradition to give participants the afternoon off on the last day of the expedition.
This gave them time to enjoy a wonderful afternoon at the “rocky beach,” swimming to the island across the way, or finding a rock to lie on across the shore—in short, relaxing and enjoying this incredible site.
While swimming, Quentin and Judith, who were wading in the water, were visited by a loon that emerged between them. It mesmerized the entire group, so much so that Tobiasz bumped into the site’s identification sign! Everyone spontaneously burst into: “I saw the sign…” (instead of I saw the sun… yes, once again—and according to Catherine, this is the group that has sung the most in her whole career).
Dinner was hearty: butter chicken and apple crumble cooked on the fire (one of the most anticipated desserts, apparently, according to Mathieu). After dinner came the sharing moment. All together, in a circle, in the light of the setting sun, each person revealed their word.
Fulfilled, renewal, perfect, unity, discovery, grateful, growth, letting go, connection, landscapes, transcendent, bonding, song, beauty, richness, gentleness, silence, layers, growth, enjoy, alignment.
Catherine then handed out a small cord that we all held, as we placed our most beautiful expedition memory into it. This cord will become a bracelet we can wear, as an anchor to this little bubble of time that—even though we might meet again elsewhere—will never be quite the same. A tangible memory to carry with us.
I hope these words resonate with the stories you’ve read over the past few days. In them, you’ll find the power of nature, its beauty, its strength, its impact on our minds, its soothing effect, helping to turn the pages of one or more chapters in our lives. You’ll find the connections built and nourished over these few days, through sharing, listening, helping, understanding, and discovering the people who made up our little community. And finally, you’ll sense the kind of synergy that arises and takes shape in expedition projects, in nature- and adventure-based interventions, the capacity of a project to spark things larger than ourselves, a bit intangible, yet very real, that help bring meaning to our lives.
See you tonight for the celebration.
Gabrielle
