When it's warm outside and it's a Sunday afternoon, going for an unplanned three hour hike through Gatineau Park is not a terrible idea.

Although the park guides instruct you to never walk alone, I do walk alone more often than I do with someone else. I never truly believe anything will happen to me, but I can also imagine how easy it would be to overpower someone of my size and to hide the body in any random spot in the vast expanses of greenery.

So besides this most minor shred of irrational fear, I find that I experience a peculiar form of pleasurable loneliness when I go hiking. It's not necessarily that I want to talk to anyone, but perhaps it's more a desire to have someone there with whom I can share the beauty of the woods. When someone who understands you also experiences the wind rustling through the layers of leaves, the sun streaming through into small golden pools, the water bubbling over rocks.

And with a friend, after taking thousands of steps together through trees and bushes and gravel, it seems that arriving at a place like this would be an amiable moment.

But then you come across small surprises. And is in solitude, in not needing to express anything out loud to a companion, that some wordless moments are etched more deeply.