The colours we see around us can impact us more than we realise.
Charlottetown Marathon
For most of my life I have lived in cities. They are busy and bustling with energy, so I have always loved it. There’s been something about cities that was always fascinating to me, whether it be the history of its location, how the change across a country or the type of people that find themselves living within them. There is always something different to see when visiting a new city.
However, even most other city-dwellers will agree with me when I say that what cities have in culture, they tend to lack in something specific: colour.
It’s hard to make a city colourful. Sure there are great pockets in some of them where art is truly on show, like a graffiti alley or a particular neighbourhood, but those are spots you have to seek out for yourself. Apartment buildings, condominiums and office skyscrapers don’t usually add much with their boring grey or rectangle windows. After all, engineers don’t usually make great artists.
As a city-slicker for so long, I had become accustomed to the look of a city and the lack of colour within it. I’d spent my life so used to being surrounded by grey that I hadn’t really thought too much about the impact that a different colour might have on us. I loved parks, and lakes, and visiting the countryside, but I’ll be the first to admit I didn’t fully understand the reason.
During marathon #12, I was about to get a step closer to figuring out why.
The City
As long as I’d lived in Canada, the locals had mentioned that there was something different out to the east.
Prince Edward Island sits as Canada’s smallest province, crossable in just around four hours by car from the most eastern and western tips, neighbouring Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. While it has a tiny population, it is rich in indigenous and colonial history that has permeated through Canada’s, and the world’s, culture for generations in a way that is easily missed.
You may have heard the story Anne Shirley in Anne of Green Gables, a story written as a love letter to PEI’s beauty by its resident Lucy Maud Montgomery. The novel reached all over the globe, doing wonders for the advancement of women’s literature in the twentieth century, and it all came from the tiny and forgettable town of Cavendish in PEI. The quaint, colourful lighthouses along the coast continue to populate the majority of postcards sitting in souvenir stores on the mainland, and so chances are you have seen parts of this island without knowing it. And Charlottetown itself was home to the signing of Canada’s federation, as its old buildings and signs continued to remind visitors.
But by far the most iconic thing about the island was the colour that permeates through it. The majority of the dirt in its southern half has a high concentration of iron-oxidation, which essentially rusts the sand and turns it red. This surprising chemistry extends inland for a long way, and so the ploughed fields of farms present an amazing image of rolling red and green fields that is unmatched by anything around the world.
I was stunned by such images as I entered the city of Charlottetown and saw it all for the first time. The intercutting weave of red fields on a landscape beneath a clear blue sky was something I truly had not seen before, and still remains difficult to describe in words today. I could barely take my eyes off it, and the more I looked the more I felt a sense of joy permeating within me.
I had seen plenty of fields before. I had seen plenty of dirt before.
But I hadn’t seen such red inter-woven with green and blue like this.
I barely understood what I was feeling, but something about the colour was truly uplifting me. I was here to run a marathon, and for the first time I truly couldn’t wait to get going so that I could see more.
The Marathon
As the hotel would have charged me extra for a late check out, I woke to tackle the marathon. I had until midday to get myself out of there, including time to eat, shower and pack, so I powered through the early kilometres to get some distance on the board.
Nothing, it seems, is more motivating to a run than the prospect of losing money for slowness.
I’d had one afternoon to explore the city the day before, and so while planning the route I had popped into the local running shoe store to ask the staff for any recommendations. As expected, they were all regulars, and immediately recommended the Confederation Trail. The whole thing, they explained to me, was a shared bicycle and foot trail that ran tip-to-tip across the entire length of the island for nearly 500 kilometres, with many additional connected branches to connect other parts of the island, including Charlottetown. I salivated at the prospect of such a long way of uninterrupted running.
The sun rose above the water as I tackled the coastal walking path first, and then looping through some of the suburban streets and roundabouts before the rest of the island woke up. I covered twelve-kilometre in an out-and-back first along the ocean, and then headed to the start of the Confederation Trail to continue the last 30 kilometres along it with eagerness.
I ventured inland towards the heart of the island. It was so quiet. I was truly alone, save for the occasional walker or biker. The only sounds I heard were the light rustling of trees and my own controlled breathing, which spurted out a light mist to reflect the morning cold. In my mind I was taken back to marathon #4 in Queenstown, New Zealand, where the solo trek through a beautiful landscape fulfilled me in a new way I had yet to experience at the time. While I was on the entire opposite side of the world, and about eight more marathons down, such a feeling came to me again.
It was absolutely beautiful. Beneath me, the path was truly unique. Like the fields I had seen in the distance, it was mostly a terracotta red, and it stained my socks and shoes in a way I couldn’t be disappointed with. I was so used to the same brown or grey of mud and pavement respectively that some red felt new, different and fun.
The feeling these colours brought up surged through me, and almost too fast I found myself turning around at the small town of York. I had just 15 kilometres left to run back to Charlottetown and finish the marathon. I couldn’t believe I was already here.
I was so glad for the simplicity of the Confederation Trail. It allowed me not to think about the route, but to look around and absorb every inch of it that I could. Over and over again, the hills of green and red rolling over the horizon was so beautiful that I forgot about my tired breathing, sore legs and throbbing feet. The ligament pains I usually felt barely registered this time. Seeing the colours helped fuel me forward, so eager was I to see more.
I was almost sorry to find myself in the last five kilometres (I said almost!) and the fact that I had enough in the tank to nearly sprint the last five minutes meant I really had just settled into a relaxing rhythm for most of the marathon.
I returned back to the start of the trail with plenty of time to spare before checkout, and probably for the first time was somewhat sad that the marathon could not have been just a little longer…
Reflection
When we look upon the world around us, I don’t think we truly realise the simple impact that colour can have on us. A great day can be easily ruined by seeing grey in the distance, and a gloomy moment can be healed by a walk next to blue water or amongst green grass. Colours alone can brighten up a living space, and have carried meanings and feelings to cultures across millennia.
The red sand and rolling green hills of Prince Edward Island has inspired the people of Canada for generations, and it helped me here today. I felt a swell of joy when I looked upon the rolling hills around me, the intersecting tableau of green, red and blue.
So how do you feel when you see the colours in a bouquet of flowers, or a work of art? What do they make you feel? When you see them? If flowers or art isn’t your thing, perhaps there are other colours that resonate within you.
Whatever it is, I cannot recommend enough a visit to Charlottetown and the rest of Prince Edward Island, just to see the colours all around it. Lucy Maud Montgomery put it far better than I could have, so I will leave this one with her words:
“You never know what peace is until you walk on the shores or in the fields or along the winding red roads of Prince Edward Island in a summer twilight when the dew is falling and the old stars are peeping out and the sea keeps its mighty tryst with the little land it loves You find your soul then. You realize that youth is not a vanished thing but something that dwells forever in the heart.”
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