a day on the North Country Trail

I never kill insects. If I see ants or spiders in the room, I pick them up and take them outside. Karma is everything.

Holly Valance

I am covered head to toe in deet, but that doesn’t dissuade gnats and even one mosquito from dive bombing my eye balls, drowning in the moist corners.

And I’ve only been out an hour.

Richard and I drove up to Northern Wisconsin on country roads a few days ago to visit friends from Houston who summer at a cabin on Lake Namekagon. These are friends we sang with at Christ Church Cathedral, went on tour with, and were part of the early days of us coming together to tie the knot. Our fondest shared memory is escaping Hurricane Rita barreling towards the Gulf Coast by hunkering down with lots of singing, card games and booze until the wee hours.

Not much has changed.

And yet, my goals on this visit include testing my mettle on trail. So we get ourselves up and out earlier than the rest to give the North Country Trail a try, the trailhead just a few miles away on windy gravel roads so deep in forest, it’s easy to lose all sense of direction.

Like the Appalachian and Pacific Crest Trails, the North Country is a federally recognized long distance trail. At 4,700 miles, it is the longest running, from North Dakota to New York. I don’t know anyone ‘thru-hiking’ it, probably because it lies so far north, it’s not possible to walk in one season.

None-the-less, I meet an ‘end-to-ender’ catching as much as possible in 2021. Joe sprawls out on a narrow bridge to pump water. He talks non-stop in the way those who have hiked alone too long do, spending equal time talking to me as if I know the trail and educating me like I’ve never walked it.

Which I have, all the juiciest parts in Minnesota anyway – the Superior Hiking Trail, the Border Route and the Kekekabic. But here I’m burdened with only a day pack and, with Richard picking me up wherever I end up, the freedom to walk as much or little as I like.

It’s been an unseasonably hot summer, humid and buggy deep into August. I love the first few miles in the fresh cool, the sunlight dappled through the thick forest of maple, oak, birch and white pine. Richard drops me near Drummond, and I disappear into the Chequamegon National Forest (pronounced shuh-MAH-go-in) 1.5 million acres set aside by the federal government to harvest trees but also simply to enjoy.

The trail through the Porcupine Wilderness is easy walking on soft ground, the moss thick as the trail moves up on an esker along the eponymous Lake. I’m amazed how quickly the outside world vanishes – no cars, no noise whatsoever, only wind high above in the trees.

The trail is not blazed, but signs point me in the right direction when I hit exits towards parking ‘lots,’ more wide spaces along empty dirt roads. I spy lakes tucked in behind trees, then a pristine babbling brook begging me to take a bit of respite by its banks.

My attitude is not entirely centered in on the loveliness of this place. Trees just seem to go on and on, and I get impatient. The bugs are no help and even in here, I’m hot and sweaty.

But I move fast, vacillating between wanting to grab as many miles as I can and enjoying the surprises along the way, mushrooms in fanciful colors and frogs in my path.

And this is precisely how I get into trouble, pushing too hard in the heat, putting off my break for a suitable ‘view,’ and losing sight of what surrounds me.

I meet a couple at a lake just as I find myself turned around by herd trails to various campsites. When I ask them if I’m headed the right way, they tell me they’ve never been here before, though they helpfully suggest I walk an entirely different trail.

Fortunately, it’s not entirely different and where I’m headed later in the day, a part of this same trail ‘system.’ They promise good views before I snap their picture and head on, deep into forest and still more.

Robert Louis Stevenson said when you hike, “you sink into yourself, and the birds come round and look at you.” True enough. I am a visitor just passing by, and birds flit from tree to tree, checking me out and no doubt commenting on my furious pace.

I head straight up from the lake on a well worn path, digging in my poles. It takes me to a super site with a well constructed fire ring that must have a splendid view in fall. So I head right back down again, fairly certain whatever this path is must be the right one.

And as if the universe heard my call, I come upon a woman who assures me it is. I warn her of the maze of side trails and she shares her own warning of a beaver dam to negotiate with bog on each side ready to suck in the careless walker. “But you’ve got sticks and should be fine.”

I notice her hiking pants are free of dirt and tears while my bare legs are spotted with mud (from where in this drought?) scratched and bleeding with one red, itchy and swollen bite the size of a half dollar.

Nothing in here is hard, only the monotony of forest and the heat sucking at my will. The dam is just as she warned, a narrow path of pressed down bushes, Joe Pye and thorns grabbing as if refusing my passage without a price. My reward is a small handful of plump blackberries.

I reach a road to cross that sends me out of wilderness and into the Hardwood Scientific Area. I’m later told each section is managed by different agencies, some federal, some state.

I decide here to keep moving and take my break at the upcoming overlook at Long Mile Lookout. This requires a lot of up and down, just when I get to the breaking point of thirst, but there’s nowhere in the leaf litter to stop.

Still, this is one of my worst habits. I push myself not wanting to lose momentum and I like to chill at a view. But it’s been about ten miles already so I make a mental note to affix a bottle holder to the front of my pack for sips during my more manic phases of walking.

The woods have an odd darkness, as if they’re their own society separate from the world. It’s as if I’m not outdoors at all. The only other time I’ve felt this way was in Utah in Buckskin Gulch, a long slot canyon that embraced me tightly like a high, narrow cathedral.

I contemplate this feeling of being inside as opposed to out when a long line of backpackers catch me. They’re young with big packs, laughing as I take a film of them marching past.

Their presence reminds me to chill out and stop taking myself so seriously – and for the goddess’s sake, stop rushing. Though I protest to the ether that my view is just beyond, up one more hill.

Which of course, it is not.

Up I go, then down, up and down and up again, one more to a sign pointing to the overlook. Finally! The wind is up and I hear a mournful whine in the enormous tower above. Am I meant to climb that?!

But, how? There appear to be no stairs. No, there are not stairs. Only a ladder. And the first twenty feet have gone missing.

I am definitely not meant to climb it, or even able to. This is a tower all right, and my view from below it is non-existent. There’s a nice spot to sit anyway on the concrete blocks holding the tower in place looking deep into trees. At least the wind is up.

After I down all my water in two shakes – chocolate peanut butter and mango chia seed – the forest continues, but mostly down until I shoot back up over a lump of moraine to head quickly back down again. It’s another four miles of this in dappled light before I reach another overlook. This is the one the couple from the start assured me actually affords a view.

I cut off for ‘Juniper Rock’ feeling a bit cynical though this time around, I’m rewarded with quite the view into a deep valley of oak, aspen and maple, the distant high points sharp and steep.

I sit down on the pinkish rock to savor it as long as I can, even as the sun burns down on my shadeless patch before diving back into the forest towards ruins of a Swedish settlement from the late 1800’s.

Immigrants found their way to Wisconsin during a time of famine, taking advantage of the Homestead Act. It granted them land as long as they lived on it for five years and ‘attempted’ to farm. One couple – Gust and Ida – did their best, the gal garnering the nickname ‘goat’ for her ability to run up and down these steep and lush hills above the Marengo River.

I come upon remains of a spring house made of concrete and try to imagine life in those times – hard, for sure, but tight knit, neighbors needing to rely on one another for everything from help harvesting to company when lonely. It didn’t help that these hardy souls attempted to farm on glacial til. Pictures of the time reveal cleared woods, but now it’s all grown back, and I’m swarmed by bugs.

So off I go, taking only a precursory look at the other remains before pressing on into a planted forest of red pine, tall and straight, the light streaming in long rays. It almost feels primeval with huge ferns, like New Zealand.

Two more view points open up, but nothing offers as much as the first so I barely sit down before marching on. I’m hot and tired, feeling like I’ve seen all I want to see when I really haven’t done that much hiking. Ole Ida the ‘goat’ would take her churned butter ten miles to market in Grand View and must be snickering at me from the beyond wilting carrying only a day pack.

The trail begins to descend and I’m fairly certain I’m heading out now, though the path plays tricks on me turning sharply left and going deeper into the gloom. I laugh and wonder if choosing this trail was a good idea in the dog day’s of summer.

To paraphrase Paul Theroux, “Hiking suggests hope. Despair is the armchair; it is indifference and glazed, incurious eyes. Hikers are optimists.”

My outlook is certainly more optimistic these days learning my heart has no blockage, no weakness or structural damage and is not verging on any life threatening arrhythmias. Whatever weird heart beat I have occasionally has proven elusive and we can’t seem to catch it in the act, so my cardiologist has suggested for now medication, vagal nerve maneuvers and an Apple watch – plus more hiking.

I’m finally spit out onto a road, not a soul around just me and the bugs. I send Richard a message that I’m stopping here and squat down on a rock to gobble up a leftover thru-hike lunch.

My wait is long since his drive from a disc golf course he played and mapped is winding and complicated. I flick away a black and white spider from my leg, and he simply crawls right back up. Such persistence; such hopefulness and optimism that spider maybe looking for salty sweat and warmth on my beaten up shin.

The trails will see me once again as soon as I can organize my schedule to get back. This short ‘trial trail’ just to whet the appetite, and likely more interesting on paper and as a ‘hoped for’ experience than what it turned out to be.

But I didn’t stay at home or complain about the woods of Northern Wisconsin not living up to the standards of the Rocky Mountains. I went and walked and took it as it comes. I moved forward, each step taking me towards a possible overlook, a tiny surprise, a joy in moving.

I’ll take that – bugs, heat and all – over standing still any day.