Tag: hiking

Trail for the ages

The monarch butterfly alights on sedum in pinkish-mauve bloom, then takes flight. It twirls and dives, then rises again with seemingly no sense of urgency or direction. It appears to enjoy the whims of the wind. But the butterfly knows better than I, surely, and will soon be southbound, on its way. Fly my butterfly, one September day.

The trail stretches before me for 7.3 miles on this day in early September. The trail actually lays out for about 10 times that distance, across northern Wisconsin for 74 miles eastward to Park Falls. But 7.3 for me today.

I’m at the Tuscobia Trail’s western trailhead, the parking lot and kiosk along Hwy. SS north of Rice Lake. The sun is hiding for now behind the treetops along this east-west corridor, sending only slivers of light through portals in the leaves. It’s going to be a warm day, but the early morning has a hint of autumn. Coolish and crisp.

Today’s outing presents a special challenge among the emerging asters and retreating bergamot. Each September now I “run my age.” I ran 7 miles a few years back, then 7.1, then 7.2, and today it will be 7.3. You’ve figured it out. What was once a normal daily run now is long. And slower.

I mark this annual milestone on the Tuscobia Trail, having come to this abandoned railway—one of the state’s first Rails to Trails—in my 20s. For decades it was my training ground for marathon running, snowshoeing, and cross-country skiing. Today, along with memories, it hosts my conviction to continue.

It’s a quiet morning, but out of habit along less picturesque pathways, I’ve put in earbuds. Though I’m tracing the tempo of The Moody Blues, I’m missing the sounds of silence as the forest swallows me between fields and swamps. I take off the buds.

The footing is softened by pines needles and the first-fallen leaves, mostly tumbling from birch and aspen. The leaves are like golden coins, creating a tannish footpath below and between the greenness. Where it can, the sun plays on the pathway; I run through the shadows.

Except for the occasional drone of traffic along the intersecting town roads, there’s mostly only soulful silence. Birdsong is nonexistent, save for crows and bluejays. A sharp-skinned hawk perches silently on a branch above the trail.

As I approach my turnaround point (3.65 miles), I hear a muted rumble behind me. Motor vehicles are prohibited here—thank goodness—but the rumble grows louder. I turn around to see a horse and buggy gaining on me. Two young Amish men smile as the horse trots past. The black buggy with wooden wheels fades into the trail’s narrowing V ahead.

It isn’t today’s only horse. On my return, I meet two horseback riders, who alert me to stop. Though the horses wear blinders, I’m told that running footsteps sometimes spooks them.

I reach the trailhead at the intended 7.3 miles. Just then, three men with large backpacks walk toward me through the parking lot. They sling their packs to the ground, keep the smiles on their faces, and take a seat on the trailhead’s bench and the sawed hunks of a tree trunk that must have fallen on the trail.

What follows is a pleasant conversation. The men are hiking the Ice Age Trail, having started a week ago. They are from Cincinnati, Idaho, and Tennessee, their names Ed Acheson, Eric Weinmann, and Joe Sobinovsky, respectively (left to right, below). They are friends through hiking, having put their heels to some of the country’s most treasured trails. And now they add Wisconsin’s Ice Age Trail, of which Tuscobia is a part of for a dozen miles. 

They ask about my run today, and I reveal the birthday endeavor while wondering aloud how long it’s sustainable. “It is for as long as you can,” offers Ed, with a smile.

There’s something about meeting strangers on a trail and sharing a fleeting moment. We are strangers in only name and appearance, but are akin in seeking the solitude, beauty, and challenges of the outdoors. We choose to enjoy nature without the use of noise and engines, and away from the crowds.

The men are inquisitive as to what lies ahead. Suddenly, I am the trail expert for this local segment. They are delighted to hear that Tuscobia is flat while passing between woodlots and farm fields; they started their hike a week ago in St. Croix Falls, and had encountered some dense and hilly forests on their way to northern Barron County.

The previous night they tented on the church lawn in Haugen, having asked permission from the folks at Holy Trinity Parish. This morning, they had breakfast in Haugen at the popular Lona’s Corner Cafe, then hiked 3 miles south to the Tuscobia trailhead.

After their Tuscobia segment, I tell the hikers that the Blue Hills segment will be hilly and mostly large tracts of forests. They just smile, and tell me they hope to make it to the gas station/convenience store in Weyerhaeuser by nightfall. They ask if there are showers there. Probably not, I tell them.

We bid goodbye after they get assurance that water is available in Brill, five miles down the trail. As I near my truck in the parking lot, Ed shouts, “7.4 next year!” I turn, laugh, and wave.

I walk away into the September day. This next year of my life is just beginning, as is my favorite month, the month with the bridge to autumn. I go home and reread a poem I wrote years ago.

Goldenrod blooming, blackbirds gathering. I will gather my thoughts in September.

Painted leaves and faded tansies. Lingering butterflies and easy breezes. Red apples and blue asters, old shotguns and canoe paddles, wood smoke at a cabin, and frost on the pumpkin, in September.

Bumblebees on sedum, tiny toads test their freedom. Sunflowers reach for the sky. Do I smell an apple pie? In September.

Velvet curls from deer antlers, woolly bears curl in fright; I’ll curl up with a good book, in September. Full Harvest Moon, northern lights, and southern flights. I’ll look to the sky, in September.

Sweet on Sugarloaf

The mountain was calling, but fog was already on the line. So Sugarloaf would have to wait. Instead, I traded a steep climb for a smooth ride along a bicycle trail tracing the shoreline of the world’s largest freshwater lake.

This is Marquette on the south shore of Lake Superior, midway along Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It’s a city of 22,000 residents and two faces, one the bustling downtown and the Hwy. 41 beltline choked with big store and restaurant chains, the other face that of Lake Superior, beaches, endless forests, steep hills, hiking and biking trails, and rapid rivers racing to Gitche Gumee.

I pedaled for miles along the lakeshore path, a wide asphalt surface dedicated to walkers, runners and bicyclists. Later, I would take on the Noquemanon Trail Network’s North Trails tracing Dead River before curving off into a forest of tall pines and oaks, with ferns bordering the pine needle-softened path. 

I would take on Sugarloaf Mountain the next day, dawning cool and clear in Tourist Park Campground. The campground along Dead River—also flowing to Lake Superior—is a convenient base for a choice of bike trails, hiking paths, beaches, and Presque Isle, a 300-acre forested park jutting into the lake just past an active iron ore dock crawling into the lake like a giant alligator to meet the shipping freighters.

(I would take the enjoyable 5-mile bicycle loop around Presque Isle several times, always stopping where one can see Sugarloaf Mountain across the lake.)

At 470 feet above Lake Superior, Sugarloaf is not a mountain of a mountain. But it is a climb, 30 minutes on a trail requiring an eye on paths with rocks and roots through the boreal forest of conifers. Easing the climb is a series of stairways with wooden steps and railings. On the way up, I counted nearly 300 stairsteps.

It’s worth the climb. Atop Sugarloaf, three viewing platforms give a 360-degree view of Lake Superior’s vastness, its rugged shoreline, of Marquette and the ore docks, of Presque Isle, Little Presque Isle, Hogback Mountain, and the Huron Mountains. 

Also in prominent view is the Superior Dome on the Northern Michigan University campus. Covering five acres, it’s the world’s largest wooden dome and home to NMU Wildcats athletics, including football, and community events. From atop Sugarloaf, it looks like a big white bowl turned upside down. 

I took a wrong turn on Sugarloaf’s ascent—there are two parking lots from which to start—and was slightly descending when I met a local, Craig, climbing an alternate route from the second parking lot. “I think I’m going down,” I said, somewhat embarrassed. ‘You are,” Craig said. He invited to follow him to the top, where he showed me points of interest in the distance below. He was my personal guide, and the perfect guide, telling me just enough, not overwhelming me with too much.

Before he started heading back down, I learned that Craig was a retired neurologist who had flown into my hometown of Rice Lake, 300 miles away, for work. He was most anxious to tell me about Forsyth Forward, a group in nearby Gwinn inviting outdoors folks to “Explore Our Wild” as an alternative to Marquette’s sometimes crowded outdoors scene, as good as it is.

Craig bid me goodbye in the early morning light, saying it was wise to come to the mountain early; the trails would soon be crawling with tourists. He was right.

I had Sugarloaf’s peak to my own for a time before older couples and young parents with children began filtering out of the trees to the summit. Some were out of breath. From platform to platform, I walked on granite rocks smoothed by glaciers and resembling topographical maps with their swells, protrusions and depressions held together by curving, intricate lines.

After climbing through the dense and dark, cool and damp forest, Sugarloaf’s summit was awash in warm sunshine, which glistened on sky-blue waters below. A red-eyed vireo filled the lofty air with song, and berries hung on numerous serviceberry bushes.

On the way down, I stopped often between the walls of rocks, with small trees poking out of crevices and tiny, green ferns—rock polypody—decorating the lower reaches of rock. I began meeting mountain hikers more regularly, but in one particular solo moment in the forest hush, I heard only the whistle and flute-like song of a hermit thrush. The hermit that lives on Sugarloaf.

Note: My book, “Soul of the Outdoors,” is available through me, at bookstores, and from online sellers. For a personally-signed book, email davegreschner@icloud.com or text or call me at 715-651-1638. The book is available at bookstores in Rice Lake (Old Bookshop), Eau Claire (Dotters), Menomonie (Dragon Tail), Hudson (Chapter2Books), Spooner (Northwinds), Three Lakes (Mind Chimes), and Bayfield (Honest Dog), in Duluth, Minn., at The Bookstore at Fitger’s, and in Marquette, Mich., at Snowbound Books.

Of fur and feathers

This is not my rabbit, this oblong figure of fur plump on the snow where the ground slides off into a gully of scraggly alders, dogwood, and honeysuckle. I’m a mile from home, too far from the rabbit’s home range of only an acre or so. So, no, this is not the rabbit under my birdfeeder every night.

It has, however, been eating well. It is a big cottontail, and it doesn’t seem too concerned about moving that big body—perhaps 4 pounds—just for me. I guess we’re friends; this encounter has been happening day after day when I trek the trail on snowshoes.

The rabbit just sits there like a watermelon with ears, sometimes sideways to me, other times facing me, only yards away.Sometimes it stands as if to query me. I bid for a reaction with inane questions: Have you brushed and flossed your incisors today? Have you combed your fur? Wanna carrot?  No response, just a cautious stare from large brown eyes, processing if I’m a curious visitor or lurking danger.

Oh, those large eyes, “soft, dark, and brown,” like the line from a Lovin’ Spoonful song.  A rabbit’s eyes are placed high atop the sides of its head, providing a 320-degree field of vision, the only blind spots directly behind and for a few inches in front. The big cottontail I’m watching has no trouble seeing me even when it’s not facing me.

I move to the foot bridge above a dry creek. With blobs of snow on the bed rocks, I’m looking down on a mosaic of white, gray and black. Keeping with the color scheme, a chickadee flits below me from one branch to another, climbing as it might be, up the steep bank.

The chickadee comes close, all five inches and half-ounce of it. “Fee-bee, fee-bee.” It is just below eye level, on a branch about six feet away. I study it, and take photos. The black-capped chickadee wears a black cap, of course, on its roundish head with a black throat. Its cheeks are white, as is its nape, from which a little white spills raggedly onto its gray back. Wing feathers have distinct stripes of white, gray and black.

From this vantage point of a chickadee’s back, I see only a rim of its belly extending beyond the wings. The creamy belly down I can see has hints of rust. The black, rounded split tail is trimmed with gray.  

A cottontail and a chickadee. Ordinary sightings, for sure, but the closer one gets, the more beautiful are our winter neighbors. That includes the blue jay at the bird feeder. Though sometimes scorned for raucous behavior, the blue jay wears an attractive palette of blue, much like a da Vinci landscape rolling across the canvas in endless blues.

The blue jay’s back is ultramarine blue, some say, but others see it as indigo blue. Its wing feathers are Berlin blue, and secondary hues, trimmed in black and white, include the blues China, azure and flax-flower. So pretty, the jay can chase away the winter blues.

From my walk’s close encounters came the inspiration for a new year’s resolution: I will ease even closer to wildlife, recording the astounding details of birds and critters. A year of fur and feathers.

Note: My book, “Soul of the Outdoors,” is available through me, at bookstores, and from online sellers. For a personally-signed book, email davegreschner@icloud.com or text or call me at 715-651-1638. The book is available at bookstores in Rice Lake (Old Bookshop), Eau Claire (Dotters), Menomonie (Dragon Tail), Hudson (Chapter2Books), Spooner (Northwinds), Three Lakes (Mind Chimes), and Bayfield (Honest Dog), and in Duluth, Minn., at The Bookstore at Fitger’s.

Walking the land

Introduction: During this season of giving thanks and giving gifts, I am sharing several excerpts from my book, “Soul of the Outdoors,” which was released last Christmas. For the holiday season, the book is available through me at a special price. See information at the end of this post. The following chapter, “Walking the Land,” is from the November-December segment of the book. Enjoy.

I’d like to think the land remembers my face, my gait, and that I was a friend. Still am. Why else would I keep returning to these woods, pastures, fields, and old farmsteads?

I come here now because I was here as a youth. Growing up here, the land etched in me the tranquility of tall pine trees, amber sunsets beyond fields of green corn, flaming maples, and fox tracks crossing fields of snow.

I nurtured a love for the land and for walking the land. There remains within me a desire to walk out the back door, through the barnyard to the pasture, up the hill and through the woods, across the town road and through the neighbors’ fields, pastures and woods, as I once did. 

Though properties were defined by fences and roads, they remained joined by the land’s flow of hills and valleys and tree lines. And the sweat of settlers.

The land I walked for miles in all directions had different owners, but owners who were not much different from each other. They were farmers bonded to their neighbors by the need for green pastures, healthy crops and livestock, and firewood. Come hunting time there was a sharing of the land to an extent I’ll never see again.

These descendants of immigrant settlers from only a generation or two ago were willing to share. They lived the saying of Native Americans, “Who are we without the corn, the rabbit, the sun, the rain and the deer? Know this, my people, the all does not belong to us. We belong to the all.” 

When I visited this land on a mild, sunny afternoon in early November, I knew I could cross the property of at least one family, for they are the children and grandchildren of my parents’ neighbors a generation ago. From our woodlot, I headed for the huge rock on the adjoining farm we once owned. The rock is in a valley of the pasture, near a small creek at the foot of tall pines. The rock is larger than a chest freezer. It begs one to pause.

I sat on the rock as a kid while exploring, and later as a young man while hunting. In his journal, “In Context,” Native American Kenneth Cooper (Cha-das-ska-dum) wrote that the Lummi tribal members in Washington tell their children, “You sit on this rock, and I’ll come back in a couple of hours, and you tell me what you learned.”

Patience is what children will learn on the rock, and what we all should learn if we take the time to sit under a canopy of tranquility. I sat on the rock for a time and then pushed on to the first deer stand my dad built. The boards are rotting and crumbling. I think I should rip the deer stand down someday. I think I don’t want to.

On this mild afternoon I nestled my back against the trunk of a large maple tree and slid to the ground, letting the sun find my face. I listened to a dog barking in the distance. It could have been my dog decades ago, barking at a treed squirrel from the base of this very tree.

I got up and begin pushing over a series of hardwood hills, crossing the tracks of deer and wild turkeys. I stood in a clearing between woodlots, where as a young photographer I was consumed with the golden leaves of birches against a blue autumnal sky. The birches are still there. And today, so am I.

Note: Want to read more nature essays such as this? Thr0ugh the holiday season, “Soul of the Outdoors” is available through me at the special price of $17. For a personally-signed book, email davegreschner@icloud.com or text or call me at 715-651-1638. The book is also available at regular prices through online book sellers, and at Wisconsin bookstores in Rice Lake (Old Bookshop), Eau Claire (Dotters), Menomonie (Dragon Tail), Hudson (Chapter2Books), Spooner (Northwinds), Three Lakes (Mind Chimes), and Bayfield (Honest Dog), and in Duluth, Minn., at The Bookstore at Fitger’s.