Day 1: The Journey Begins

Walk on a rainbow trail; walk on a trail of song, 

and all about you will be beauty. There is a way out of 

every dark mist, over a rainbow trail.

– Robert Motherwell

A pose before we go

We glanced into the woods, past the brown, wooden sign with yellow letters.

“North Country Trail.”

And there was the path. Mysterious. Marvelous. Deeply brown and green shadows buffeting a leafy, narrow single track that first turned up, then to the right, then disappeared altogether.

The Upper Peninsula morning was crisp, damp, earthy. Autumn was hard at work turning summer’s verdant canopy to browns, yellows and reds.  

We three would be going down that path – a retired toxicologist, a Hallmark logistics guy, a book publisher. All gray of head and beard, certainly old enough to know better. 

The plan was to follow the trail for 10 days and 140 miles, give or take. To walk every bend and curve and up and down, to scale the path’s tree roots and rocks and potholes from Au Train, to the towering ridges above Lake Superior, to the Lower Falls of the rushing Tahquamenon River.

To smell the pines, to brace against October’s northwesterly winds, to witness the majesty and relentless power of the world’s largest body of fresh water.

And to test our mettle – to balance ourselves along cliff tops, power our 35- to 40-pound packs up hillsides, to mend our feet and backs and shoulders when necessary.

In short, to step into a wormhole and not know who or how we’d be when we popped out the other side.

I joked that I simply wanted to lose a few pounds. But there was more to it. For all three of us, I think, there was more.

Cindy, my wife and our ride to the trail, remarked that it was like sending boys off to summer camp.

It was. I felt the same butterflies this Oct. 4 morning that I’d felt the last time I’d backpacked – 44 years ago, at age 16.

Anxious. Curious. Adrenalin flowing. Already missing the comfort of my bed.

“Let’s do this thing,” I said.

And then we went for a walk.

***

It seems the world’s gone hiking. Earnest authors tell tales of soul searching and redemption as they struggle along the Pacific Coast Trail, or the Appalachian, or any of the other 30 or so national scenic and historic trails that lace through America’s mountains, hillsides and prairies.

Up here in Michigan, author Loreen Niewenhuis wrote A 1,000-Mile Walk on the Beach chronicling her journey around Lake Michigan. She then walked the shores of all five great lakes for a second book … and then walked the shores of all five lakes’ islands for a third title.

I’m confident she’s now run out of shoreline.

Cheryl Strayed wrote Wild detailing her transformation along the Pacific Crest Trail, released later as a popular movie with Reese Witherspoon.

Redford as Bryson

Bill Bryson, the granddaddy of walking authors, penned A Walk in the Woods in 1998 about his trek along the Appalachian Trail. Smelling a trend, film producers just released a movie version starring Robert Redford as Bryson. (It was a funny movie, although I think Redford’s backpack was pumped fat with helium.)

I’m not sure what drove the three of us to “do this thing.” As I noted in a previous post on my other blog, Above Water, I don’t think any of us were seeking to cast out demons, or discover eternal truths.

“Why do we hike, gents?”

I asked this on Day 9, while we were marching the 10 miles from Culhane Lake to the Upper Tahquamenon Falls.

I was the middle guy in line during this particular stretch of the trail.

“Because we can,” said Bruce Kaldahl, the Hallmark friend from Kansas City, behind me. Bruce, 57, is a tall, strapping father of three born to a farm family in Nebraska. He wore a Nebraska ball cap for most of the hike.

“Because of the challenge,” responded Bill Stott, the former Dow toxicologist, ahead of me. Bill, 64, is a fellow Traverse Citian who also stretches tall, his long legs always powering forward.

“I think,” I said, “it’s because we get to see things that very few others get to see.” Insightful, right? Oh … I’m 60 years old; my legs are shorter than theirs, which will prove good and bad in the days ahead.  

All three answers are right, of course. And not surprisingly, given that we’re three quiet, Midwestern guys, that would be the extent of our introspection and heavy sharing of why we were doing this.

I suspect, though, we each had other reasons … personal reasons. And probably some reasons we couldn’t articulate.

   

Culhane Lake

I still wonder, for example, why, seconds after dropping my pack at our Culhane Lake campsite toward the end of Day 8 and walking the short hill down to the lake’s shoreline, my eyes filled briefly with tears.

I was exhausted, sure, as you’ll learn. But these weren’t tears of relief, or pain. But of joy, like you’d shed after witnessing the birth of your child.

Because there, stretched before me, was a lake of pristine beauty, seemingly untouched by man, its isolated shores guarded tightly by deep-green pines and vibrant oaks and maples, its blue waters as clear as glass and pure as rain. Geese were flying low across the calm, their honks muffled.

Yes, this is why we hike, I thought then. There’s some truth here in Nature that I just can’t grasp, I told myself. But it’s real, and it’s beautiful.

I rubbed my eyes dry and headed back up the hill.

***

What follows are 11 installments chronicling our adventures. This isn’t life-and-death reading. For example, you can guess already that we were not attacked by toothy, snarling beasts. (We did cross paths with a toad.)

Nor did any of us tumble over some rocky crag to our doom. (I did fall on my butt four times; given that Bruce and Bill fell not once, I’ll devote some speculation and science in Day 10 as to why I think this happened.)

But what I do promise is an honest assessment of what it’s like for three guys with about six decades under their belts to think it smart to go hiking 140 miles in 10 days … over sometimes treacherous trails … while carrying packs weighing the equivalent of four or five bowling balls each.

And to do so with cheery smiles and not one – truly, not one! – profane utterance.

Of many small miracles this trip, the latter now seems most notable.

***

We kept our first day’s hike intentionally short … just over 7 miles. Bill had pulled a back muscle just a week prior to the hike – cleaning up trees near his house that were toppled by an incredible Aug. 2 storm – so we thought it best to go slow at first.

The prior night, after our drive northward, was spent at the Seacoast Resort west of Munising, on Lake Superior. The proprietor met me at the office door.

“I thought you’d stood me up,” she announced bluntly.

She had us down for the night of Oct. 2, not Oct. 3. My fault, maybe. But I looked around the parking lot, empty save for our car, and I couldn’t grasp the problem.  

We checked into our two rooms, each equipped with kitchenette, small table, a microwave and small fridge, and a bathroom/shower as tight as a head on a ship.

Dinner would be Mexican in nearby Marquette, to the west, and breakfast the next day would be microwaved Jimmy Dean sausage biscuits that we grabbed at a grocery store.

Settling into our packs

After breakfast, Cindy took some snapshots of us outside the motel adjusting our packs like horses adjusting to saddles. Then she drove us to the trailhead along Au Train Forest Lake Road, where we’d start our journey. (The entire trail stretches from New York State to North Dakota … about 4,600 miles … so our section was a mere sampling.)  

My intention each day was to use my phone’s Map My Hike app to keep track of mileage and time. We wouldn’t have phone service for most of the hike, but we would have GPS.

So after kissing Cindy good-bye and all of us giving her a wave, I pushed the app button.

“Start workout!” responded the bubbly female app voice, which I’ll dub for convenience here “Sweetie Pie,” or “Sweet P” for short.  

Bill, Bruce get acquainted

We were off. The hills were modest, our feet fresh and our spirits high. So the 7.5 miles were covered quickly, with Sweet P chiming in optimistically every 2 miles about distance and speed. We spent our few rest stops in quiet chatter – Bill and Bruce mainly getting to know more about each other, since they’d just met in person two nights before.

Although we planned to camp that night in a clearing somewhere off-trail, we happily discovered a Michigan state-forest wilderness campsite at Two Ponds that included a fire ring.

So at last, we could test our equipment in real time – tents, mattresses, sleeping bags, food prep and the food itself. As to the latter, we’d purchased freeze-dried dinners from Mountain House, an Oregon company. Lunch would always be a mix of beef jerky, dried fruit and energy bars; breakfast a mix of oatmeal, cream of wheat and dried fruit. Coffee and tea as desired.

But dinner would vary each night. First up? Beef stew.

Pretty darn good!

All we needed for cooking was hot water. Bill had brought a small propane stove, Bruce an ancillary stove fired by fuel pellets. Clean water is key, so I brought the Platypus, a gravity filter system that can clean three liters of water per load. Bill fetched water from the pond.

The stew was surprisingly good and the campfire perfect. We shared long stories of work, play and family. Our tents proved roomy and secure. 

Tomorrow would be another short day as our shakedown portion of the hike continued – 7.6 more miles – with a waterfall along the way and a nighttime motel stop in Munising, one of only two motels on the 10-day trip.  After tomorrow would come the more challenging days of 14 to 18 miles each.

Before lights-out, Bill and Bruce hefted the bear bag containing our food over a tall limb and tied it off – a ritual they would follow each night on the trail.

We fell asleep quickly.

“Pretty easy day,” I’d written in my log.

I would write that just once. 

###

Sweet P's Log - Day 1

Next: Day 2 - The Road Less Traveled

To see more photos from Day 1, click here.

For some pre-hike blog posts, see Doug's Above Water.