And Then We Went for a Walk: Day 4: The Efficiency of Age

Lake Superior's winds blew strong on Day 4.

My watch beeped its 6:30 a.m. alarm. I didn’t hear it. It dinged for 10 minutes before I stirred, the soft tone masked by the deep rumble of pounding surf.

What had been a relatively calm Lake Superior the night before now seemed a bit of a tempest.

Not of gale proportions – not a storm – because the tent wasn’t rocking. But I could hear the wind strong in the trees.

Yesterday, the lake had become our close companion – just a stone’s throw to the left of us – and would remain so for the next four days of our journey east.

So beginning this morning, I tried to sense its mood. Would Superior be strong-willed today? Or merely playful? Would its cold winds nip at our ears? Or would the coolness bring comfort as we struggled on the trail?

I climbed out of my tent and saw sunlight inching its way through the trees. Today was showing promise. It would be a clear day. Blue skies, blue waters and, now, frisky white caps slapping hard against tall cliffs.

Perfect.

Bill, per usual, was already up and active. He complained briefly of not sleeping well. I felt rested this morning. So far, my gear was keeping me comfortable.

Bruce was up too, and, after our usual breakfast, we packed quickly and rejoined the trail.

Four fingers this time.

Our destination: Sevenmile Campground, about 16 miles up the coast.

On our way out, we saw that a hiker had strapped a hammock between two trees overlooking the beach. There he’d slept. I would guess, anyway. Our tents were shielded from the stiff winds by the thick forest, but he was on Superior’s very doorstep.

I could only imagine the kind of rocking and rolling he’d experienced last night.

Then again, one man’s cacophony is another’s man’s lullaby.

***

It struck me as we set up camp the prior night and then decamped in the morning, that our group was surprisingly efficient.

Our tents ... from left, Bill, Doug, Bruce

We each found a flat spot for our tents, propped our backpacks against a tree, and methodically went through the rapid routine we’d adopted of erecting our temporary hamlet on the trail:

- Spread ground cloth

- Put up tent

- Inflate mattress

- Lay out sleeping bag

- Find that night’s food.

- Secure miscellaneous items.

We did this with no words exchanged. In minutes.

In the morning, we did the reverse.

I remarked to Bruce, with whom I’d long ago shared assistant scoutmaster duties, that it would have taken our young scouts an hour or more to do the same. Not because they weren’t capable. Just that they’d get, well, distracted – by play, mostly.

They say as you get older, all manner of bad things happen to your brain. You lose a sense of wonder and curiosity. You become rigid, less open to new ideas and challenges. You get cranky. You avoid play. You fall into a routine – a perpetual comfort zone. Brain shrinkage? Maybe that’s the cause.

But I think all three of us embraced this hike precisely because we like to celebrate what’s wondrous and wonderful. Our brains aren’t declining; we merely have been taught well to think linearly – how to get from Point A to Point B to Point C in the most efficient way possible.

But curiosity still drives us. So, yes, let’s find the best path forward, but let’s smell the roses along the way.

Bill and Bruce exemplify that.

Bill ... hamster surgeon.

Bill and I became friends through the Traverse City Newcomers club. He’s a former researcher and toxicologist for Dow Chemical in Midland, Mich. He went on to teach biology at Northwestern Michigan College and retired just a few weeks before the hike.

He’s a clean-water freak; I appreciated that he supplemented our filtering system with tabs of iodine and chlorine. He knows a lot about science, of course, but the softer arts as well, including politics and history.

He’s also a veteran hiker who can tell long tales of hikes across parts of Europe. After he learned I planned to blog about our trip, he loaned me his copy of A Coast to Coast Walk by Alfred Wainwright, which describes in incredible detail the best way to walk across England, from St. Bees Head in the Irish Sea east to Robin Hood’s Bay in the North Sea.

Bill retraced those steps in a 14-day hike in the year 2000 and scribbled small remembrances in the margins of the book as he did so. It’s a joy to read.

To this day, he remembers the journey in great detail —a magical two weeks of history, culture, science and mystery.

Bill also is one of those quiet guys who can surprise you.

Best campfire story: Bill, who used to work extensively with lab rats, told us he once operated on a hamster for a friend using a buddy to administer the anesthesia while he did the surgery. The hamster was suffering from a tumor on the leg. The surgery was a success, because the hamster lived another six months – although a chagrined Bill said its leg ended up being about half its normal size.

Bruce and I later conferred, amazed: Who is calm and collected enough to operate on a friend’s hamster? How cool is that?

Then there’s Bruce.

Bruce ... almost skunked.

Bruce and I go way back thanks to our sons being friends from grade school and beyond. We watched them grow through Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts, then on to high school and college.

Bruce hails from Danish farm stock, and his family still owns a big spread in Nebraska. He, though, preferred a life off the farm – a future with Hallmark Cards in Kansas City. If you walk into a Hallmark store and you see all of those Hallmark card fixtures, Bruce is the guy who got them there. It’s a big deal – a logistical feat.

Bruce is also, let’s say, economical. Bill and I went out and bought new equipment for this trek; Bruce pretty much made do with what he had: a big Coleman tent, those $12 poles, and an old pack that required him to tie all sorts of things to its outside.

Bruce’s pack reminded me of the truck driven by Tom Joad, the father in The Grapes of Wrath. The truck, already overburdened, had numerous necessities tied to its outside – baskets, mattresses, tools, extra tires– as the family fled the Dust Bowl depression in Oklahoma for a better life in California.

Bruce hung similar essentials to his pack -- extra shoes, green and gray sacks stuffed full of camp gear. They all swung like pendulums as he marched on.

On cliff's edge.

Bruce has an important backstory, too. A few years ago, he was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia, something only a handful of folks around the world had been stricken with. The doctors in Kansas City were amazed and enthralled, and quickly got to work figuring a way to battle back.

After stem-cell treatments and other therapies, Bruce is now cancer-free. But it was serious there for a bit -- a dance with death, although I suspect Bruce would never call it that.

Bruce is a man of strong faith. He and his family believed deeply during those months that it would all be OK. Bruce now cherishes every minute of every day. More than I do, I fear.

As I like to say, he marvels at what’s marvelous.

Best campfire story: Bruce and I were on a Boy Scout campout. We’d just gotten the boys into their tents, and we were sitting at a picnic table, under a tarp, in the dark, enjoying the adult quiet time and talking softly. We sensed some movement on the ground, and we watched, now silent, as a skunk shuffled up to our table, slowly crossed under it – and us – and meandered on with nary a stink.

My faith is not as strong as Bruce’s. But it got a boost that night.

***

We hadn’t walked far on the trail before we ran into four hikers heading west. They were about our age, and a couple of them had the old, heavy-cloth rucksack style of pack you see in old Army movies, not the sleek synthetic versions Bill and I preferred.

We asked them where they were going, and they mentioned Munising.

We said we’d just been there and wished each other well in parting, as hikers do.

Up we go ...

After that, it seemed the ups and downs just got more up and down. The National Park Service had done a fine job of carving stairs into hillsides when roots wouldn’t suffice, but the stairs invariably were steep and long – at the least risky when not treacherous.

“Progress was slow,” I wrote in my log that night. “Averaged 30 minutes a mile vs. the usual 20. So many elevation changes. Many steps up, many down … hard on the knees, feet.”

We also encountered occasional warnings posted to barriers across paths: “Trail Hazard. This section of trail has been closed for your safety. Please follow temporary reroute ….”

The reroute often was a fresh-cut path featuring smallish tree stumps an inch or two above the trail, well-placed tripping hazards, we discovered.

... and down.

The washed-out trails were evidence of the ever-changing landscape of these cliffs. Wind and water pummel the rock, eroding the sandstone, sending both rock and trees plummeting to the water below. It’s not surprising that the North Country Trail, running tight along these cliffs, would occasionally succumb as well.

Despite the hazards, we saw spectacular cliffs, seemingly around every corner. Each time, the path would steer us out of the woods to a rocky edge. There the winds would buffet us and the waves would roar.

And we’d stand in awe.

Among the sites:

· Grand Portal Point, a rocky arch below an abutment just beyond Mosquito Beach, where frothy water surged through it like a funnel, spitting out the other side.

· Spray Falls. Waters from a creek we’d crossed tumbled 70 feet down to Superior in a striking cascade of silver and white.

· The Lucky Tree of Chapel Rock, where an evergreen seemed stranded, yet alive, atop a pillar of sandstone. In fact, the tree’s thick roots stretched across an abyss to the mainland. A sandstone arch once supported the roots. The arch collapsed, but the roots hung on, keeping the tree alive.

A sand plateau.

· Plateaus of sand almost as big as soccer fields that stopped abruptly at the cliff’s edge 200 feet up. These wide beaches provided spates of smooth walking. Relief!

Lunch would prove an adventure. I was low on water, so I wanted to find a spot where I could fill the Platypus and let it filter while we ate. We arrived at a sharp turn in the trail, and below was a flat outcropping of rock just at the water’s surface.

I grabbed the Platypus, and Bruce and I inched our way down. Large waves rolled in, forcing us to leap from rock to rock to stay dry. As each wave rolled back out, I dipped the Platypus into the shallow pools left behind, filling it before the next waves arrived.

Getting water.

Water collected, we then ate our jerky above the spot, sitting on roots that hung over the crashing surf below.

It’s days like this when your senses are filled to the top, when you gape and stare and utter “Wow!” and snap photos in hopes you can somehow really capture the grandeur, beauty and sheer power of what’s before you.

We also knew that this day could be the scenic pinnacle of our 140-mile walk. We were frustrated that we had to move quickly to reach Sevenmile before dusk. We would have welcomed a stop of 15 minutes here, 10 minutes there, to soak in the splendor.

Lunch high up. Roots provide seating.

But we were locked in. We had to reach our Grand Marais motel – and our fresh food supplies – the next night. Because we had an even longer 17.5 miles tomorrow, we had no choice but to complete our 16 miles today.

And so we tromped on. Again, the last few miles seemed torturous. Bill was in the lead, Bruce in the middle and I at the rear. At one point, maybe a mile away from Sevenmile, I had had enough – I needed a break.

“How about a stop,” I said. We had the time, I thought.

It was a rare moment of repressed tension. Bill had momentum and wanted to continue; I didn’t see a reason why my feet needed to suffer when a 10-minute break would remedy at least some of the pain.

Not that words were traded. We’re low-key guys, after all. Bill acquiesced, I was thankful, and we proceeded apace after the brief rest.

It had been a long day for all of us.

We arrived at Sevenmile and again found a stunning beach. We fetched water from Sevenmile Creek for dinner, and I decided to resupply the Platypus after dinner so we’d have plenty of water for breakfast and the next day’s hike – a lesson learned after running short on the trail today.

I’d allocated an extra dinner each for this first half of the trail. So we all had a bag of lasagna available in addition to the planned beef stroganoff. The guys decided they’d eat both that night, since Grand Marais – and pizza – awaited us tomorrow. I was good with just the stroganoff, thinking I could use the lasagna some other time down the trail.

Time to cool the feet.

After setting up camp, we walked the short 50 yards or so to the shore to catch the sunset. It was getting colder. We’d heard that we’d get rain the next day, so we assumed a front was moving in.

I shed my boots and again soaked my feet in the cold wet.

The waves, still strong, sang their hellos as we gathered on the beach.

Later, after retiring to our tents, they’d sing their goodnights, too.

As good friends do.