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Still Learning …and Hiking

I’m still on trail. Or, more accurately, I’m back on North Country Trail for the third time this year. Apparently no amount of misery will keep me off of it.

This summer I’ve hiked about 1000 miles, finishing the 300 mile Superior Hiking Trail in northern Minnesota – a part of North Country Trail – a couple weeks ago. It’s become very clear that the time of year and weather matter a lot when you’re hiking, especially if you’re backpacking and cannot escape the elements.

When we came back from mountain climbing to hike central Minnesota, we found a beautiful well-maintained trail through the woods. Unfortunately, it was mosquito and deer fly season. It was also hot and very humid. We were the only ones on the trail except a man from Fish and Wildlife Department who was mowing the trailhead parking area.

He looked at us, shook his head and said “You don’t have to hike this trail in order, right?” We nodded. He said “You should skip on up north and get out of these bugs. Nobody hikes central Minnesota in July.” We were miserable and not at all looking forward to camping in heat and humidity with relentless biting bug swarms. That evening we drove up north, skipping over 300 miles of trail, and set our sights on hiking the Border Route section of this trail.

The bugs were far fewer, although it was still tough wilderness area hiking with very challenging terrain. The paths are difficult to navigate and this year all trail maintenance was canceled because of Covid. I am glad to say we finished it without injury. The campsites are beautiful and we often camped by a lake and had great views of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness at times. Plus, I felt like the challenge brought my experience level up a notch. I am glad we hiked it, …and even happier it’s behind me.

Next we started the Superior Hiking Trail, hoping to regain our love of hiking. It was a wet and somewhat buggy start and my hiking partner stopped hiking after the first full day. He decided there was more joy in fly fishing, but stayed nearby to shuttle me between trailheads. That way I could hike with a day pack instead of my full 29 pound backpack.



I hiked on my own a few days and then one of our trail angels from North Dakota, Rachel, joined me for a week. We had very good weather with some beautiful river and waterfalls along the way, plus good views of Lake Superior. It all went so well in fact that she is the reason I’m back up in northern Minnesota again.



A friend of hers planned a hike through another remote section of this trail, the Kekekabic Trail (Kek), with a permit to start next week. They invited me to join them and I took them up on it, as I’m probably not ready for solo hiking that type of wilderness area just yet. It’s a 22 hour drive up here, so I brought my bicycle and car to shuttle myself along the hike. I want to complete as many of the miles we skipped earlier as I can before we start the Kek next week.

The plan is to park at a trail head, then ride my bicycle as far as I want to hike, lock up the bike and hike back to the car. Then I can go pick up the bicycle and do it all over again the next day.



I did my first self-shuttled hike late yesterday after I arrived. It was only 3 miles but gave me a chance to try it out. I’m on a section of the trail that follows a bicycle trail called the Mesabi Trail for over 130 miles. I figure a shared bike/hike trail will be the easiest way to test this strategy.

I’m grateful to have the chance to hike the North Country Trail this year, even though it has been challenging in many ways that I never expected. I’ve learned a lot this year about hiking, reevaluating dreams, and about how stubbornness can both help you reach your goal and prevent you from reaching it at the same time. I hope to sift through these lessons and insight to be able to write about them someday.

In the meantime I’m going to keep hiking and searching for ways to make the reward worth the work.

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The Journey

I’m exhausted. Fourteen miles into town on gravel roads, then asphalt roads with traffic from Highway 210 rerouted onto the same road I hiked …this isn’t what exhausted me.

The fours days prior with temps in the mid 90’s while winds howled 30 mph as they pushed me sideways along the dusty roads, causing a man we met to remark that we needed to shorten a pole on the wind side because we were leaning so hard against the wind …that isn’t what exhausted me.

The nearly 500 miles we’ve come in the first thirty-two days while sleeping on the ground most nights as ticks kept us trapped in our zipped up tents aren’t what exhausted me either.https://fromdreamtolife.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/img_7826.mov

We’ve actually slept well, and the previous few nights were helped along by people who either offered us a place to camp sheltered from the wind, or gave us cold beverages and snacks, invited us inside out of the wind for an hour or two, or even took us inside their homes for the night, cooking dinner and breakfast for us before we hiked away the next day. These people added energy back into our days.

In fact, I’ve come to believe it’s the people along the way who have kept us on trail. Sometimes I feel like each day a stranger picks up where another stranger left off, gently easing our path and giving us encouragement, as though they’ve formed an unspoken agreement to ensure we continued along our journey.

No, lack of a good nights rest isn’t why I sit silently in my hotel room. I’m thinking nothing and doing nothing. I have no will to take off my hiking shoes. I don’t make a move to take a shower, normally the first thing I prioritize when reaching a town. I’m thoroughly and completely exhausted.

It’s the thought of hiking more of the same which exhausts my entire being. I sit on the hotel bed minutes after checking in, eating chips and staring blankly at the wall. Wingman seems to be doing the same thing from the couch in our little suite. After a while I say, “I was serious,” and then look over at Wingman. “I will be happy to take a few days off to climb a couple mountains and then come back to the trail.”

“Me too,” he answered, “My sister can bring my truck – I’ve already asked her.”

By the end of the evening we went from thinking it over to a new plan. We will road walk the next forty-five miles of the North Country Trail over the next three days, then his Mom and sister will bring his truck to us in Frazee, MN.

We cannot wait. I’m a USA Highpointer, which means I climb, drive or walk to the highest points of every state. I’ve completed thirty-four and next weekend we will be climbing King’s Peak in Utah, followed by Borah Peak in Idaho a few days later. My ice axe is being shipped from California, where I had it held in anticipation of hiking the Sierra Mountains, to Wyoming – ready for me to pick up along the way.

We hope a few good things are different when we return. First, we already know the miles ahead change from nearly all road walking to mostly trail. Only about one-third of the trail over the next two hundred miles is on a road and further north it’s all trail. Trail is why we hike after all. Short roads connecting long trails are not bad. The reverse is just trudging across America.

Second, more trail maintenance will be finished. Some trail ahead is still thigh-high with brush and grass. The ticks are very heavy and include deer ticks which carry Lyme disease. I am now used to pulling several ticks – if not dozens – off my shoes, ankles and legs every day. Deer ticks are harder to see than wood ticks though, as deer ticks are no bigger than a dot. We soaked our shoes and socks in Permethrin for the upcoming miles, but if more trail has been cleared by the time we come back, trail life will be much better and ticks will be fewer.

We expect Minnesota will open more in a couple weeks. Right now, some showers and restrooms ahead may still be closed. Breakfast isn’t served in the hotels – just sugary prepackaged treats – and most restaurants are still take-out only. Even remote areas like those we hike need a little more time to reopen in Minnesota.

Finally, we expect to be rejuvenated mentally. I’m pretty stubborn, which helps me reach my goals. What I need right now is to enjoy the challenge of pursuing this goal more than I have this first month. Since we don’t plan to finish all 4,735 miles in one season, it really doesn’t matter how far along we make it before snow flies – my cue to go home.

If we come back to trail and find it isn’t the journey we want to spend our days navigating, we can take the truck straight to the Boundary Trail and Lake Superior Trail sections of this hike. There are a lot of good hiking days ahead. We just need a strategy for creating them.

Two days later, I’m resupplied and nearly ready for the seventeen mile road walk ahead today. We casually walked nine miles of trail in a big “U” through town yesterday, so we even hiked some miles on our day off. It was a really pretty walk with groomed trails on half of it and downtown on the other half. I only found two ticks, and the rain which soaked us mostly dried by the time we found a partially open restaurant downtown.

I’ve been told repeatedly Maplewood State Park is beautiful. It’s our destination today. Once we finish today’s road walk, we will be in the woods on a trail camping on the last available site. It looks like a pretty sunny low temp day. I think it will be a good start to our new plan.

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Day 128 – Dropping Like Flies

The thru hiker drop out rate tracked by the Appalachian Trail Conservancy (ATC) shows only 20-25% of those who start an AT thru hike go on to finish. I’ve passed many milestones and plan to summit Mt Katahdin in early October, …and surprised each time someone I’ve met decides to leave the trail for good. Even though it’s taking much longer than I expected, anyone who is near me on trail has plenty of time to finish before Baxter state park closes for winter.

Many hikers quit in the first couple weeks and another wave quits before the second month. That was expected. There are so many of us at the start we couldn’t know most of those who quit, but it was clear our numbers were thinning as I moved into the third month. I saw fewer hikers each day at different break and campsite areas. It even started feeling like no one else was on trail, as I would go hours without seeing another northbound thru-hiker. We can literally hike just a half mile apart and not see each other for days. Other times, we catch up with fellow hikers at a rest spot when suddenly everyone chooses the same off trail space or shelter to take a break or camp for the night.

Lately though, word is spreading fast when someone quits the trail and it’s catching me by surprise. Somehow, I had it in my head that those who made it past Harper’s Ferry and had their photo taken at the half way check-in at ATC headquarters would be hiking all the way to Maine. As we approached Harper’s Ferry, and spent time there avoiding the rain, I realized a lot of people were leaving the trail for good right after they checked in at the ATC.

Many hikers were people I knew that seemed very capable of finishing, but each had something pulling them off-trail. Some were simply tired of doing the same thing every day, particularly when it kept raining all the time. Others cited aches and pains that wouldn’t heal, or running low on funds. A couple hikers seemed just plain homesick after two to three months on trail.

It seemed every couple days word came around about who was leaving trail and why. It was unsettling, and I did my best to spend time with people who were working to stick it out.

A friend and I hiked out of Harpers Ferry into Maryland and there we ran into two more hikers quitting that very day. It sounded one was determined to leave and the other was leaving because she would no longer have a hiking partner. That is happening a lot: one hiker leaving soon after their hiking partner went home. I was glad Wingman would be rejoining me on trail as soon as he came back from visiting family, as hiking on my own isn’t as appealing as I thought it would be. I had invitations from other hiker friends to join their tramily (trail family) and could go along with them, but I know they hike very differently in pace, distance, and days off from what works for me. I planned to hike near them for a little while though, to keep me connected to the trail life.

Wingman rejoined me just a few miles into Maryland and we three went another fifty miles and passed the true half-way marker, where I was sure anyone that reached it would stay on trail unless injured, sick, or bad news from home. I was wrong again. Over 1300 miles into the journey, a hiker talked about leaving and an hour later turned around on the trail and headed back to the last road crossing to catch a lift to the airport. He said it wasn’t fun anymore and he didn’t want to “waste” time doing something he didn’t enjoy.

His reason for quitting is actually the one that scares me the most. I don’t want to fall into the trap of giving up just because it’s very unpleasant. Lots of goals require long stretches of physical and mental discomfort and this is definitely one of them. I want to prove to myself I will finish regardless of how much my idea has lost its sparkle.

It’s hard to find joy in the trail some days though. Other times I hike along happy as can be for awhile and then find myself weary of it before heading into a neutral zone – all in the course of a couple hours!

As the pointy rocks continued to litter our path, the boulders became harder to climb with our packs and poles, and the rain made all of it more treacherous, I realized I needed a good break. We planned to take one after fourteen straight days of hiking, but moved it up a couple days. It was a great idea to move it up, and when Mountain Dew suggested a third day off, we took her up on it. We originally had six hikers planning to take zero days (zero hiking mile day) together, but the rain drive three of them to start a couple days earlier than us. Wiki said if she hadn’t left trail right then for a break, she was about to leave for good. She hasn’t posted since she headed back on trail a couple days ago, but I’m hopeful she is still heading to Maine.

Wingman and I are headed to Fort Montgomery, NY and will be in Connecticut in just a few days. Crossing state borders is always a lift of spirits. Then we have a couple other nice milestones before reaching the White Mountains where Marc is going to pick us up and drop us off each day for a week of slackpacking, which means only carrying what you need for the day. Having Marc visit plus slackpacking to look forward to will help us keep our focus on the trail and making decent mileage.

The Whites are really tough – and a bit dangerous – so I’m glad to have the extra comfort and support from Marc. In the meantime, I’m still on trail and hoping to hear my remaining thru-hiker friends are still on trail, too!