The Blissful Hiker learns to recognize and savor joy, not so much that joy is fleeting, but to remember when times are tough, that joy will return.
In this episode:
MUSIC: Introduccion y allegro by Carlos Guastavino as played by Alison Young, flute and Vicki Seldon, piano
available on iTunes
The Blissful Hiker learns to recognize and savor joy, not so much that joy is fleeting, but to remember when times are tough, that joy will return.
In this episode:
MUSIC: Introduccion y allegro by Carlos Guastavino as played by Alison Young, flute and Vicki Seldon, piano
available on iTunes
I’m up early as the sky begins to lighten. I eat as I pack and wonder if maybe going forward in my backpacking ‘career,’ I forego a stove altogether. I really don’t need it and it adds bulk and weight.
Stuffing the kitchen in Blueberry (my new Granite Gear pack) I realize I left my pot, filter and water bottle down on the rocks by the dock. The foxes are such thieves, I hope they're still there.
It’s dead quiet, even on the dive boat. I see a bit of bright blue tucked into the rocks, and the kit is right where I left it. And what a gift to come down here in this moment – something I would have missed had I not left the filter - a magical sunrise at the end of the long cove, perfect reflections of the boreal forest in still water turning orangey-yellow.
I’m walking the length of Isle Royale, a national park and wilderness surrounded by the icy water of Lake Superior. It’s one of the most pristine places I’ve visited even though it’s accessible by boat, plane and there are shelters in some camp sites to sleep in. But I have seen more wildlife in a few short days than many longer trips I’ve taken – including seven moose so far!
Like a lot of the trails, though, it’s a green tunnel for miles, and I walk in and out of swampy, mosquito-infested, brackish wetlands along usually sturdy boardwalks. Frogs leap out of my way A swan lets out a car-horn honk that would make Gershwin proud. A rabbit jumps through the path. How on earth did a rabbit get here?
I walk close to the western shore of Chickenbone Lake. Long and L-shaped, it was obviously not named by the natives. The sites are lovely right on the water, but I continue, passing portages on steep, rocky grade.
At Lake Ritchie, a sign tells me there’s an algae bloom here so not to drink or wash – apparently no filter can clean water with an algae bloom. It’s a shame since beautiful campsites line the shore on exposed Canadian Shield rock.
I meet people, one who tells me she has my exact same buff. Another asks if I’ve seen moose yet. I hold back telling him I’ve seen seven already – “you will,” I tell him with a hopeful smile, “I promise!”
This hike is not fast, it’s not hard, and I really don’t walk that many miles. It’s likely due to this weird summer and Covid closing things down, but when I arrive at Moskey Basin, it’s totally deserted and the best shelter – number two – is available.
I think of that line from Sally Koslow, the editor of Mademoiselle, “Learn to recognize good luck when it’s waving at you, hoping to get your attention.” I take the shelter grateful for the good luck that’s been waving at me this whole hike.
Moskey Basin is at the western end of Rock Harbor and part of Lake Superior, but the water is a teensy bit warmer. I sit on the rock shelf with my feet soaking. A brown toad lies next to me in the sun before shimmying towards cooler moss. Brown and green crickets hop with loud clicks. Butterflies land in my drying socks, their long tongues uncoiling to suck out the salt.
I take advantage of no one being here and strip down. I’ve never been much of a diver right in – and it’s a slow process, my bottom on the sloping algae covered rock with one foot in a crack below the surface holding me steady so I don't slide all the way down before I'm good and ready. Finally I dunk under with a scream and scratch my scalp clean with my nails.
I was tentative at first to go in, but glad I did feeling so refreshed. But what’s this on my legs? Pine needles? Pine needles that are moving. Oh my god, leeches! Hundreds of tiny, wriggling strips of mucus suctioned tightly to my legs.
I try to pull one off and he suctions directly to my fingers. Argh! I try to scrape them off with my nails then try to remove them on the rock. I can feel their little bite as they dig in. It’s a nightmare of African Queen proportions, even if they’re only the size of rice.
I purposely don’t take all that much with me when I backpack – but I do have a mini Swiss Army knife with tweezers. It’s a two step operation: pulling each one off as they stretch out still suctioned to me, then taking a small piece of wood to remove them from the tweezers.
I think I have them all off my legs but let’s just make sure. I check between my toes one after another. Had I mentioned these little nasties are green? Not when they’re full of blood. On my right foot, between my pinkie and fourth tie, it’s a war zone, a pile of red bloated leaches squirming in that tiny crevice. I pick them off one at a time and each one bursts with my fresh blood.
Ok, so now I think I’ve gotten all of them. Ugh! There’s only one thing to do, take the rest of the afternoon off, lie in the sun and read my book. The book I brought is one of the best I’ve ever read – Anne Lamott’s “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.” Listen to this graph:
“Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It's like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.”
I’m dressed when the two guys in shelter three return and take their swim. I warn them about the leech swarm, but they jump in fast and not one leech latches on. And I just have to laugh – and for my second swim? I jump right in.
More hikers arrive – boisterous, door slammers – you can’t blame em, they’re excited to be here. But it does cause me to need a little space – our shelters are all right up at the water’s edge and close together. So rather than complain, I get up and move, walking over towards the dock and the huge exposed Canadian shield, bright yellow goldenrod bursting out of fissures, sage colored lichen holding fast to the granite.
Funny, it’s a better view from here as I mosey out on the concrete dock where a picnic table sits at the end. A plastic orange netting is placed beyond the table, keeping people from the end which has been cracked and damaged by ice.
Something black is on the end. I move closer to the table and see it’s an animal – an otter.
He’s a fat fellow, his fur slick and lustrous as he busily cleans himself – of leeches, I wonder? – biting and scratching, followed by rubbing his blubbery belly on the concrete. He doesn’t seem to mind my sitting here watching, looking up every so often out of squinty eyes in a silver, be-whiskered face, his nose turned up and in his mouth in a sort of permanent scowl.
A jumbo bright green dragonfly comes close to me, then close to him as if to introduce us. A loon tremolos, her mate flying across to meet her. A huge silver fish launches out of the water and I see another otter swimming quickly towards the dock.
Just when I think how on earth does he get up here? In one motion, he just flops all that body right up on and the two shimmy into a cuddle, then get right back to cleaning, the new one’s fur spiky.
I don’t know if he sees me, but the new arrival doesn’t stick around long and flops right back in the water, swimming fast to shore, his butt and enormous tail in the air momentarily before he dunks under. Then my otter leaves too, a bit slower but spending even more time underwater.
I eventually leave, walking back up to the rocks above the dock and startle a snake who slithers directly towards me. My view is three-sided of a magenta sunset, its afterglow and the waxing gibbous moon reflected in the ripples. A pileated laughs, sandhills clack and wolves yip far in distance.
The magic of this place is that it’s a living world where we’re just visitors. Interesting fun fact is Isle Royale is the only national park that closes in the winter and I imagine the residents are just fine with that. I have never seen such abundance and feel privileged and humbled to be a guest here as I tuck in, loons' calls echoing over the water and someone swimming nearby.
When I wake, it’s as though the sky had never gone to sleep.
Orange, magenta, lavender and pink in a swirl of color, so present and overwhelming, I feel bathed in its glow. I suddenly remember that the wise old saying about red skies in the morning, sailors take warning. This glorious morning will be followed by rain.
I’m back on wooden planks over leatherleaf and Labrador tea threatening to overtake the bog leading me to dense forest and Daisy Farm, a massive campground of sixteen shelters abutting a cove where two sailboats of different sizes await their sailors. I get briefly lost, but soon find the trail heading up to Mount Ojibwe and its fire tower.
The trail winds around steeply finally meeting the Greenstone Ridge, and the views are spectacular, even more so from the tower, where 59 steps take me to a walkway where I can look straight down the island’s spine thick with balsam fir and white spruce. Inland lakes lay below the ridge, and a carpet of green, the big lake beyond.
The wind picks up and the sky feels heavy with moisture. I throw Blueberry on my back and continue along the trail towards Mount Franklin. No rain, no creatures, just forest, bearberry thick with red berries growing into my path.
At the mountain, I meet a couple having a snack at the view, which looks down to where I’ll sleep tonight. They shock me with their story that a moose charged them, splashing through a lake to get to them. “What did you do?” They tell me, they ran and when the moose got to shore he seemed to have changed his mind.
I’m extra vigilant as I head toward the turn off for Lane Cove, a steep, oftentimes washed out set of switchbacks heading back deep into forest of paper birch and aspen. It’s an undulating trail, much like what I’ve seen already, so my mind wanders thinking about this being my final night on the trail and that I can’t possibly expect to bat 1000 and yet again sleep in the very best site.
But here I am and the place is deserted. Site two is right on the cove, a tiny set of stairs taking me to the water’s edge and a perfectly placed sitting rock. I dive into the alicoop as it begins to rain. But it doesn’t last too long, just long enough for a nap before it tapers off and I emerge in rain gear, only a few droplets making rings in the placid lake. A family of mergansers swim by as smoothly as Saint-Saens’ Swan. My dragonflies are back. Loons call across the cove.
A wise person told me once to recognize when things are wonderful and enjoy them fully, because it won’t last. The point was not so much that joy is fleeting as to remember when times are tough, that joy will return.
As the sun slips below the spruce covered finger of land in front of me, I savor these past days and the light shows at sunrise and sunset, some dramatic, some quiet like now in cantaloupe and silver. I breathe it in and in the dark, head to my tent.