My Walk in the Woods, Part II

So...

After not being eaten by the bear, we enjoyed a good day’s worth of hiking, punctuated by several short spells of resting, each requiring that we take off and put on our packs. This would be more accurately referred to as “dismounting” and “mounting,” as it wasn’t so much that we were carrying the packs as it was that they were riding us. We were also treated to further ridiculous, unpolluted views – scenic moments that become instant, permanent photographs in your brain. For instance:

(As with the previous post, click the photos for larger images)
Our day was not, however, entirely about nature. As I have mentioned in previous posts, a world populated by humans is an endless source of hilarity, and this is true even in the semi-wilderness of a National Park. We were blessed with two quality moments of human comedy. The first came during a point where the trail emerged from the woods to parallel a bluff overlooking the beach. It was there that we were treated to the sight of a middle-aged man strolling down the shore about fifty yards away, completely naked. The surprise of male nudity was compounded when we realized that this gentleman was at least three miles from the nearest campsite, eight miles from the nearest road, and didn’t have a single possession – backpack, tent, Power Bar, toothbrush, speedo – anywhere in sight. My rational mind had – and still has – some difficulty deducing the circumstances which led to the appearance of that solitary bare-assed individual, but there he was. He didn’t look up or otherwise alter his strolling, so we did the same, and followed the trail back into the woods. Like a lot of human comedy, I have no idea what to make of the naked man. We were similarly surprised to find, rusting quietly next the trail, this:

Although not quite as baffling as the naked man (the trail had intersected with an old logging road a few hundred yards back), this is nonetheless a strange thing to run across on an "into the wild" type adventure. My favorite among the graffiti that had been scratched into the car’s rotting hull was the following: “Junky ole car.” I am going to subscribe to this school of vandalism, and run around at night labeling things in spray paint: “Interstate Overpass.” “Yield Sign.” “Wall.” Brilliant.

So it was a gorgeous if somewhat strenuous walk, with great views, beautiful weather, tons of nature, and not a few mosquitoes. I was completely thrilled to be on the trail, away from civilization, with good friends. Backpacking was good. And then we arrived at our first night’s campsite.

As you saw from the photo in the previous post, it was a stunningly beautiful location, but I was a bit too tired to appreciate the view. It was getting dark, and we needed to set up camp. The problem with this is that you suddenly need everything from your backpack, and not necessarily in the order in which you packed it. Thus, three packs promptly vomited their contents all the hell over everywhere:

If you’ve just walked X minus Y miles and are a person who prefers your life to be somewhat organized, this can touch off some neuroses. I found myself in a small world of stress at the end of day one, moments after the packs threw up. Hungry, dirty, mosquito-hounded, and back-cramped, I was less than eager to sift through our scattered gear searching for, say, the numerous elements required to make dinner: stove + stove stand + stove fuel + cook pot + cook pot lid + cook pot handle + waterproof matches + freeze dried camp food + several cups of filtered water + utensils + hot sauce (nectar of the gods, by the way, when backpacking – I have no idea why). And then there was the putting up of the tent, the arranging of sleeping bags inside the tent, the filtering of water for the next day, the repacking of the packs, the foraging for firewood, the hanging of the food (and toothpaste and deodorant and anything that smelled like or touched food) out of bear-reach, and the tying up of the tarp so the packs wouldn’t get rained on at night, among other things. This last task – efficiently typing a square tarp to four non-geometrically arranged trees – is much harder to do than you think, as demonstrated by these gentlemen, holders of degrees from major educational institutions:

Sounds more like work than vacation, doesn’t it? At the time, it definitely felt that way. It’s not that I was miserable doing all of the above things, but by the time we actually went to sleep that first night, my personal bottom line was, “Backpacking is fun for some people, and I’m glad I tried it, but I don’t think I’ll need to go doing it again.”

I was completely wrong about this, for two reasons:

The first reason was made clear to me over the next few days, as the work of backpacking transformed from tedious hassle to a string of small, happy accomplishments. Because you’re limited by the contents of your pack and your physical isolation, everything – eating, washing dishes, brushing your teeth, drinking water – is harder than normal. These things are initially frustrating, but they soon take on the joy of small accomplishments. The work becomes its own reward, and the more you do it the better you get at it, so that by the end of the trip you’re standing proudly over six plastic bottles of filtered water, thinking, “Egads! I have created drinkable water! I am a God among men!” Well, maybe it’s something less than that, but there is a deeply satisfying sense of accomplishment.

This is the key factor that separates the adventure from the vacation. If your goal is to go somewhere beautiful and lay in the sun (and that is an excellent goal), you don’t want to be bothered with anything more annoying than tipping the girl who brings the margaritas. If your goal is adventure, however, you head out looking for challenges, whether they are involved as driving from Indianapolis to northern Arizona without stopping or sleeping, or as simple as washing your face. Backpacking takes the challenges that come with car camping and expands them to a substantial degree, and the result is an adventure that boosts your sense of accomplishment by forcing you work at things that you typically take for granted. As it turns out, this is a very gratifying undertaking.

The second reason that my first-night assessment of backpacking was completely wrong is this:

This is the view from our second-night campsite, another staggeringly beautiful location, and a place where a very wise decision was made. In the initial planning of the trip we had planned on going X miles in six days – a very aggressive, linear, and male-ego-fueled approach. The plan was to make our miles, put ground behind us, and rip off a big freakin’ hike. At our second-night campsite, the very passive, wandering-about approach of a Day of Rest was put forth. Being an overly goal-oriented person (in certain situations), I was a bit resistant to the idea. I was in this for the going, not for the stopping. But I acquiesced, and the next day was our official Day of Rest. Thank you again, Nate and Louis, for talking me into that. The Day of Rest was far and away the best day of the trip, and certainly one of the more atmospherically perfect days that I can remember in my life. A clear day in the high-sixties on an isolated beach, windswept and shot through with sunlight:

The more I think about it, the more the sun-bright memory of that day comes back to me, the more I realize the futility of attempting to describe it using any other word than just “perfect.” What did we do all day? Some camp work – laundry (see photo in previous post), gear maintenance, filtering water, etc. – but not much else. Collected rocks. Threw rocks at things. Took a long walk on the beach. Soaked up the isolation. Sat. Breathed. Watched the sun settle into the crashing surf:

After dark we witnessed the most dynamic and jaw-dropping display of the northern lights that I could ever have imagined, with pulsating bands of white light traveling from one horizon to the other backdropped by broad, formless, shifting illuminations in the north. Perfect.

As I’ve said, there was a staggering amount of natural beauty on the entire trip, but it took the sheer, mind-hurtling perfection of that single day to remind me to take it all in, even if I was tired, sweaty, mosquito-bitten, and wanting nothing more from life than a slice of summer sausage. I won’t go so far as to say that that single day changed my life, but it did burn itself into my memory in the way that only a handful of days in a lifetime can do.

And that, really, is the story. We got back on the trail and finished the hike. The sights were amazing, the companionship was excellent, and the trek was purposeful. I could say that when we arrived back at civilization that we were jarred by its loud technology crowds of people, but we weren’t. I suspect that we hadn’t been gone long enough, and in any event the point of backpacking is not to learn to dislike civilization. The point, I think, is to be out in the wild, work for small accomplishments, see the sights, spend time with friends, have an adventure.

I will go back again.

My Walk in the Woods, Part I

As you read, do so with the following image in mind, which is the view from our first campsite: (click on the picture for a larger version – same goes with all subsequent pictures)

I’ve done a little bit of camping in my life, so I know about the tent and the stove and building a fire and how excellent it is to wake up to a cool, quiet outdoor morning with trees overhead and dew on the ground. Until June, however, all of my camping had been car camping, wherein you pull your vehicle up next to the campsite and enjoy the peaceful semi-isolation of nature while still being able to run to the grocery store if the Golden Grahams get pilfered by raccoons (who are, by the way, the devil’s mignons). Car camping, it turns out, is not universally accepted as “camping.” The population of non-car-campers – backpackers, back-country canoers, serious rock climbers, etc. – look sharply down their noses at you if you are one of the slave-to-comfort weenies who can’t leave their Volkswagons behind. It is a look that says you might as well have stayed at the Sheraton Palm Court and dined on Miso Glazed Chilean Sea Bass.

So when my friend Louis called me in April and said “Hey, you and Nate and I are going backpacking on the North Country Trail in Michigan this summer, okay?” I quickly agreed. I was tired of him, a card-carrying non-car-camping geek, looking down his nose at me. More importantly, it was time for a good adventure. I feel that it is tremendously important to go rambling off on an adventure at least once every other year, or else life gets a little rutted out. Louis and I have been on a few adventures before (the most epic being our road trip from Indianapolis to California, which we kicked off by driving thirty-two hours straight through to the Grand Canyon – in the days before Red Bull, no less) so it seemed right and proper that my first true foray into the wild should be with him. He also owns more gear than freaking Grizzly Adams, which would save me a bunch of money because, as I found out, backpacking equipment is pricey.

It was a pretty spectacular trip. In the interests of you, the reader, actually accomplishing something at work today, I have divided this epic into two posts, the second of which will be polished and edited and ready to go some time next week (unlike a certain as yet undelivered sequel).

In preparation, we bought maps from the North Country Trail Association (darn fine people, by the way, who manage a continuous hiking trail that extends from eastern New York to central North Dakota) and planned out how far we would go in our six days of hiking. I will destroy any suspense right here by saying that we planned to go X miles but in fact only went X minus Y miles, with X and Y being numbers somewhere between 3 and 98. In the end, we ended up going exactly the right number of miles. Our hiking locale was Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, a national park on Lake Superior in the upper peninsula of Michigan. A photo of said rocks:

See? Very pictured. If you live in the Midwest and are a fan of nature, I highly recommend Pictured Rocks. Don’t worry, they have car camping, and I will not sight you down my nose if you make use of it.

You need to go buy some stuff before you go backpacking, even if your friend has all of the major gear. You need wicking shirts and wicking socks and wicking underwear so that when you wash your clothes in sub-zero Lake Erie they will dry on a line in a reasonable amount of time:

Do not bring cotton, as it will never dry. I brought one pair of cotton socks, washed them in the lake, and three months later they are still wet.

You also need many hilariously small items, including a small bath towel (wicking, of course), a small pillow, a small knife, and a small air mattress. Your friend the gear geek will bring the absurdly small stove, small tent, small water filter, small hatchet and on and on. Now you will need to get all of this stuff together in one place and cram it in the appropriate number of backpacks (I recommend one per hiker), which will get full so quickly you can hardly believe it. Hours before leaving to drive to the park, Nate, Louis and I tried to shove all of our gear, including food (small food, naturally) into three backpacks. After much compression, and many sacrifices we strapped the beasts on our backs (requiring the fastening, adjusting, and refastening of approximately ninety six straps) and tried not to fall over backwards. We estimated that mine, the heaviest, weighed in the neighborhood of seventy pounds. X miles quickly started edging towards X minus Y.

After a lot of driving about and obtaining of permits and other final preparations (buying the industrial strength, non-diluted, “do not use on children,” 100% Deet insect repellent was key – I may develop fatal elbow tumors at age 36, but it was worth it to keep the mosquitoes off), we arrived at the trail head, strapped on our packs (now the density of depleted uranium) and headed off down the trail. Just before leaving we had another hiker take the following picture, which, now that I think about it, had an only slightly less than even chance of becoming a “Last Known Photo” tacked onto sheriff’s bulletin boards all over northern Michigan:

But that is exactly the sort of spirit necessary for an adventure: “We kind of know what we’re doing, we mostly know where we’re going, we’re pretty smart, and it is likely that we won’t actually die. Let’s do it.” And so we plunged into the woods, which were so beautiful that words are a waste of time:

And it was good. The birds chirped, the sun shone, the trail was slightly downhill, and we managed not to topple over from the weight of our packs. The walking sticks helped. After a little more than an hour of peaceful walking, nature introduced itself. We stopped for a minute to rest. Nate and I got out some summer sausage (insert drooling sound here) and Louis wandered off the trail a few yards to relieve himself. Approximately seven seconds later Louis returned from the woods at a high rate of speed and said without stopping, “You guys let’s go I just saw a bear.”

Now, a word about bears: there are all sorts of signs and warnings and pamphlets at every entrance to the park warning about the presence of bears and making helpful suggestions on how to avoid them. This does not mean that we actually expected to encounter a bear, and certainly not seventy minutes into our adventure. There was a brief frenzy of strapping and grabbing and jogging, and ten seconds later we were 100 yards down the trail, moving at speed, Louis gripping our three walking sticks, me clinging to the summer sausage, and Nate holding the bear mace at the ready. Yes, bear mace. This is a ketchup-bottle sized item which sprays something unpleasant a distance of twenty five feet (the “close range” bear mace being sort of useless) and which, I suspect, has much greater value in providing hikers a false sense of security than it does in actually repelling charging bears. But, lucky us, we didn’t get to find out. The bear apparently had no taste for either adventurers or summer sausage, and we didn’t see him or any of his bear companions for the rest of the trip. Technically, Nate and I never actually saw the bear, opting instead just to take Louis’s word for it, as pausing to question him in detail seemed ill-advised. Louis, if one day, years from now, you decide to reveal that you just invented the bear to see how fast Nate and I could run with our packs on and wasn’t that a hilarious joke and hey, there was no harm done, I will put a fork in your eye. In any event, it was a good solid start to our adventure: A reminder that we were out in Nature, plus a good, dramatic story to tell without having had to go through the trouble of being eaten by a bear

So that’s it for now. Coming soon, in the next exciting installment: Vomiting Backpacks! Nude Bathing! And Whether Backpacking Actually Changed My Life Or If It Was Just Quite Amazing.

Photoshop and Too Much Time On Your Hands

Somebody sent me this website soliciting photoshopped submissions of would-be combined movie posters. Most of them were a bit obvious (Freaky Friday the 13th and A Few Good Men In Black) but a few were actually pretty funny and well done. This is a good example of the eternally uncertain balance between "Hey, that's kind of funny" and "You spent how much time doing it?" In any event, for your consideration: