Originally printed August 19, 2016
A long day awaited me.
With an estimated seven hours of hiking in front of me, I was up bright and early to drive to the end point of my hike 8 miles west of Plymouth.
Because of the length of the hike, and because my hikes are taking me further and further away from home(and also because it was her birthday!), Jane wasn’t with me for this trip. Instead, I was meeting with Jim, a “trail angel” for this segment of trail. Jim met me at the end point of my hike along Highway 67 and drove me to the starting point at Mauthe Lake. Along the way, we shared a bit about our backgrounds(Jim is a recent Kohler Co. retiree), and we discussed our love for hiking in general and the Ice Age Trail in particular.
Jim also made a point of warning me to avoid harmful plants on the trail. Poison Ivy I’ve known about for years, but I had never heard of Wild Parsnip until this year. For those not familiar, these plants contain juices in their leaves. If one touches the leaves, the juices, combined with sunlight, can cause widespread, painful burning and blistering. If that isn’t bad enough, perspiration makes the effects even worse. Nasty stuff. All this makes me relieved that I wear long pants and long-sleeved shirts whenever I hike, and that – as a rule – I don’t touch any plants when I’m hiking.
We arrived at Mauthe Lake and said our goodbyes. After visiting the facilities, I got started at 8:15. If this wasn’t the earliest start to one of my hikes, it had to be in the top 2 or 3. Hiking in the morning has an entirely different feel to it. It seems quieter. It certainly was cooler. Most striking, the woods look different because the sun is much lower in the sky. It is as though the woods were lit from the side instead of from above. Very striking, ethereal and beautiful. Kind of like an Impressionist painting.
I’ve mentioned before that communications with Jane is very important while I’m hiking. That doesn’t change if she is home. If the cell phone coverage is good, that’s terrific. As I would hit a landmark, I would text her, like, “Crossed Kettle Moraine Road.” She’d see the text and when it was sent. Everything would be good. But, it is a little different story when cell phone coverage is spotty, as it was in this area. If I sent that message at 8:30 am and it was in a hold list, it wouldn’t get sent until I walked into an area with good coverage, and it would carry the time it was sent – not the time I typed it. So, to help give Jane a more accurate picture of where I was and when, I started typing messages with the time included, like, “Crossed Kettle Moraine Road at 9:00.” In that way, when it was actually sent, Jane could see when I was actually hitting the various landmarks. This helped a lot, because I had 4 or 5 messages waiting to be sent. Once I got to a spot with decent coverage, all of them were sent at once. Jane then got a clearer picture of my progress. Every time out I learn something new, and that was the lesson for that hike.
With the exceptions of some intermittent breaks, plus a .5+ mile section of marshland east of Butler Lake, I was in deep woods the entire hike. Outside of some stands of pine, I saw lots of maple, oak, white birch and sumac. That included a couple of huge, roughly one foot in diameter, oak trees that had fallen across the trail and completely blocked it at roughly the 3 mile mark. There was no walking around these trees. I had to clamber over them to continue the hike. Once I returned home, I emailed the trail angel in case this was news to him, so volunteers from the Alliance could get out there with power saws to remove those trees.
The intermittent breaks in cover were welcome to me for several reasons. First, although I wasn’t protected from the sun, I was mosquito-free. Second, the wildflowers were beautiful. Last, although I like tromping up and down hills in the woods, the change in terrain was welcome. In particular, I’ve really learned to like hiking through marshland. They are not dead places to be drained. Rather, they are incubators, teeming with life.
One challenge I became more aware of on this hike concerned high grass on narrow trails. I’ve walked through high grass before. But, it seemed as if this trail was narrower through the grassy areas, and the grass was higher – some places, up to my shoulders. As a result, I couldn’t use my walking sticks like I normally would. Plus, it seemed as if the grass was clutching at my feet and ankles and blocking my ability to stride out like I wanted to.
Most of the time, I had the trail to myself. No one passed me on the trail, and I didn’t overtake anyone as I headed north. But, I did encounter roughly a half dozen people going south on the trail. Their clothing choices amazed me. I wear a hat, a long-sleeved shirt, pants and gators to protect myself from skeeters and ticks. All of them were wearing shorts, and one of them was shirtless. I have no idea how they could do that without being eaten alive.
At the four hour mark, I stopped for lunch at the Butler Lake parking lot. This was roughly just past the halfway point of the hike,. There was no shade, but no bugs, either. A couple of picnic tables were there, and well as a water pump. I took a good half hour to eat, massage my aching feet and recharge my batteries a bit. After filling my water bottles, it was back on the trail.
A highlight of this segment is the Parnell Esker. Just what is an Esker(besides the name of a dining hall at UW-Whitewater)? According to the Ice Age Trail guide, an esker is, ”A sinuous rounded ridge of sand and gravel deposited by the streams that flowed through tunnels at the base of the glacier.” The Parnell Esker is four miles long, it ranges from 5 to 30 feet in height, and it runs from southwest to northeast. From what I could observe, it looked like a huge loaf of bread rising out of the ground.
After Butler Lake, I was a man on a mission: complete the hike. After slowing up to take in the beauty of the marshland just east of the lot – the reeds and cattails were taller than me – I plunged into the woods. As I got more tired, I started making form mistakes while walking, dragging my trail leg on the ground instead of lifting it to make a new forward stride. All that did was make me trip on protruding rocks and tree roots. A couple of times I came very close to rolling my right ankle. I had to really, really concentrate on my form for the simplest of acts, walking. How serious was I about finishing? One of the attractions on the last segment of the trail is an observation tower. But, it involved going on a loop trail that would have added roughly a mile to the hike. Not today, thank you.
Gradually the woods opened into a grassy field. Within a quarter mile, I was back at my car. It actually took me less time than I had estimated. I changed into some dry clothes in the car(It would have been interesting if a sheriff seen me then), and drove into Plymouth. At the first available convenience store, I bought and fairly inhaled a 24 ounce bottle of water and a diet coke.
So nice and cold. So good!
My Days on the Ice Age Trail 