Northern Light Overlook Trail

The North Shore Hiking Guide describes it as “Difficult but short.” A more accurate description of the Northern Light Overlook Trail off the Gunflint Trail north of Grand Marais would be “Difficult, almost vertical, one-half-mile climb that seems infinite, over exposed roots, sharp rocks, large outcroppings, moss and mud. The breeze will disappear soon after you leave the parking lot and begin the climb through the woods. A variety of bugs will welcome you, keep you constant company, and suck your blood. Take water so you can at least feel like you’re doing something to survive. Also take identification, just in case. If you think the trek up is tough, be prepared for the lack of sure footing on the way down. Note that you’re the only one on the trail. There’s a reason for this.”

But the guide does get one thing right: “Outstanding vistas in several directions above Northern Light Lake.”

The Iranian Hikers

First off, I’m glad that Sarah Shroud, the 32-year-old American hiker, has been released from imprisonment by the Iranian government, and I would hope that Iran would soon release her hiking compatriots, fiancé Shane M. Bauer and their friend Joshua F. Fatall, still being held on suspicion of espionage. Maybe they are all spies. I doubt it (though there’s a long history of the public not knowing what the government is up to). Let Iran prove it. But one thing I do know is that they are idiots. What in the fuck were they doing going for a hike along the border of Iraq and Iran, the former a country we’re at war with, the latter a country we may soon be at war with (and both countries on the Department of State's no travel list)? Why not hike the Appalachians? The North Shore of Lake Superior? Somewhere in Argentina? And to claim that the Iran/Iraq border is not well-marked (as Shroud did in explaining how they got into Iran, by mistake) is but to underscore their stupidity. But they are being portrayed in the press, if not as heroes, at least as victims. No, they’re not heroes or victims, they’re idiots. They shouldn’t be touted as champions of — what? freedom to hike? the right to be clueless? to be Americans? — but rather the inanity of youth. Chastened rather than acclaimed.

Superior North Shore

A perfect day on the North Shore of Lake Superior (sun, partly cloudy, 78 degrees), and a solo walk on Pincushion Mountain, three or four miles. Very few other people, a family of four, a couple, and two other solo men; this is mostly a cross-country ski trail, not a hiking trail. For no reason but nothing else to do I try without any knowledge at all to identify the dozen or so bird calls I hear of the birds I cannot see and could not recognize if I had brought my binoculars and bird book. I imagine coming upon a moose or bear or even wolf, but know there aren’t any here in what is only marginally wilderness (how backcountry can it be to hear the semis occasionally boring down Minnesota Highway 61 some 1000 feet below). The trail is broad, about eight feet across, and recently mown, and mostly in sun, and not at all a backwoods feel. But the granite outcropping that rises at trail’s end at mountain crest is impressive and offers a 360-degree view of Grand Marais and the Gunflint Trail and Lake Superior and further to Canada. And then near the return to the trailhead, lost in the woods and bird calls and occasional views across the lake, my cellphone rings. It’s Mike from the bike shop in Grand Marais and they’ve fixed my warped wheel. I say I’ll be there in half an hour. And any sense of wilderness vanishes with “End Call.”

Pincushion Mountain

It looked like a relatively easy hike, about a 400-foot climb and a mile up from Minnesota Highway 61, a spur trail just outside the door of my motel room to Pincushion Mountain. And the first quarter of a mile and 100 feet was fine, if a little-used trail. But as I got further on, the trail became less defined, and I began to have to search for it. In a couple of places tree-fall had blocked the trail, and I had to steer around the fall and find the meager trail again. But when I got up to about 300 feet I ran into granite outcroppings and clearings of grasses of red and gold and funguses of gray and green, and few hints of where the trail might be. Searching around, I would find a cairn, or a brief depression indicating the trail. I also began to look back to where the trail entered a clearing of outcroppings and grasses in order to be able to backtrack down the mountain. But at some point I’d clearly lost the trail altogether. But I saw what I at first thought might be a deer run, but after a while realized was ATV tracks. But I figured at least those tracks would keep me on some sort of relatively civilized path. But after a couple more clearings and outcroppings, I realized that I was way off the track I was originally on, and wasn’t going to make it to the mountain peak. So I decided to head back down. But before long, my landmarks were no longer there, and I was wandering around the mountain, lost. At the uppermost clearing, I kept coming back to a fire ring that I’d used as a marking, but I couldn’t, after at least three meanderings around the area, find the trail. But finally I did, nothing more than a dark depression in pines, and thought all was well. But soon back down I again lost the trail, and again searched and searched for my landmarks. Finally, I just gave up and decided to point myself down the mountain to the highway. I could hear the traffic on the road, and after a while I could see it. So I pushed through a stand of pines and came out at the back of some residences above the highway/lake, and found a path of a phone line that I’d seen at the beginning of my hike, and followed it to a driveway, then down the drive to the 61, and when I looked up the road, saw the sign to my motel. It wasn’t at all the hike I’d expected. But it was an adventure of sorts. With all the climb and loss, wander and worry, it finally was nothing more than a walk up the mountain, a walk in the woods. And awhile of being lost, of maybe losing a few moments of where I just might be.