Excerpt From Superior Hiking Trail Log
Day 4
9–30
Camping at East Devil’s Track
The sun was new to the day around 8:30 when I made it to the SHT Lakewalk, a 1.5 mile stretch of the trail that walks directly on the Lake Superior shoreline. The cobblestones are surprisingly tiring to hike on, but the sky was blue and I was guilting myself a little for not planning to do a sunrise here.
Had an amazing lunch at Kadunce River. The oats were ok. The view/leisure was top notch. I fired up my little stove right next to the water, and the rhythms of the solitude and the noises are more and more every moment blurring the line between what is me and what is everything else. There is no greater pleasure than reading a book next to the sound of a river. Nothing more immersive; I feel a part of where I am.
The scale of things this far north seems more extreme. I did not know we had cliffs in Minnesota like at Devil’s Track. The trail carves down to a campsite on a small ledge right near the river. Again the sounds of running water. First night camping alone. I hung my bear bag a ways away, the worries that are always pretty slight become a little less slight when alone. My instinct is that bears dislike crowds, but my instincts are based on nothing out here. I just assume the plants won’t make me itch when I march through them in shorts to take a piss off the trail. I have no idea which plants they are.
Sixteen miles today is the longest day so far. I’m glad I’m keeping my average down compared to the last time on this trail. My body will appreciate a short day tomorrow. I’m hoping to go to Pincushion Mountain for sunrise and then just a few miles to town where I will stuff my face with a burrito and some cold pints.
Day 7
10–3
Camping at The Ledge
“That is at bottom the only courage that is demanded of us: to have the courage for the most strange, the most singular and the most inexplicable that we may encounter. That mankind has in this sense been cowardly has done life endless harm; the experiences that are called “visions,” the whole so-called “spirit-world,” death, all those things that are so closely akin to us, have by daily parrying been so crowded out of life that the senses with which we could have grasped them are atrophied. To say nothing of God.” — Rainer Maria Rilke
My dreams have gotten wilder in the last few nights. More full. And I suspect this has something to do with space given to the mind. Stimulation maybe acts as a constraint, constantly keeping us in bounds of the stimulation. Maybe the freedom of wandering creates the conditions for the mind to imagine more possibilities; To create in the minds’ eye possibilities that our more rational, constrained selves could never imagine.
Plus there’s the matter of our collective modern faith (bordering on a religion of its own) in analytic, rational thinking. This thinking has it’s place, but breaking things down into components and atomizing is not a satisfying prism for understanding experience. Life is lived as part of a moving system. There’s a oneness of all things. The closer way to understanding is the opposite of atomizing; It is broadening. A recognition of the vastness of qualitative experience. You will never in all your life experience only a sound. You only ever experience the complex whole of a moment. I see the river but that is only a small part of what is happening to my experience at that moment.
“The point is this: that human consciousness is — at the same time as being a form of awareness, and sensitivity, and understanding — it’s also a form of ignorance. The ordinary everyday consciousness that we have leaves out more than it takes in. And because of this, it leaves out things that are terribly important. It leaves out things that would — if we did know them — allay our anxieties, and fears, and horrors, and if we could extend our awareness, you see, to include those things that we leave out, we would have a deep interior peace.” — Alan Watts
And I begin to wonder the extent of this effect. We are such a proud people when it comes to our tools of rational thought. We really think we know stuff, and I suggest this pride closes out a lot of what’s on offer. I can imagine how people used to believe in more of what is outside immediate physical experience and how that belief would make them see god in a rainstorm or a vision of their ancestors or demons in the darkness. I bet their dreams were wilder too. When you believe stuff, you’re more likely to see it, and this type of vision is only available to those who leave space for it.
But the devil is good at his job. So the temptation to seek stimulation is always readily at hand. To force experience instead of letting it come to you. To tell your self that you have deconstructed some obstacle in your life to the point that you have it perfectly mapped. With screens readily available in our pockets we can constantly crowd out phenomena that parts of our brain wish to call to our attention.
“Other than to amuse himself, why should a man pretend to know where he’s going or to understand what he sees?” — William Least Heat-Moon — Blue Highways
According to the Buddha, his enlightenment was obtained by sitting in silence. Not by being told, taught, or shown anything.
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Camping alone again and today thankful for it. I want to hear the water rush and I want to not know what I might say aloud or what someone else would. All this beauty and selfishly I am thankful that at least right now this scene is here for me and just me.
A beautiful stroll through maple stand this morning showed a fluid display of the color spectrum. Red orange yellow green top to bottom. The pictures sell it horribly short and don’t do the vibrance justice. Sky was white with…fog?…overcast?…my shortcomings as a naturalist or outdoorsman are apparent. I don’t know what I’m doing or looking at. I mostly look at a thing I cannot name to feel a feeling I cannot describe. And as a non-photographer I can’t do much to the scenery either. It’s actually beautiful to stand in the middle of it with the colors exploding towards me, but without a blue background sky all the pictures look dim.
The afternoon brought me along Cascade River. Impressive, dramatic, violent, it’s as if the river is running through a rock hallway. I remember how we used to treat it a game to run to lunch in Junior High and how I’d tie my shoes just for this race and how sometimes someone would clip a wall or get tripped up and now I’m amazed there weren’t any broken bones from the tradition.
Mid day dragged some blue out, and just in time for me to have a short picnic at the Tofte Overlook. It is views like this that the hiker comes to the North Shore for, and anything I could possibly say about it would fail.
