Day 5 - Chickenbone Lake to Daisy Farm

From Chickenbone Lake campsites, we hiked long Greenstone Ridge Trail, then down to the shore of Lake Superior though the term down is misleading for every down slope was followed by an upslope almost as long but not quite, resulting in a general trend down that was achieved there bit by bit. Since I was trudging ahead in the lead to set the pathetically slow pace, I deprived my companion of the ability to share in the observation of my first moose. Since it was vastly hugely larger than I imagined such a thing would be, I loudly exclaimed a few words that would have been totally inappropriate in the presence of the Boy Scouts, providing another good reason for our setting out ahead of them. He kindly let me live after I scared the moose away before he could see it, and we moved on. We were rewarded later, when we came to a beautiful pond with rock formations and wild irises and I confidently said with my new found expertise on the species, "This looks like a good place for moose." And yes, there, just yards away, was a giant dark brown hulk munching on something from the depths of the pond. I snapped photos from afar, resting on my worn out feet, while my partner snuck back for a closer look.

Later on the trail, we encountered another first, this time a botanical one. Yellow lady slipper orchids appeared, first singly then in groups. Their brilliant yellow would be enough to make them stand out in the shade under the tree canopy, but their unique shape, with a ballooned pouch under a trio of striped burgundy petals, two of them long narrow and twisted, makes them like nothing else in the plant world. Only the onslaught of mosquitoes kept me from shedding my pack to creep about the soggy ground on my belly to photograph them from every angle. Instead, I snapped a few shots from above and by holding my camera low, and scurried on. Remaining a moving target is the only sure way to keep the tiny biting devils from sucking blood. Just as I was remarking that I had seen the two most amazing things I had ever seen, one from the animal world, and one from the plant world, we came upon the longest boardwalk I had ever seen, longer than I could imagine people thinking wise to build from one board at a time carried from miles away. Along that boardwalk were interesting woody plants that I assumed to be blueberries, making me crave fresh fruit more than ever before, and horsetails and the usual ferns and skunk cabbages, but then, alas, something new and entirely different. The pitcher plants were in flower! Rich deep maroon red down-facing flowers of thick waxy petals over tubular leaves that are carnivorous, in that they trap and dissolve insects. What an truly amazing day! Camp at Daisy Farm is in the woods away from the shore of the 'big' lake, Lake Superior, where the wind was cold but after being hot and sweaty for so many days in row, it was a welcome cold. And it felt good to know that there was just one long day of hiking left, meaning there was a genuinely good probability that I would make it back home alive.

Chicken? Sitting on the fence?

Is there something you'd like to do but are too chicken? Take a chance. Give it a try! Be brave. Go for it.
Are you sitting on the fence about something? Make the decision. Choose. Get on with it! Making the choice and acting even if it turns out not to be the ideal choice is often better than doing nothing at all.
That is my farm advice for today.

The Worst Thing

Wet shoes. To willingly put my feet into wet shoes is the grossest thing I have ever done. For you to ask me to put my feet into wet shoes makes me want to do harm to you in a violent way that is not in keeping with my personality or my values. I hate wet shoes. Wet shoes are cold and wet and squishy. The instinct to avoid wet shoes is strong in me and it takes a great deal of will to overcome that and put them on. When I know my shoes are going to be wet in the morning, it can wreck the whole night of sleep for me. It turns my anticipation into dread. I plot in my head myriad ways to avoid it. I have begged the group to stay put for a day to let them dry. I have pondered hiking in my camp shoes. I have offered a great deal of money to a fellow camper for his dry shoes. To some, wearing another person's shoes is repugnant. It is to me too. But less repugnant than wet shoes. I do not know how serious my offer was, but I am pretty sure if he'd taken me up on it, I would have followed through. I hate wet shoes very much.

But there is another issue here too. It is the ongoing debate of hiking boots versus the new hiking shoes. Hiking boots, high ankled, waterproof, with thick heavy soles of deep tread, are a hiking tradition, a symbol of hiking, an icon. But Leave No Trace ethics call for doing as little damage to the trail as you can and those deeply-treaded stiff soles erode trails badly. And such heavy shoes are just more weight to carry. The 'modern' thinking is a lighter, more flexible hiking shoe. Old-school boots people will say the high boot provides ankle support but the modern hiking shoe lover will talk about physics and say that for a boot to actually prevent bending of the ankle in a stress situation, the boot would have to be much higher than that and so the ankle support idea is a myth. But the one thing the old boots do provide that the modern light weight shoe does not is waterproofness. Now, my sweaty feet just heat up and suffer claustrophobicly in a boot, but still, for hiking in the rain, a shoe is going to get saturated and a boot is going to get wet outside and stay toasty dry inside. Except for the sweat part, which for me might be just as bad. But still, if I complain too much about wet shoes, as I am shrinking and shriveling inside from having to put a foot into one, some smart ass old-school boot fanatic is going to pipe up "Well, if you had been wearing boots, they would not be wet right now."

So not only do I have to suffer the indignity of wet hiking shoes, but I have to suffer it in silence.

And as much as I hate wet shoes, I love to gripe when I am uncomfortable.

Cairns

Piles of rock left by previous hikers to guide future hikers. These things represent to me what is good about people. To be on a trail and recognize that you have had difficulty finding the way to go, and to stop and take the time to make a marker to tell those that will come after you the right way to go. To act in a way that will help others that you will never meet, in a way that you will never witness, to perform a kindness for which you will never be thanked. That people do that for each other makes my heart glad.

Day 4 - Hatchet Lake to Chicken Bone Lake

The Hatchet Lake campsite was a good ways away from the main trail, and I regard these little side trail to camp to be a waste. You are just going to have to reverse hike it the next morning. In this case, it was a long hard steep downhill, and I spent the night dreading the climb back out. It was going to spend a lot of energy right away and make the rest of the day hard. I was nauseous all day, for the second day in a row, and had no real idea what was wrong. I was drinking enough and had no other symptoms. The kids suggested banana chips for the potassium, and they actually helped, as we waited for dinner, I picked the salt particles out of the seasoning mix because I was craving it. My hiking partner had proposed that we leave early, before the boys were even up in order to get a head start, and that had worked well the previous day, so we got up and struggled up the difficult and slow climb out, and proceeded along our way back on Greenstone Ridge Trail. After a period of hiking the usual ups and downs, the rocky ridges and the boardwalked valleys, he took a GPS reading to see how far we had come and announced that we were moving too slowly. He said we had not come far enough since we left camp at 6 am and we needed to move faster. Well, I had just been contemplating asking for a long break to sit down, have a snack, take my shoes off, change to dry socks, adjust the pack, maybe even have a short nap. And now he is all hot that we are never ever going to make it to the next camp by nightfall and we are going to die out here and be eaten by wolves while still alive and never see our wonderful sons again. I ventured that we had really left later than that and were okay after all, but he insisted. Needless to say, things were tense for a while. Eventually, the rest of the group caught up to us, and we all sat down for lunch together. I quietly inquired of the other leader if he knew what time we had left camp, and he said a little after 7 am. Hah! And needless to say, my hiking partner recognised immediately that he had made things worse for me by pushing me. The mood on the trail got better after that. I got my breaks and there were plenty of sunny ridges to enjoy them on with breathtaking views and abundant wildflowers. We were near the highest point of the island, so there were more patches of evergreen forest on the higher slopes, with their dark needles contrasting with the brighter green of the ferns that carpetted the ground along the trail. Camp at Chicken Bone Lake had less of a canopy of trees, so fewer ferns, but the sunlight offered more brilliant wildflowers. Another day of wonder and awe.

Around Hatchet Lake Camp