Family First

Fall is my favorite season to hike. The warmth of hiking offsets the crisp coolness of the air. The bright colored trees are mesmerizing. There are fewer mosquitoes, little humidity, more deer and wildlife. I even love the smell of fallen leaves and the sound of the crunch beneath my feet.

From the last weekend of September to the third weekend in October, I plan out my weekend hiking trips with zealous detail. I map out the exact locations to maximize the changing seasons in the best weather. I actually already have several itineraries mapped out to explore various parts of the state that should be aglow in fall foliage. 

Last year at this same time, I hiked over 50 miles of the Ice Age Trail and I’ve been thinking of little else in the early weeks of September as I’ve prepared for my autumnal outings. One weekend last year, I rented a cabin in the Northwoods and explored some of the most colorful vistas I’ve ever seen in the state.

But this past weekend, plans changed. Rather suddenly. My dad got sick and had to have surgery. Instead of hiking I spent the day in the hospital trying to make him laugh, while meeting with doctors and nurses and learning about recovery times and risks.

I couldn’t picture myself being anywhere else.

As I look over my itineraries for the next several weekends, they don’t have the same appeal and joy. My dad is going to make a full recovery and he came home from the hospital a few days ago, but he still has four weeks of recovery. How can I drive around the state hiking, when my parents need groceries and have laundry and need help getting things done?

There will be other years to do autumn hikes.

This year there is somewhere else I’d rather be.

"Hummock" is Actually a Four-Letter Word

Prior to hiking the Ice Age Trail, I had never heard of the word “hummock.” Now I read the phrase practically every week. “Hummocky” is the word most often used to describe segments of the Ice Age Trail, especially in the northern segments.

At first I thought a hummock was a type of tree so in my imagination a hummocky trail was one surrounded by a bunch of very specific types of trees. Granted this wasn’t something I put much thought into and I certainly didn’t research.

Now that I’ve experienced numerous hummocky trails I finally looked up the definition and I can tell you that it has nothing to do with trees. 

If you ask me for the definition of hummock, I’d say “another f-ing hill.” If you ask Merriam-Webster, it’s “a small knoll or mound; a rounded knoll.”  

In learning the definition of a hummock, I also tried to find out how they were created. This was like trying to learn a foreign language.

“Glacial hummocks in Wisconsin are stagnant-ice features composed of melt-out till, meltwater-stream sediment, and flow till.”

Huh?

I did learn that hummocks are generally less than 50 feet high and when mapping out a hike the small hills seem innocuous. It’s just a few baby hills, how hard can it be?

However, experience has taught me that a few miles down the trail, they can be taunting and menacing for a shorty like me. My knees begin creaking and my toes ache. Even the downhills are distressing because I know once I get to the bottom, I’m just going to have to hike upward again. 

The cumulative elevation gain at the end of a few miles can be over 1,000 feet. That’s the same elevation gain of hiking to the top of both the East and West Bluffs at Devil’s Lake State Park.

Here’s an elevation guide to the last hummocky trail I hiked.


Underdown Segment - Ice Age Trail

When I returned home from this hike my sock was red. Apparently hiking down all those “little hills” created enough friction on my toes to remove my skin.

As I’ve been focusing my hikes in Northern Wisconsin, I’ve cringed at the trail descriptions:

“…the segment continues southward through rolling, hummocky glacial topography in a mix of hardwood forest.”

“This segment traverses dramatic high-relief hummocky terrain with numerous scenic kettle lakes.”

“…experience a dramatic high-relief hummocky topography through a mix of conifers and hardwoods…”

“Glacial debris remnants in the form of hummocks separate deep kettles.”


I suspect they use the word hummocky to try to fool people like me who didn’t know what it meant. 

I guess it’s a good thing I’m not writing the trail descriptions: “Glacial debris remnants in the form of multiple f-ing hills separate deep kettles…”

Goal Setting

I am a goal setter.

Some are long-term: I will go on a hot air balloon ride before I die.
Some are short-term: I will not buy cookies at the grocery store today.
Some of my goals are meaningful: I will mail (not just email) letters to people I love, just because.
Some are vital to my mental health: I will start writing again.
Some of my goals are more challenging than they first appear: I will get out of bed this morning.

My goals are sometimes just in my head, but typically I like to write them down as often as possible so I have the satisfaction of crossing them off my list. Goal Accomplished – check!

Whenever I achieve one of my goals and either mentally or physically check it off the list, I get a boost of pride and sense of accomplishment. I have a silent mini-celebration in my head, which adds a little pep to my step or smile of satisfaction on my face.

Way to go, Amy. You cleaned your bathroom this weekend. Woot.

Of course, I don’t always achieve my goals. Sometimes I do buy cookies when I go to the store. I have stayed in bed all day due to depression.

Notice I haven’t mentioned my weight loss goals…it’s not because I haven’t set any.

Hiking the Ice Age Trail is my biggest goal to date -- 1,121 miles on foot. This is a five-year goal and I’m on year two. I often question why I’m doing this or if I’ll ever finish.

From doorstep to doorstep, my brother lives exactly 254 miles from me in a suburb of St. Paul. If I were to hike the same distance as the Ice Age Trail, I could walk back and forth from his house 2.25 times. This seems absolutely ludicrous to me. And yet every weekend I grab my trekking poles and hiking boots and head out for the trail, checking off part of my goal one mile at a time.

I think I set this goal to give me a temporary sense of purpose. I was floundering the past few years and feeling directionless. What better way to find my way then hike one of the national scenic trails?

Now I have mini-celebrations every weekend. I’m able to have a sense of accomplishment every time I color in another segment of my map with yellow, or go to my spreadsheet and add a few more miles to the “total distance hiked” column.

In addition to my weekend goals I have distance goals like hiking 225 miles per year (I’ve already hiked more than 300 this year I say with a smile on my face and great sense of pride).

This past weekend I logged my 561st mile, which means I've hiked HALF of the trail. This was cause for a lot of singing in my car on my way home. 

Halfway there!

Of course, since then I realized the Ice Age Alliance has made a few additions/changes over the past year so the total length of the trail is now: 1122.9 miles.

Adding 1.9 miles to the overall length isn't much of a whoop-dee-do when you have over 560 miles to go, however, this means that my halfway done celebration was a little premature. doh!

I guess if I'm going to think deeply about this, the lesson learned is that it's okay when goals change and there are some things may take a little longer than anticipated.

However, if I'm not going to think too deeply about this, it simply means I'll have another excuse to celebrate a distance goal this weekend when I reach the new halfway. :-)

A Lesson about the Kettle Moraine

This winter I was whining to my dad that I didn’t think I’d ever finish hiking the Ice Age Trail. I had over 800 miles to go and the task was too daunting. It doesn’t help that I despise winter and would hibernate if I could, so everything seems unsurmountable in January.

My dad is one my biggest cheerleaders. The poor guy has to listen to me whine about everything from house repairs to aching muscles to my favorite character getting killed off in a movie. Basically, I’m lucky that I’m the youngest and only daughter. When he’s not rolling his eyes at me, he reminds me that I’m capable of accomplishing a lot more than I think I can.

He suggested instead of looking at the overall trail, I should think of what I want to accomplish this year. So I decided one of my 2016 goals was to complete the trail through the Kettle Moraine region. At the time I assumed the Kettle Moraine was some sort of feature that only existed within the Kettle Moraine State Forest (there are 6 units of the forest in southeast Wisconsin), but the more I’ve hiked in eastern Wisconsin the more I learned the Kettle Moraine extends far beyond the State Forest’s boundaries. As a matter it goes through at least seven counties from Walworth in the south to Kewaunee in the northeast. 

If you don’t really care how the Kettle Moraine came to be, feel free to skip ahead (it’s not like I’d ever know). 

From what I’ve gathered (although I could be wrong), the Kettle Moraine’s origin story started when He Who Must Not be Named killed a young Muggle-born mother protecting her infant son and a lightning shaped scar appeared on the baby’s forehead…okay, so that’s the origin story of Harry Potter. You got me. 

In actuality, the Kettle Moraine was created around 15,000 years ago when two glacial lobes (think massive fingers of ice stretching south) bumped into each other. They left behind a bunch of dirt and rocks that formed an uneven, clumpy ridge (called a “moraine”). When the lobes ran into each other, chunks of ice (unbelievably huge chunks – larger than an iceberg) sometimes broke off and got buried beneath all the dirt that the massive ice fingers were pushing around. When the glaciers receded and the ice melted, large holes were formed (many, but not all, filled with water) which are called kettles or kettle lakes. 

So there you have it: The Kettle Moraine – a very long, very hilly stretch of land with over one hundred miles of the Ice Age Trail for hikers like me to climb up, then down, then up, then down, then up… 

In the past year, I’ve hiked from the southernmost point in Walworth County to the Lower Cato Falls County Park in Manitowoc County, which totals about 167 miles. I’ve hiked through all of the state forest segments and am on my way to Kewaunee.

The topography throughout the Kettle Moraine is challenging (I’m the crazy hiker on the trail muttering to myself about stupid hills), but the views are spectacular. Just take a look at some of the beauty I’ve seen…

I’ve hiked an additional 300 miles since I complained to my dad about the impossibility of me trying to complete this task. I’m a lot more confident now that I’ll actually finish (only 570 miles to go!).

I’m just taking it one hill at a time.