Reflections from The Wisconsin River

I guess I should start off by saying I recently took a trip to The Wisconsin River for some hiking and sightseeing. In my usual fashion, I decided to go completely alone on this trip; just me, a backpack and my wits. I found a cabin to rent for fairly cheap right next to the river, and intended to go up there for some relaxation and quality time alone with nature. So I took a very much overdue vacation from work, packed my bags and left home early on a Saturday morning to start my 5 day adventure. I’m not going to be overly dramatic and say this trip changed my life, but I think I can honestly admit this was exactly the trip I needed for where I am in life right now. I learned an immense amount about myself and on life in general, and I’d like to document some of my thoughts here.

From the moment I left home on that Saturday to probably the middle of the second day, I was dealing with some intense anxiety and perhaps even fear. I think some of it had to do with wanting the trip to go well and just the idea of making sure I had everything for the hikes, enough food, all the right clothes, etc. Which looking back on it now, I was incredibly overpacked. I didn’t wear half the clothes I brought, I didn’t need to use a single hiking tool that I brought for safety, and I didn’t eat even half of the food that I brought or bought while up there. I guess there’s something good about being prepared, and had I needed any of that stuff I would have been very thankful. Still, knowing this now, it seems a bit foolish to have worried so much over things that obviously didn’t factor into the success of the trip. Which brings me to the first night of the trip, and my first hike in Wisconsin.

I’ll start by saying that Wisconsin is absolutely gorgeous. Especially this time of year, with the golden tops of fully grown corn covering the rolling hills, or just the vast open fields of flowers, wild plants or cows roaming freely in their pastures. It seemed like every other second I was seeing another amazing landscape. By the time I arrived at Poynette (the town next to my cabin) and mind you this is nearly 6 hours into the drive, I just wanted to get out of the car and explore something. So I gathered up my hiking gear and went to the closest stop recommended by my host, which was a local creek and fishery just a few miles up the road. I drove over to the park, found the trailhead, and started walking. And this is technically where I think my vacation began, but not for the right reasons. At first I was just excited to be out in nature and out of my car. I walked up to the creek to take a few nature selfies, took a picture of some logs in the water, and then finally made my way over to the information board to get some details about the trail loop before heading out. I took a picture of the trail map and then finally took off.

One of the first things I noticed in this walk was my inability to let go of fear. Despite being in town, just a few feet from the downtown area and in a very populated area, I couldn’t let go of the fear of someone or something coming out to get me from the woods. Which is an unusual thought for someone that willingly chose to go out alone into the woods for a vacation. But for some reason I still held tightly onto my pocket knife in my left hand for the entirety of that first hike. I never exposed the blade, but instead squeezed the handle for a feeling of protection. I didn’t need it once the whole trip, but that first day I thought for sure I needed something immediately available for protection in case something happens. I think this attitude played into the next trouble I ran into, which was the fear of getting lost or stranded overnight in unfamiliar woods. At the time I got to the park it was around 5:30, and sunset was due to come in at 7:30 so I knew I had a couple hours of sunlight and then some after before I got into any real trouble, and again this is a small park with only 3-4 miles of trails. Still, after the first hour, I started to get a little worried when I wasn’t reaching the end of the trail where I planned to turn around. I noticed I had less than an hour before sunset, and this thought made me worry even more. At this point no part of the trail was showing any sign of being the end of a loop or getting me back to the starting point, and I had only gone further and further away from where I had parked that whole time. So now, likely a few miles away from my car and with short time before losing sunlight, I considered my options. I could run back the way I came and just get to my car now before getting too lost. Or, I could keep pushing further to see if this loops back the way it’s supposed to and take the planned trail back to the parking lot. The trouble is, if I’m somehow on the wrong trail or if I keep going and don’t come to the trailhead, I’ve now just wasted more time and will have to go even further back in the dark in an unfamiliar woods. I’m sure you can imagine I’m a bit freaked out at this point. Despite all of this, I decided it’s best to follow the trail as planned and trust in my instincts to take me on the right trail back. And of course, within 5 minutes of this mini panic attack I found the sign marking the trailhead, and within another 20 was back safely at my vehicle before the sun fully set.

This is all wildly embarrassing to type out, but I think this mindset says a lot about where my mind was and how I often view life. Lets start with the knife. I’m in an unfamiliar place, and not knowing what I’m getting into, so I can reasonably have a knife on me. However, had I taken a moment to understand the location of this park and remember what I’d studied on the local wildlife, there is almost no chance of any danger being present. Of course there’s nothing wrong with having protection or wanting to feel secure, but there’s a difference between being foolishly defensive and cautiously prepared. Brandishing a knife in fear could have caused me to scare a fellow hiker, or perhaps caused me injury if I had fallen on it. I would call this foolishly defensive. There’s nothing stopping me from storing it in my bag and taking it out quickly if needed, and this may have been the cautiously prepared approach to better handle the situation. A similar message can be taken from the feeling I had of getting lost in the woods. I was so worried about getting stuck in the woods after dark that I literally started running in short panicked intervals until I found a part of the trail that looked familiar, and even when I did I couldn’t stop myself from wanting to keep running just so I could get back to the car. Like there was an internal battle happening inside me, half wanting to be out exploring and seeing nature versus the other half that wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible because anything bad could happen. Having just driven over 6 hours to go hiking for a week, I knew I had to quickly shut that down. It’s challenging to have to face those primal fears of fighting for safety and ultimately the unknown, and this first night I had to put that to the test. This was a poor first night performance, but at least I had discovered something I could start working on.

As I drove back to the cabin watching the Wisconsin sky change from a deep blue to a brilliant orange and red, I had a chance to reflect on the day as a whole. I knew I had let my anxiety get the best of me. Despite walking over 5 miles (The trail map said 3-4 miles, my phone recorded 5 miles walked) that afternoon through a beautiful park, all I felt was anxiety, panic and fear. How could I travel all this way and not be able to enjoy any of it? Was I really going to let my emotions control the outcome of this trip? I decided the only way I was going to have some peace was by making it happen. So, the next morning, I planned a trip to one of the more remote destinations of my trip, the Natural Bridge Trail. My goal for the day was simple. Take things slow, stay off the phone, and just take it all in. So I did just that. I started the morning with a yoga practice on the shore of the river, had a nutritious breakfast, prepared my food and drinks for the day and headed out for the park. And I have to say, this was my favorite park of the whole trip, but it had nothing to do with the Natural Bridge. The bridge was cool, don’t get me wrong, but it was the other side of the park that caught my attention. The park has two sides, one on the parking lot side that has the Rock Bridge and some cool other little trails. The other is across the street in what seems like just a massive field on a hill. Seriously, and I can’t stress the strangeness of this enough, it was just freshly cut grass for what seemed like miles on all sides, stretching over rolling hills until finally coming to a woods. It seemed like someone just dropped a farmer’s freshly cut wheat field into the middle of a national. It was one of the most bizarre experiences I’ve ever had at a park. One moment I’m crossing a street onto an massive, open field of just grass. Then, just a few minutes into the hike through the field, you come upon trees and before you know it you’re climbing up a densely wooded hill working it’s way up the spine of the Wisconsin hills. This trail had some of the most dense plant life I’d experienced on this trip, which made it even more exhilarating in contrast with the field I’d just been in. I scrambled up through seemly endless brambles in the forest until I reached the top of the hill, where the razor thin trail then guided me through fields of ferns, goldenrods, spikenards and all sorts of other local plant varieties for maybe a mile or so until I reached another opening. And this spot was the highlight of my trip.

The opening in the trees led me to the other side of the field I was just in, but this time I was at the top of a hill opening into a huge valley. This valley wrapped around some smaller hills until taking me back to the road and to the other side of the park through the trees. But before I ventured down the hill, something stopped me and told me to take a break. Just pause for a moment and soak it in. It was this feeling that led me to take off my backpack, sit down cross legged in a meditative position and start breathing deeply. For the first time in the whole trip, I let myself simply exist without wanting anything more from the moment. I wasn’t planning my next move, I wasn’t worrying about my safety, I wasn’t trying to control anything or anyone. Just being present, listening to my breath and the sounds of nature. And after a few minutes of this, I noticed I had started to smile for the first time all trip. It made me realize the importance that intention and mindfulness has on daily life. Most of my day to day issues are caused from a lack of mindfulness, preparedness or strength from within, and yet I convince myself it’s because of my situation, other people or try to use any excuse to make up for why I’m not meeting my own expectations. Instead, if I make a practice of setting my mindset and goals every day, just like I had the chance to do on Dragonfly Hill, then I can start pushing past these problems and refocus on the important goals.

I might be over-hyping this spot, but honestly this memory is one I hope to never forget. A lot of people have an internal happy place they go to when they’re feeling down, like a place they love or feel at peace when they think about it. That hill is my happy place. The combination of the sun shining, the dragonfly’s buzzing overhead with all sorts of birds cawing behind me in the trees, while I’m overlooking this vast, open pasture leading to a beautiful tree line that’s only complimented by the wisps of clouds carelessly drifting in the background, is just breathtaking to me. Anytime I have a free moment and need a quick way to get back to that zen, I just think of that spot and take a few deep breaths. Works every time.

Knowing how stressed I’d been so far, this finding was a treasure. The rest of my day at the Natural Bridge was fairly uneventful, with the minor exception of a group that asked me if the hill I just climbed was challenging. If anyone that knows me is reading this, you’ll know I tend to talk quickly when I’m excited. Well, with the combination of zen flowing through me and my newfound energy for exploring with a better mindset, I was at peak excitement. I gave them an answer that was said so fast I’m not sure if it was English. I immediately corrected myself, and then sheepishly excused myself to continue on my walk. It’s not that big of a deal in hindsight, but it’s also something I’m not proud of either. What makes it worse is that I’m supposed to be in zen mode, which should correlate to being calm when talking to people, but apparently those are two separate beasts for me to conquer. I can have my own inner cool, which is my thoughts, how I interact with myself, etc. and then there’s my social side, which completely forgets the entire gameplan for staying cool and goes into making people happy or making people like you mode. It’s definitely something I have to work on, but finding out where I struggle is the first step to getting better.

That afternoon I still had some daylight to kill, so I chose to visit another park in the area that had great reviews online. Coming back to this all later is making me realize how bad at planning I am, but I guess this is how you learn. In my haste planning this second leg, I didn’t get a good look at the park itself or learn anything about it other than the address google gave me. This combination brought me to a small gravel drive, maybe 3-4 car length’s wide on the side of a densely forested road going up another of Wisconsin’s many hills. No homes or people in sight, and no markings other than a very old and faint yellow sign nailed to a tree about 5 feet into the woods stating this is a natural area, there are no marked trails, and hunting is allowed. Now I know a thing or two but I’m clearly not the best outdoorsman, and right away on seeing this sign I just knew I was asking for trouble if I went in there. I was already feeling fatigued from the first site as it was, and the concept of forging my own trail through unmarked woods in a very remote area had me seeing all sorts of red flags. I trust myself to an extent, but If anything were to happen here I knew my chances of getting help were slim to none. So after some rational thought, I backed away and chose another park a few miles up the road.

The second park was exciting from the moment I arrived. Like the last one this wasn’t a regular park either, but I had at least confirmed there are marked trails. As I got close, instead of pulling up to a sign or any indication of a public space, I was led to an unmarked one-way gravel road with thick pines lining each side. I was hesitant to go in, knowing I’d have no way of turning around or avoiding another car if someone came the other way. But at the same time I wanted a good hike, and this place had great reviews, so I went in slowly and braced myself for a long reverse if necessary. The path was a nerve-wracking quarter mile, which finally opened up to a small parking area with a couple cars already there, presumably from other hikers and not someone’s residence like I’d been worrying. At this point the gravel road leads up to a closed metal gate, which was the beginning of the walking trail and the first marked sign of the trail. This sign gave a map of the park along with pictures of some invasive plant species, which I thought was a nice addition because it prompted me to take a closer look at the plant life through the park. Once I decided to stop worrying about where I was hiking and how far I was going to go and all that jazz, i finally started to appreciate the beauty around me. It probably took me an hour to hike a mile, because I’d constantly be taking pictures, trying to identify plants, or just stopping to smell or appreciate a unique plant. This was another of my favorite trails. It felt very off-grid, had a wide range of plant life, was extremely quiet, and still had some great rock formations and landscapes to appreciate along the way. I ended that day exhausted, but very appreciative of the perspective I’d picked up. There’s a lot to be said about a day where you go to bed completely worn out from doing something you love. I slept better that night than I have in a long time.

Day three I found a completely new issue to address. I was finally feeling the zen flow, I was eating well, sleeping great and in general feeling good, everything other than my legs. My legs were incredibly sore. Dealing with soreness is something I’m quite used to. Wrestling, soccer and cross-country in high school all prepared me for moments like this, and going into a career as a massage therapist, soreness should be my specialty. Knowledge wise, it really should be common sense. Hydrate, stretch and rest and you’re fine, right? Well, I forgot to stretch after the hikes last night, and may have had a celebratory beer when I got back from the hike last night. As such, I decided today might be better designated as a rest day, but I’ll still go to a park and just lazily go about it, take my time and then head home when I’ve had enough. At first I thought I’d go to Devil’s Lake, which is the most popular park in the state, but then thought it’d be a waste to go on a lazy day when there’s so much to see there. Boy did I not know how wrong that was going to be. Instead, I chose to visit a park just up the road from there called Parfrey’s Glen, which has some cool water features and huge canyon walls you can hike between. This was the busiest park I’d visited yet, and also the first I had to pay to park at ($16 a day, that’s crazy right?). But it was busy for good reason. The stone features at this park were incredible, especially once you get past the maintained trail which ends about a mile into the park. At this point it’s all trails from fellow hikers, which goes another maybe 2 miles down the creek and through the canyon area. This was the best part of the trail, since you had to cross several sections of the creek to get to the end, and many involved carefully stepping on logs or wet river rocks to get across. This made for a great combination of challenge and adventure, which led me to almost forget about the soreness in my legs. That was until I turned around to head back. Maybe 20 minutes into my return hike, my feet are throbbing. Not from any one thing in particular, just repetitive motion and not being used to so much walking. So I decided to take a short break by the stream and dip my feet in to cool off. I am not joking when I say this, I believe I may have found magic healing water there. I’ve never been more refreshed in my life. Despite it being nearly 80 degrees out that day, the flowing river water was ice cold. So much so that my feet immediately went numb when I walked in. I understand cold application has it’s benefits, but I’ve never felt as good as I did after letting my feet sit in that water for a few minutes. In fact, I felt so good that I started to make plans for my next stop in the day.

By the time I got back to my car I was still feeling great, and it was still fairly early in the day too. I figured I might as well check out another spot, even if I don’t get to see everything there. And with that said, I realized my already paid for day parking included parking at Devils Lake. I’d be foolish to not use it, right? So I zipped on over to the park, just a few miles up the read, and sure enough found myself looking at the busiest park I’ve seen in my life. On a Monday afternoon. Literally a completely full parking lot, packed beaches, and fully-staffed restaurant, gift shop, ice cream parlor and kayak rentals. This was a bit more activity than I was expecting, but since I’d already paid for it I decided to stay and check it out. My curiosity led me to the beach. I took a swim, laid in the sand and then took some time to sit back and appreciate where I was. If you’ve ever been to Devil’s Lake you might understand the experience. It reminded me of my trip to Alaska in a sense. To give you an idea, it’s a crystal clear lake surrounded by evergreen forests towering above from rocky cliffs up to 500 feet above ground level looking over the lake. It’s difficult to describe the sense of peace and tranquility I felt when looking at that landscape. But after a few moments of soaking it in from the ground, there was no stopping me from wanting to check out the views from the cliffs.

One of the fascinating things I learned on this trip is that I have an ability to push well beyond my limits when I’m in the right mindset. Any normal day I’ll go on a 2 mile run and feel tapped out for the week. Or if I’ve worked out hard the day before, I’ll take an easy day and do just about nothing all day to let my body recover. This isn’t entirely bad in itself, but it just shows how soft I’ve been. I can easily do hard work day in and day out, and I discovered then and there that every day I’m able to go further and push myself harder than I did the last day. So after a grueling morning licking my wounds at Parfrey’s Glen, I rallied and took on the most challenging and visually breathtaking hike I’ve ever been on in my life. Distance wise, this was only maybe a 5 mile hike there and back for the full loop. The challenge here is that most of it is going uphill on uneven surfaces or downhill on unsteady surfaces, or any combination of the two. I was climbing over boulders, jumping between steady footings and carefully balancing on a loose rock to get to the next step. It was the workout of a lifetime, and the views only made it more incredible. The only downside was the sheer number of people I was sharing the trail with. At every single landmark, I met another group of hikers stopped to take photos or just resting. It was never a big deal, but this was a stark contrast from what I’d been experiencing elsewhere. Which made me wonder, why is this the popular park by such a large margin when there are so many other comparable parks nearby? Sure the views are great and yeah there’s a beach, but for the price of parking and the crowds, it seems to me other parks might be better able to provide the experience I’m looking for. Which then leads to the concept of the road less traveled. Do I like taking the road everyone else is taking, or do I prefer to forge my own path? Based on the writing in this post I might choose the former, because there is a part of me that likes staying safe and comfortable doing what I know. But deep down I know it’s so much more fun doing something on your own. It’s a hell of a lot scarier too, but that’s part of the fun. Taking risks and being bold is all part of life and feeling alive. Life is too short to be worried about failure. It’s the fear of never succeeding that should scare the shit out of you, not failure itself.

If I thought I was sore on day 3, day 4 put a whole new perspective on my pain tolerance. The intense climbing and cumulative hours of hauling my overpacked backpack up and down cliffs had done a number my legs and lower back. Still, I wasn’t going to let this discourage me, and with no actual injuries I knew this was a situation of mind over matter. So I hydrated once again, did some yoga, prepared my meals for the day and went off to the next park, Mirror Lake. To my dismay, this was another park that required payment for entry, but $16 is worth it in my opinion for a good day of seeing new sights. Mirror Lake is a much smaller lake than Devils, and much narrower too. It has some areas with rocky formations around the waters, but the surrounding area is mostly flat. This meant that many of the longer trails were of the surrounding area and not around the lake itself. All of this to say that unlike Devils Lake, this hiking experience was much more flat and level. I took this as a blessing knowing I’d be able to give my legs a break and just walk for once. I guess it hadn’t really dawned on me on the other trails, I’d been so active in trying to watch my footing, identify plants, listen for wildlife, and just in general focused on being active that I rarely stopped to think about myself, my future and my needs, wants and goals in life. Because if I’m being honest, that’s one of the things I really hoped to be able to spend time mulling over on this trip, yet until that point I’d been avoiding any thoughts of that sort. Finally, I didn’t have a challenging trail to focus on and I could just walk and be with my thoughts. I took a snails pace, picked a long and winding trail, and started thinking about whatever came to mind first. After a few minutes that thinking turned into talking out loud to myself. Call me crazy if you have to, but it felt important to verbalize these thoughts. It was literally a conversation with myself, but not a back and forth sort of thing. More like an internal monologue, kind of like what I’m writing here, but said out loud so that I could actually hear it. And I told myself a lot of things I needed to hear, a lot of truths I’d been avoiding for way too long. It felt incredible to have that moment of complete and total openness with myself and just accepting where I am now in life. I’ve not always made the best choices, and I can’t change the past. But i can change my future, and use my past as a guide. It’s as simple as that. It might not mean much to anyone else out there, but as someone who’s come to terms with being a nobody for so long and almost giving up so many times, I can’t tell you how powerful it is to come to an agreement with your inner self that you’re worth the effort. I’ve had the thought so many times, but nothing has cemented that in quite like this experience. I hiked 11 miles that day, the most I’ve ever recorded hiking in a day. That might not be much to experienced hikers, but coming from a guy that that’s usually gassed after running a single mile, this was a huge day.

This brings me to the final day of the trip. I visited two more parks, both being relatively remote and less visited compared to others. Yet surprisingly, for both locations, I found views comparable to what I’d seen at Devils Lake, just no lake to look over. I don’t have much in terms of insights to add. By this point I felt I had accomplished what I set out to accomplish, which was to have an open conversation with myself and re-establish a mindfulness mindset. I now have a finalized version of my new mantra, which is simply “Slow down. Be deliberate in everything you do” I’m sure this isn’t an original quote, but I can’t find a source so I’m claiming it as my own. Essentially, if this isn’t already a simple enough concept, I just need to find ways to remain present at all times, while also taking time to ensure I do my best with every task I choose to do. This means no half-assing, no slacking. If I choose to do something, I’m going to do my best and I will accept nothing less. For most of my life I’ve given myself excuses to be lazy. Now that I’m in a position to find success, I’m having difficulty removing those excuses from my thought processes. This mantra gives me a chance to break that cycle.

So now I’m home, applying these concepts as best I can and living happier than I’ve been for a long time. A few final thoughts. First, I suck at fishing. As they say, river fishing is a completely different animal from lake fishing, and I barely know lake fishing as it is. Second, I don’t like talking with people. I’ve gotten to the point where I think I’m actually getting worse at talking to people because I’ve avoided it so much. This all comes back to anxiety, and facing fears is the name of the game home boy. It’s time to start breaking down those walls. Third, I’ve really enjoyed identifying and learning about local plant and mushroom varieties. It might sound odd, but finding a chicken of the woods mushroom on the last leg of my 11 mile hike had me giddy all the way back to the cabin. Finally, and this is really just a health update I guess, but my breathing has improved dramatically since going to Wisconsin. Like the depth of my breaths and just overall quality of breathing seems to have improved. I don’t have any metrics to use as evidence for this other than my personal sense of feeling able to breathe better. Maybe it’s a step in continued healing from the damage from cigarettes and vaping, or maybe that magic healing water did more than make my feet less sore. Who knows. Anyways, thanks for reading. Until next time, peace.