Sig's shack

I had the rare opportunity last week to visit Sigurd Olson's writing shack. Much to my surprise, it was not at the famed Listening Point, but right in town in Ely. My brother George and his partner had met Listening Point Foundation's executive director, Alanne Dore, and she invited them to see the shack. I tagged along, and was really glad I did.

The shack looks like Sig had just left. I was stunned to see that the last thing he ever typed was still in the typewriter: 

A New Adventure is coming up

and I'm sure it will be

a good one.

Perhaps subconsciously aware of his own passing, Sig typed those words, then went out in the woods on his snowshoes and died. The snowshoes rest in the corner of the shack.

Sigurd Olson is best known for his work in the Boundary Waters and for wilderness preservation worldwide. He would come to the North Shore area primarily to fish the headwaters of the streams for brook trout.  He did write a lovely poem about Lake Superior; when I find a copy I'll link to it here. There is talk now and then about naming Minnesota Highway One, the winding wild road connecting Ely and the North Shore, to Sigurd Olson Highway.

An entire desktop in the shack was covered with rocks, some of which could have been from a North Shore beach but others coming from much further away. Probably a lifetime of memories right there, captured like a Zen garden.

As a writer, naturalist, educator and fan of wilderness myself, I was deeply moved by the experience. The writing shack is so resonant with the spirit of the man. The future of it is unclear, as it sits on private property. If you're inspired by the work and words of Sigurd Olson, consider supporting the Listening Point Foundation.

German Expressionism hits the North Woods

Seen on a well-used National Forest outhouse at a ski trailhead in Ely:

 
This well-weathered man reminded me of the woodblock prints of the German Expressionist, like this one from Max Kaus.

When we arrived in Ely for our winter break, the woods were full of snow, but it was a crusty, angular, and shall we say depressing snow. Like the angular cuts in those woodblocks. Actually, there was a lot of German expressionism during our week up in the Ely woods.

Like my older son, in his first year of German, teaching his younger brother how to insult someone in that great language ("No, no, no, it's 'dein-e' Mutter, not 'dein' Mutter!")

Or when the old German scholar himself whoops it up sledding down the steps of the snowy cabin. Ach du lieber! Was für einen Rutsch!

When my 75% deutschstämmig wife expresses herself, is that German Expressionism? 

What if she takes the express route right down a moody Boundary Waters lake? I think I've seen this scene in a Ernst Kirchner print.

Der viele, viele Schnee...

On the ski trail with Sigurd Olson

Everywhere I go in northeastern Minnesota, the great naturalist, writer and activist Sigurd Olson was there before me. I skied along the top of an esker the other day with my son, lovingly pointing out to him how the trail ran down the top of the winding ridge. Eskers are basically fossils of the rivers that ran underneath the great continental glaciers

In search of a skiing quote later that day, I found this from Sigurd Olson (in Spirit Of The North: The Quotable Sigurd F. Olson)

An owl is hooting in the darkening timber, and over the trees hands a thin sliver of a moon. It is time to go, and we drift easily down the old river bed. On the last long slope we gather speed and know the thrill all skiers have at night of seeming airborne, of floating down into the darkness of a bowl. For a fleeting instant we are part of that glacial river churning through its tunnel of ice, part of the milky-white water speeding toward the boulder-strewn outwash below.

Here's me skiing down the steep end of the esker, into a gravel pit:

While Sigurd Olson probably never skied this trail (the Ridge Runner trail at Boulder Lake), he captured the spirit of the place and the skiing. He understood and explained the land of NE Minnesota like no one has since.

Sigurd Olson was a backcountry, break-your-own-trail skier. He wrote in his journal back in 1930 about his temporary ski trails, "How few men have a road all of their own that they alone travel and enjoy and how few can afford, once they have so expensive a treasure, to abandon it as I can. I am a millionaire of the spirit." (I love that last line!)

Get out today on your skis and find your own millions, thanks to the great Sigurd Olson.

Ski joke: Why ski trails are measured in kilometers

The world needs more ski jokes; here's my attempt to provide something new:

The top ten reasons ski trails are measured in meters and kilometers, not feet and miles

1. When the woods are lovely, dark and deep, skiers would rather not have miles to go before they sleep
2. Skiers’ feet are stinky
3. C’mon, would you rather ski 30 miles or 30K?
4. Three words: One World Government
5. “5 K” sounds way cooler than “3.2 M”
6. That’s how they measure distance in Finland and Norway...and all the rest of the industrialized world
7. Chicks dig “clicks”
8. Gives the Italian, Swedish and Norwegian skiers homefield advantage wherever they compete
9. “Short” and “long” were already taken
10. Since ski wax temperatures are in Celsius, it’s easier to make the conversion

It's cooler by the lake: The poem

Today's 57 degrees in Grand Marais and 87 degrees in Minneapolis make your mind turn to poetry. This old ditty deserves to get back into circulation:

It's Cooler by the Lake
Steve Stark

The weatherman on TV News
Said "It's a nifty day
For golfers with their polished clubs
To get outside and play.
Or if you have a mind to work
You might go outside and rake.
Two Harborites can stay inside --
It's cooler by the lake."

The Minneapolis temps are up
It's lush and warm and green.
In Brimson, well, the skies are clear
Ten miles can be seen.
All over Minnesota
The citizens will bake,
For us the caveat is out --
"It's cooler by the lake."

Bermuda shorts are seldom seen
Short sleeves are seldom "in."
With sandals, well, your feet will freeze.
It seems we cannot win.
'Cause when you know the summer sun
On you will soon forsake,
Take heed because you know by now --
"It's cooler by the lake."

Oh, somewhere in this northern land
The sun is shining bright
And children dance and romp and sing
At morning, noon and night
The warmth abounds, the birds all sing
It's good to be awake
There is no joy by Agate Bay --
"It's cooler by the lake."



Copied, without permission but with sincere admiration, from Minnesota Sea Grant's 1980 Superior Advisory Notes. Original credit to Steve Stark, Lake County News-Chronicle. Order your free copy here!

Poem for the Lift Bridge: Boat unnah hum

I caught the Great Lakes' largest boat, the Paul Tregurtha, coming through Duluth's Aerial Lift Bridge yesterday afternoon. Our neighbor was there too, with her toddler Piper. "We love these boats," she said in that first-person plural parents of speechless toddlers use.

Watch out when these young boat fans start to talk for themselves. Our older son at age 2 loved to tell and retell the whole story of a boat going under the bridge, sound effects and all.

The Lift Bridge, to our toddlers who rode cars over it, was known as "the Hum Bridge" for the distinct sound of tires on metal grates. "Unnah" was "under." To ride in the stroller under a tree was to go "Unnah Doe."



Here's his recitation:

Boat unnah hum

Honk! Honk!

Ding Ding Ding.

Up up up up.

Boat unnah hum.

Man, those were the days! Now we can hardly get him to tell us anything, even with sound effects.

Dylan Thomas to the rescue

Above is the four-day forecast for Duluth. With nighttime lows above freezing and rain for three days straight, the North Shore snow cover is taking a huge hit right now. Around Duluth, major brown spots are showing through.

I will ski again this year. It may be on a frozen lake in Ely. It might be after a miracle March snowstorm. I'm not going gently.

This stanza from a Dylan Thomas poem was stenciled on the side of a car door that hung on the classroom wall in my seventh grade English class at St. Paul Academy. I summon it for the cause of this forsaken winter:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Hanging the midday sun

In a North Shore winter, in early January, the sun is low all day long. At noon today, the Duluth sun was 27 degrees above the horizon. We're ten days past the equinox, but the midday sun hasn't climbed more than a degree.

No, I was not out there at 2 below with a sextant to measure the angle. I looked it up at NOAA's Solar Position Calculator. I was out there at 2 below, but with skis and a camera instead.

I skied the 5K of trail at Hartley Field (that's page 42 in Skiing the North Shore) at midday. Halfway around the Outer Loop, I noticed it had suddenly become dark. I scanned the sky for a cloud, thinking a big dark one must have passed overhead. But it was only blue sky as far as I could see.



Instead, I'd skied alongside a small Duluth ridgeline. Here, at 11:30 AM, the sun had already set for the day and the snow had turned a dusky purple.



The low sun makes for high beauty. As I skied along, camera ready, I kept looking through the trees and snow for shots of sunlight working its magic. Doing this reminded me of a favorite Japanese poem from Steve Van Matre's collection The Earth Speaks:

Experimenting,
I hung the moon
on various branches of the pine.

I imagined the ancient Zen poet doing exactly the same thing as I was doing, using the forest to frame the light, "hanging" the sun like another Christmas tree ornament off in the woods.

Maybe I'm a performance artist after all.

Visualizing snow: A winter poem from Gary Snyder

"Pine Tree Tops"

in the blue night
frost haze, the sky glows
with the moon
pine tree tops
bend snow-blue, fade
into sky, frost, starlight.
the creak of boots
rabbit tracks, deer tracks,
what do we know.


Gary Snyder, from Turtle Island, 1974, New Directions

Tettegouche: The funny bits

I went for a lovely and very challenging hike yesterday at Tettegouche State Park. I took lots of pictures and will have some interesting, reflective posts here on the blog.

However, I just had to put up pictures of these two signs. The first one, for the Cedar Lake Overlook, is missing just the right letters to have it turn into a Polynesian blessing: "E-dar A-ke O Er Ook." There is a scene in Finding Nemo, where the other fish in the fish tank at the dentist's office initiate Nemo into their tropical brotherhood. Their chant is just like this. Edar Ake O Er Ook.

So I continued my trek, getting tired but hitting every overlook spur trail like a good guidebook author. But now I was powered by the Finding Nemo chant. E-dar A-Ke O Er Ook!!

As far as I knew, however, it was just random entropy that took those letters off. Sh** happens.

Then I saw the second sign, at the start of the climb to Mt. Baldy. I'd hiked six miles, my legs were sore, and I'd already climbed to four or five other overlooks:



Now I knew. This one convinced me it is not just random entropy on these signs. It's not just nature taking its course. Those particular letters didn't just fall off. Some hiker, maybe tired as I was, peeled them off in some reverse Wheel of Fortune humor.

I got around the rest of the hike pondering the potential for this sort of reverse graffiti on other signs.

Andrew Slade? Turns into "drew ad"

Barack Obama? "Bar bam"

Lake Superior? "La Supe"

Minnesota Vikings? "In so iki"

Definitely NOT one of America's Best

Just in from the "Why Local News is Best" department, this stunning endorsement by Backpacker Magazine. In their search for the best 100 dayhikes in America, they looked at trails all around Minnesota and found...a road.

I picked up a copy of Backpacker at the public library, with a stunning cover photo of a narrow slot canyon and the big headline "America's Best Dayhikes." I had to know: of all the great dayhikes on the North Shore, which would the editors of this reputable publication pick? I've been hiking all over the North Shore this year, picking out 50 of the best trails. There had to be some agreement in this, right?

Paging through the article, I found trails I knew...in other states. The Hoh River Trail and the Olympic Coast, in Olympic National Park, are terrific. I've been to the top of Half Dome. I've done the Highline Trail in Glacier and hiked the Syncline Loop in Canyonlands.

And, with all these great trails, the only trail on the North Shore to make the list...is a spur trail of the Superior Hiking Trail from Hartley to Hawk Ridge. Half of which is on roads.



I don't think anyone from the magazine actually came and hiked this trail. I think they read about it online. Their directions are inaccurate. They imagine hikers on this trail surrounded by migrating hawks, but on this route you'd see mostly only chickadees.

I live here, I hike a lot, and I've never hiked this trail myself. The actual trails up on top of Hawk Ridge are really cool, with great views and alternate migration viewing spots.

Yes, I'm doing just what Backpacker did. I'm passing judgment on a trail that I've never actually hiked. But I know there are way better hikes around here than this one. I helped to scout the route, and I know it's okay but not great.

Want good information about local trails? Hiking the North Shore will be out next spring...and it's based on real research by a real person on the real trails. Local news is best.

I can see for miles and miles and miles

I hiked earlier this week along the Superior Hiking Trail to a place called "Section 13," which is this rugged area about two miles inland from Lake Superior. This was once a secret rock climbing location, secret sort of like Area 51. Now that it's the official Superior Hiking Trail, it's not a secret anymore. In fact, I could swear I saw Pete Townsend of The Who up there. There was this old guy claiming to be from Duluth. I heard someone singing "I can see for miles and miles. I can see for miles and miles. I can see for miles and miles and miles and miles...Oh Yeah."

It's a rough hike that just gets rougher as you head further in, with great views of the inland ridges, ponds and rivers. At the crest of this trail, at over 1600 feet, a huge distant view opens up through a valley back out to the lake.



There's no way this picture will show the real details I could see, but that finger of color coming in from the left above the lake's horizon is the curving North Shore headed way out to Grand Marais. I love that view. The North Shore is not just one straight shoreline; it has this broad beautiful swooping curve to it.

I could swear I could pick out one distant summit. Here's the best job I can do zooming in on it:



I took a compass bearing on it, and it was at 61 degrees. Sort of East-Northeast.

At home later that day, I pulled out a big Lake Superior map and traced 61 degrees from that point I was standing. It went right to a feature well east of Grand Marais called Farquhar Peak.

How far to Farquhar? 60 miles.

Is that cool or what? I had to have the height to see that far, there had to have the clarity of the air to see that far. And there had to be the open gorgeous curves of the North Shore to pick out details that far.

And if that really was Pete Townsend up there, well it was nice to share the hike with you.

I can see for miles and miles and mile and miles....Oh yeah.

I'd like to buy a consonant

I'm looking for a slight change in my career path. After twenty years of environmental education, I'm thinking about something new.

Maybe...maybe I could just add a letter, or take one away.

Instead of being a naturalist...



I could be a naturist. The pay would be about the same, and I wouldn't have those nerdy hiking sock tan lines.



Instead of doing phenology, the study of the timing of seasonal phenomena..




I could do phrenology! Might be a bit bumpy, however.



Not sure where I am now on this one, but I could either go all the way into my love of language and be an etymologist...



Or I could indulge my interest in blackfly pollination of blueberries and be an entomologist.



Maybe I'll just stick with EE.

Stop thinking, start sighing.

In my last blog posting, I wrested with prepositions. By the lake? In the lake? On the lake?

It reminded me of first-year German: "aus, ausser, bei, mit, nach, seit, von, zu!" (Phonetically, that would be "Owss, ow-sir, bye, mitt, knock, zite, vaughn, tsoo", and they are the prepositions that are always followed by the dative article.)

I get way too deep into this stuff. Way too many grammar lessons framed by rigid language rules. Latin students get "Amo amas amat, amamus amatis amant" for "I love, you love, he loves, we love...."

The evening light last night was gorgeous. To get these grammar lessons out of my head, I headed out for a walk on the Park Point beach in the backyard. Big thunderheads were rolling by along the South Shore. Some Emerson Lake and Palmer popped into my head, from "Roundabout":

In and around the lake
Mountains come out of the sky
And they stand there.

And if those mountains coming out the sky weren't enough, the sun was putting on quite a show behind the Aerial Lift Bridge:



With an ELP Moog synthesizer riff rolling through my head, I could only sigh, with the cool warm water ticking my toes, "Um yum hmm aah."

Straight across the Heart of Darkness

In Joseph Conrad's great novel, Heart of Darkness, the character Marlow recounts his voyage deep into a dark continent trying to advance French colonial aspirations. The native people help in the carrying of trade goods. And deep in the continent at a colonial station is Kurtz (i.e. Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now), the demigod and the man most deeply transformed by the experience of being in deep.

Yesterday, I drove across the heart of Wisconsin, listening to Conrad's novel on disk. Wisconsin is a deep and strange wilderness to me. I normally stick to my side of the Mississippi and St. Croix rivers. But my family had given me "trade goods," and told me of the "colonial station" to which I was to bring them.

According to Rand McNally, it was quicker to drive straight across Wisconsin from Winona to Duluth than to go through the more familiar Twin Cities I-35 route. I snuck across the mighty Mississippi river at Winona, and drove up through the very scenic Driftless Area on Highway 93. Green Bay Packers logos were scattered here and there. Eau Claire, with its shopping malls and chain stores, was a refuge of civilization, but just north of Eau Claire the land turned truly alien. A highway sign pointed to Green Bay itself. Three times the straight lanes of Highway 53 passed under "County Road Q".

In the Holiday gas station, on a Sunday, they were selling wine. And cheese curds. Bizarre.

Then finally in Rice Lake, a mile off the expressway, I reached the trading station:



Natives in their simple dress of elastic-waist khakis and polo shirts greeted me. Since I carried an empty 11-inch pie tin for trading, they assumed I meant no harm. If they had known that my true loyalties were with the Minnesota Vikings, I might have been buried in lefse or, worse, whipped topping.

I didn't enter Norske Nook far enough to know if Kurtz was there, in a booth in the darkest corner. Or, if not Kurtz, what demigod would Wisconsinites worship? Maybe good old #4?

Minnesota has colonial aspirations on Wisconsin's own demigod, Brett Favre. That makes me murmur, as Kurtz did on his deathbed, "The horror, the horror."

I traded for a Blueberry Crunch pie. It's a huge pie and we're still eating it. And someday I can dig out the empty tin and send it off with someone else on their own journey across the Heart of Darkness.
_______________________

I'm going to get it big time from my wife and mother-in-law, who have real Wisconsin and Scandinavian cred and might find the above post, well, insulting. But I couldn't pass this next bit up. After my journey across Wisconsin with a pie tin for trade goods, I'm waxing philosophic.

Marlow, in Heart of Darkness, on the meaning of life:

"Droll thing, life is, that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself that comes too late. A crop of inextinguishable regrets."

Wisconsin, on the meaning of life:

I hate to admit it, but I really prefer Wisconsin's.

Pincushion Mountain: Through the woods darkly

The poodle and I made it to the top of Pincushion Mountain the other day. The dramatic clarity of the views and the bare rock on top were quite a contrast with the abstract experience of the river below.

We hiked up the Devil Track River on the Superior Hiking Trail. The gorge of the Devil Track river is supposedly the deepest in Minnesota. The trail climbs faster than the river bed, so the gorge gets deeper and deeper as we went. It is so deep, in fact, that as the SHT runs along the edge of the gorge, you seldom can even see the river or its waterfalls. The river was loud with spring run-off, so I knew it was there. But even at the official Barrier Falls Overlook, here's the best picture I could get of the falls:



Maybe it's a Cubist hike. You have to experience the gorge and the river from many angles before you really get the full picture of it. To hike along and finally descend into the gorge, to feel the air freshen and chill, and cross the raging river, to smell its full spring redolence, to hear the roar come and go as the terrain changes and soundlines change...all that comes together for an complete, and wondrous, experience of the river and gorge.

It made me think of the blind men and the elephant: each person has an incomplete and imperfect sense, but put them all together and you can understand.

So when we approached the summit of Pincushion, it was like taking off the blinders or stepping out of the cave. Here's Chloe on the ascent:



I enjoy a bit of Cubism. I really enjoyed hiking up the Devil Track gorge, experiencing through different angles, though I was frustrated with the lack of a great view of the falls.

My heart soared though when we got up on top and in the open, with the broad Lake Superior views.

According to Wikipedia, Through A Glass Darkly is "an abbreviated form of a much-quoted phrase from the Christian New Testament in 1 Corinthians 13. The phrase is interpreted to mean that humans have an imperfect perception of reality."

Yeah, my perception was imperfect down below. But up on top of Pincushion, with the poodle, under the bright blue sky and looking out over bright blue Lake Superior, reality was perfectly perceived.

Save this trail!

It reads like a sad tale from Dickens. A younger offspring treated like a single child. One that never fit into the rest of the family. Falling into ill health now, just a trace of its former self. Now that the others have grown up and moved along, it will be abandoned.

Except it isn't a child. It's a trail.

I have Great Expectations: Save the Knife River trail!



Back in 1992 or 1993, a few local volunteers built a stretch of hiking trail from the town of Knife River up along the River itself. This might have been the start of the mighty Superior Hiking Trail, right there next to the Depot Campground. The trail was popular with Duluth folks, since it was the first and easiest part of the SHT to reach, just a ten mile drive out of town up the Expressway.

It's a lovely little stretch of trail, especially the first 2.5 miles up to Second Falls. The trail scoots up the left bank of the Knife River past First Falls, a scenic and wide waterfall that roars with spring melt. Then it crosses under the expressway and over the Knife River on the expressway's westbound lane. After that, it's near or on the Knife River most of the way.

Here's Second Falls:



Now the Superior Hiking Trail Association has other plans. In order to connect Duluth and Two Harbors, the route had to go way inland, up near the corridor for the North Shore Trail, the snowmobile corridor. This little stretch of scenic, accessible trail has been left all alone. For the first time in its history, the Superior Hiking Trail Association will abandon part of its trail.

When the SHTA abandons a trail, the trail loses its stewards. Who will clear downfalls in the spring? Who will repair and replace bridges? Who will make sure the route is clear?

I hiked the trail yesterday with Chloe. It is in rough shape. Footbridges are 15 years old and breaking apart. Trail markers are gone and the trail is crossed here and there by ATV traffic, confusing the route.



Despite the obstacles, it was great hike. The Knife River was nearly overflowing its banks with spring melt. The pine forests in the middle area were alive with bird song. There's a lovely little campsite at a bend in the river, perfect for lunch break before returning to the trailhead.

This gem of a trail deserves use and it deserves a new steward. How about it, Knife River Community Club? Lake Superior steelheaders? Izaak Walton League?

The bard of the woodcut

If you're in Duluth today, the place to be is Sivertson Gallery in Canal Park, for the opening of Rick Allen's show, Very Nearly True Tales of the North. The reception runs from 1 to 4 today (Saturday the 18th) and features "festive comestibles, musical diversions and treasures to win!"

Plus you can hop on the Earth Day Gallery Hop trolley and visit all sorts of other galleries with other shows, just nothing as cool or biologically relevant as Rick's.

Rick is a poet with a press and a gentleman with giclee. See you there!

Back to Plato's cave

Have you heard of those books "1000 things to do before you die?" Or maybe you saw the movie "Bucket List"? There are things we should all do at least once before we shuffle off this mortal coil. Reading Plato might be one of them, though the things to do are generally more cool places to see. Going to the ice caves by Cornucopia, WI is one of those things you just definitely do or see, at least for us here in the north.

In Plato's allegory of the cave, we're all supposed to be in this cave with images projected in front of us and we don't know about the greater reality outside. But, hey, these caves were pretty cool. And mind-opening enough that I felt like going in was bringing me a greater reality.

Hans and Noah and I went this Sunday, along with the poodle. And it was fantastic. Literally. You should do it.

It's a long schlep along the ice and snow dunes to get there, over a mile with some pretty treacherous footing. Once you're there, the real fun begins.



At the point of land, there is about 300 yards of cliff line full of nooks and crannies.

Maybe 2/3 of the nooks just dead-end in a dramatic overhanging cliff. It was just enough curvy sandstone to take me back to canyons and gulches of SE Utah.

About 1/3 of the nooks lead to something even cooler: real caves, low down caves, carved by splooshing waves over the centuries. A small entrance leads to larger caverns inside. Hans would go first, down on his tummy, then Noah or I would follow.

My favorite was a long narrow tunnel, out of the way enough that most of the visitors don't find it:



Follow the link above or this one for directions. For us, it was 1 3/4 hour drive from Duluth, and with a stop for late lunch at the Village Inn on the way back it was nearly a full day.

Now that we're back to the dim "reality" of computer screens, I'm not so sure I like this real world.

Penance on the Iso Maki

After indulging, maybe even eco-sinning, on the lift-served slopes of Lutsen Mountain, after reveling in the pull of the fall line and the ease of the chair lift, I had to make up for it. Like a bowl of unsalted brown rice after a Choco-Cherry Blizzard (large), a long loop at Korkki Nordic was the penance and the cleanser my skiing soul needed.

We locked the kids in the house with one of their six favorite Star Wars movies playing and headed up the shore to Homestead Road and the Korkki Nordic Ski Center. We passed the old Finnish homesteads of Clover Valley, where immigrants had slaved for decades to free the soil from trees and rocks to grow a little hay for their skinny goats. None of that easy living of the immigrant Swedish fishermen up the shore in Lutsen, who shot moose for pleasure and lived off tourists since the 19th century.

Korkki Nordic was carved from the wilderness by the hardest working man of them all, Charlie Banks. I think he personally cleared the trails using only his teeth warmed in the sauna. To clear my soul of the sins of downhill skiing, it was the place.

Above is pictured part of the trail, where a choice had to be made. Would I take the "Easy Way"? No, no, not today, not the easy way. I would, as Hamlet might,

"Take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them."



The real test was at the Iso Maki big hill. Let us say for argument that Iso Maki was a real person, for whom isometric exercises were named, for he pressed mightily against himself and the inert, immobile forces of nature. Here, on the long 10K part of the Korkki loop, was a challenge all of its own. You can bypass this hill, or you can climb it only to descend it again.

I chose to climb. Up and up, using my own power, not the rumbling destroyer-of-the-wild of the chair lift. At the top, I committed myself to the hill. I let gravity take me away. Should I meet a tree and die, should I tear a ligament or break a collarbone, it would be my deserved fate.



Like brown rice to the bowels, Korkki and Iso Maki cleansed my soul.