Time until departure: 4 weeks
Location: Kickapoo Valley ReserveWeather: Humid and hazy with wildfire smoke
Mood: Relieved to be carrying real gear instead of flour
This is my last fully free weekend for long training hikes, so I decided to make the most of it with a shakedown backpacking trip, taking all the gear with me that I'll use on the trip. Kickapoo Valley Reserve is about 2 hours from Madison in Wisconsin's Driftless Region, a landscape of ridges and valleys that escaped the effects of glaciers that scoured the rest of the state flat.
A friend from Milwaukee accompanied me on the hike and shortly after we set off from the trailhead, we encountered a group of tipsy horseback riders, beers in hand. After failing to guide their horses up the overgrown trail to the top of the bluff, two of them turned back and passed us. One giddily exclaimed, "We're way out here!" and the other let us know it was his first time on a horse. We were 3 miles from the trailhead. It was 11 a.m.
"We're way out here" became a point of discussion as we fought our way up the hill. I wasn't feeling particularly "out here" yet, and it made me wonder if I was missing out on something. Was it because I had been here before? Because I was thinking of today as training for something bigger? Why do I feel the need to hike for six weeks straight chasing the same feeling that these people found in a six pack and a weekend trail ride?
The philosophy was soon forgotten as we began to encounter fields of stinging nettle, hundreds of the plants unavoidably arching over our path towards our exposed legs and arms. In certain spots, the only thing we could do was charge through and wait out the pain. Luckily we both have very short-lived reactions to it!
At the end of our hike as we were making camp, we heard a commotion in the distance. Horse hooves and loud voices. Peering through the fading light we again saw our friends from earlier. The first-time rider sat in front of another, apparently drunker man on the same horse and a third horse trotted riderless behind. "Don't you do that no more!" yelled the drunk man to the rider in front of him, "Don't poke my horse! Don't f*** up my horse!" We lost control of our laughter as they trotted down the trail into the distance.
The milky way wheeled across the sky that night as the humid air left dew covering everything. The next day my friend had an old injury flare up that left him waiting at a shady canoe launch while I hiked back to the car alone. I met only one person on the way, a man maybe in his 60s hiking opposite me. He saw my poles and asked if I was training for skiing. I explained the upcoming trip and he excitedly told me he had recently started hiking and about the three miles he was doing today for the park's punchcard challenge. "I parked at the trailhead all the way at the end," he said pointing behind him. We commiserated that the day's first mile of hiking is always the hardest and went our separate ways. His excitement was contagious, and I felt grateful that—way out here—I had the good fortune to cross his path.