Walking through Big Life Changes: North Country Trail St. Ignace to Tahquamenon Falls

Back in the spring as I was finishing up finals, I listened to a podcast where one of the hosts articulated why breakups are so hard (Julia Hava from Binchtopia, episode titled "The Weight of It All" if you are interested). She talked about how terrifying it is when suddenly, the reality that you wake up to everyday is no longer the truth and you don't know whats ahead. In the case of breakups, your new reality drastically changes the way you interact with your ex-partner and all things associated, but this concept can clearly be translated to other big life changes.

As I moved through my senior year, I was mostly really excited to graduate. Classes are really stressful, I wasn't making all that much money, and I never felt like I fit in on my campus because of the fast-paced environment. People on my campus flaunt that they are "work hard play hard," and I joke that I'm much more "work soft play soft." I yearned for a healthy work-life balance where I don't have to work on the weekends, and every conversations extends beyond what exams we are stressed about. And because we are all so busy, stressed, and constantly connected to technology by necessity, it's hard to make deep connections. And as a rural midwesterner, being out east in New Hampshire, especially when my classmates are from mostly big cities all over the world, I had a different idea of happiness and contentment than many of my peers.

Don't get me wrong, college was necessary beyond just receiving my professional degree. Getting out of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and into a high-rigor academic environment exposed me to ideas and perspectives that have changed my life. I got to explore my gender identity and sexuality in a safe and supportive environment. I was supported in my endeavors to understand and explore my disabled body. I was exposed to different spiritual traditions that have helped me understand and influence my mental formations.

But it was a lot. I felt like I was always on the extremes. I was pushing really hard in school and in exercise, and I filled up the rest of my time with critical self analysis. All of this is important, but without rest, it can be very taxing. During some of my breaks, I've gotten important time for rest, and I look back on these times fondly. I deeply craved more time and headspace to be creative and rest, to be myself.

But as I hurdled closer to the finish line, turning in finals, finishing up my thesis, and saying goodbyes, the part of me that was sentimental for college grew and grew, and somehow in the midst of all this chaos, I found time to cry. Even though I had a job lined up that I'm excited for, reasonably close to friends and family with enough space to explore and feel free, I was terrified. Even though I hated the constant stress and stimulation I was subjected to, that was all I'd known for years. So many things would be changing--location, income, time spent working, the nature of that work, people I am surrounded by--it became important to think about what wouldn't change. That brought me to the question,

What is the essence of me? What are the parts of me that remain throughout these big life changes?

When I graduated, I pushed my body in order to investigate this question. The day after I got back home, I embarked on a backpacking trip with my friend Maija.

Once of my obsessions over the past few years has been the North Country National Scenic Trail. The NCT is one of America's eleven national scenic trails which stretches from Vermont to North Dakota. One of my long-term goals is to section hike the entirety of the NCT in the UP. When was a teenager, I actually got lost on the NCT in the Marquette area and was quite afraid of it, but with time I began to feel wonder every time I saw one of those blue dots along the trail.

Maija and I set a lofty goal of hiking from St. Ignace to Tahquamenon Falls State Park-- around 120 miles in six days. The first four days were all going to be over twenty miles, with the last two days being only ten miles each. We had both been planning and looking forward to this trip for months, drowning in our college lives. We knew it was going to be hard, but we rationalized our decision by telling ourselves that we are strong Yooper women (and we are), and the pain would be good for us. Another thing that any seasoned Yooper will understand is that the bugs were probably going to be bad. After four years of worrying about things that never made me feel right, I was ready to put my head down and feel some real pain.

Day 1: Maija's friend Natalie picked us up at 6 a.m. and drove us to Straits State Park in St. Ignace. The first part of our trek was through the town of St. Ignace, where we passed shops, parks, and museums. We looked strange in our big backpacks headed walking through the town, and whenever someone asked us how far we were hiking or where we were headed we gave a silly and non-descriptive answer. As two young women, we didn't need anyone knowing where we were staying each night. After hiking through the town, we took some fast miles hiking on a gravel road near some camps (what Yoopers call cabins). This part was a little bit scary, there were a lot of beer cans in the ditches and bullet holes in signs--we were certainly in the boonies and wouldn't want to be found at the wrong place at the wrong time.

This dirt road eventually opened up at the Castle Rock Trailhead. Up to this point, the bugs weren't too bad, but we were now moving into the deep woods. We forged on ahead, where we surprisingly faced quite a bit of elevation change as we traversed ancient sand dunes. There were also lots of lady slippers, something we were not used to from the central UP. Because we were up higher and close enough to Lake Michigan to get a breeze, the bugs weren't bad, but for the second half of our journey that changed drastically. While we were high spirited for the first part of our hike, we found that backpacking became significantly less enjoyable after 15 miles. It didn't help that we were exhausted, sweating, and being constantly bombarded by mosquitoes, spider webs, and ticks. The final miles took forever, and that is probably because we had to hike three more miles than originally anticipated. I remember taking our last long break on a bridge, and while sitting on this bridge constantly swatting away mosquitoes, I found four ticks crawling on the wood--it was my first time ever seeing ticks not attached to a victim. We could see Brevoort Lake, but it took a long time to get to the campground. One thing to keep in mind is that while we paid for a site, there were dispersed sites along the lake, probably two miles from the official sites.

But when we finally got to our campsite, we were cooked. Maija said, "I anticipated a lot of pain, but I didn't expect to feel more pain than I'd ever felt in my life." We spent the evening eating, resting, stretching, removing ticks, and reflecting on the day. There were worries about how we were going to be able to keep doing these kinds of miles, and we reminded ourselves that we had all the gear to keep us safe if our plans were to change. We were out there for us, nobody else. That night, I slept poorly and there was a thunderstorm. At one point I woke up to a tick crawling on my face.

Day 2: Even though we went to bed the night before exhausted and a little worried about our state, we agreed to start the day off slow. It took us two hours to get ready, which was a little too slow for me. But when you are backpacking with others you need to be ready to compromise, and the extra time to stretch and reflect wasn't the worst thing. Today, we did more to prepare for the bugs. Whereas the day before, we were in hats, short sleeves, and long pants, today we wore bug nets and long sleeves right away even though it was hot. We also had a Thermacell Backpacker Mosquito Repeller at the ready for when we took longer breaks to eat so we could be more at ease. There were consistently times when we were walking along a road or across a road, and we would take breaks here to help even more with bugs.

Soon, we put on our rain jackets for extra mosquito protection, so there was no part of our body that was exposed. We also wore our socks over our pants to deter ticks, but this ended up not always working. Still, we started out with high spirits and a good breakfast in our bellies, plus wisdom gained from the day before. We walked through dense forests, burn zones, and as we walked more into the interior UP, we were mostly experiencing swamps. While I didn't feel that much fatigue the day before, it really set in. I didn't know how I was going to hike ten more miles. At one point it felt like my brain wasn't telling my legs to keep stepping, but they wouldn't stop either. It was an out-of-body experience. I just stayed behind Maija and let her lead us deeper through the swamp. It was supposed to rain in the afternoon, which excited us because we thought we would get a break from the bugs, but when that rain came, it turned out to be enough rain to get our feet wet, but not enough to stop the bugs. Those last miles were miserable, as we had to take frequent breaks to rest our feet, but whenever we stopped we were brutally swarmed with mosquitoes. During this time, even though not an inch of my skin was available to the bugs, I continued to hear something buzzing in my ear over the course of hours, and no matter how many times I slapped the side of my head to try to kill it, or take off the net and put it back on, the buzzing remained. At one point I wondered if I was hallucinating the sounds, but soon enough, I discovered I wasn't.

When Maija and I were barely hanging on near the end, we understood that we needed to get inside a tent, away from the mosquitoes as soon as possible. Our feet were wet and hurting and we were so tired our words were slurring. We had some flexibility with where we could camp, but we needed to make sure we were near a water source, so we would reach a road, thinking it was near Little Bear Creek, but we would discover that we still had a mile to walk. These miles stretched out, there was definitely some inaccuracy in the distances we estimated, because a distance that should have taken one hour took two, even as we consistently walked a fast pace. Finally, we got to the road the water source was on, and we agreed to pitch the tent on the trail--we were in the middle of the swamp and hadn't seen many hikers that day and it was getting late, and in our fatigued minds this was an acceptable move. We were in the middle of pitching the tent in a swamp when Maija realized there was a tree in the way and we wouldn't be able to fully pitch it. We went inside the half pitched tent to get a moment away from the bugs before we determined our next move.

There, we discovered several disheartening things. First, we were still a half mile away from the water source. While Maija confirmed this on her inReach, I took off my boot to reveal something truly horrifying.

I had gotten trench foot. Maija likely had it too because her feet were hurting badly. Maija finally got to take a look at my face, and it turns out, the buzzing I'd been hearing on my right side was real, and something had bitten up my face to the point that it was swelling

From here, we laughed and cried at our circumstances and eventually I stuffed my wrinkly feet back into my wet boots, we took down the tent, and walked the last, hardest half mile of our lives down a dirt road to the water source. We were so tired that we set up the tent on the shoulder of the road. It was a forest road so we assumed it wasn't well travelled. By now, our tolerance for mosquitoes were next to nothing. This is coming from two people who have seen their fair share of mosquitoes. From someone who will wear shorts and a t-shirt when other hikers are fully covered telling me how "bad" the bugs are, these bugs had broken down my spirit. When you are under that much pain for so long, it becomes difficult to eat, but we knew we had to for any kind of recovery to occur. We set up the Thermacell right outside my tent and I cooked dinner from the safety of my sleeping bag.

While my feet recovered pretty well, Maija discovered that hers were in really bad shape. We spent the rest of the night trying to eat all of our dinner and staring off into space. We were a little nervous about camping so close to a road--that day, we had a close call with an off-leash pit bull and had passed several signs riddled with bullet holes. But we were too tired to do anything about it.

That night, while I slept soundly, Maija had a hard time sleeping. Her foot felt like it was on fire, probably fighting infections. Around 2 a.m., I was abruptly woken up to a car that was driving so fast and so close to our tent that it sprayed gravel on the walls. Thinking back to this haunts me, after that experience I understood what it felt like to be roadkill. Who knows how much alcohol the driver had in their system, and if they would come back? What if they discovered that there were two young women in the tent? Maija, who was already up, said she heard wolves howling earlier that night. It was not a good feeling, feeling like you were in an unsafe situation and not being able to do anything about it. Once again, we were well-equipped to handle situations that could reasonably arise, but the thought that those situations might actually happen was daunting.

Day 3: The night before we had decided that it wouldn't be safe for us to continue our hike, between our mental and physical wounds. Fortunately, Maija's boyfriend was already going to intersect with us for a resupply that day, so we had him get us early.

We were thinking that we might be able to do a little more hiking that day, but that morning when I limped over to the creek to get more water, I was attacked by bugs and I could barely handle it. As a result, we drank and ate barely anything that day. We spent the whole morning recovering in our tent. Not many cars drove by, but several that did went out of their way to drive very close to us, making us feel unsafe. Especially after last night, we just wanted to get out of there. Finally, we were rescued safely.

Summary: We are well aware that this trip was irresponsible. To be fair, one of the reasons we were hiking so far was that there were limited designated campsites, but we should have been more wise. But we weren't, and we knew this would be a hard trip. We don't regret it, and most importantly, we learned from it. We learned how to avoid bugs, and how dangerous trench foot can be. I got more experience and confidence backpacking. Interestingly enough, for how hard this trip was, I feel like I'll be able to handle a solo trip now.

We also found our limits, and became more comfortable there. Going back to the question I posed near the beginning about who I really am, I discovered a lot on this trip. Maija and I talked about the roles we play in our family and in our lives, and I classified myself as a survivor, someone who will tough it out, who will make things work with the cards they were dealt. Oftentimes thinking about this makes me sad because it reminds me of how I've always had to be strong and self-reliant, which has made it hard to connect with people and even myself. But on this trip, I saw the pros of being a survivor. I was able to keep my composure through really tough times. I was able to control my mind and put my focus where it was needed. There are two sides to every coin, and I'm thankful for this trait for keeping me alive through tough adventures. And getting yourself so close to your limit lets you know how you will react if you are ever in a situation where you really are in a life-or-death scenario, something I think about quite a bit.

At the time, I was reading a book called When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön. Much of this book talks about how to face your life head on, rather than running away from the things that scare you and towards the things that make you feel safe. During the first night, I read the passage:

We might feel that somehow we should try to eradicate these feelings of pleasure and pain, loss and gain, praise and blame, fame and disgrace. A more practical approach would be to get to know them, see how they hook us, see how they color our perception of reality, see how they aren't all that solid.

During this trip I became raw with pain, had to let go of this vision of a hardcore, six day trip for something different. I must also mention that while I had my phone, it was turned off the entire time, so during an entire day of hiking in the elements, I was forced to deal with what was happening to Maija and I. I also took this time to come to terms with graduating college and moving halfway across the country. How do I be with what is happening, even if it hurts? One thing I know is, I will always be there for me.

If you are interested in seeing our trip as a video summary, check out this amazing video that Maija made! It is also available on my Instagram, @weaving.wolves.and.waterfalls and hers @_maijaann_!!!

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While the backpacking portion of this trip was over, I still had a campsite reservation at Tahquamenon Falls State Park. The plan was to spend a lot of this summer car camping, and had spent the past couple months making upgrades to my set up to prepare, and I wanted to get a few days in. I also wanted to continue to log some big miles even if I wasn't backpacking. The first day I got there, I did a ten mile hike to see the upper and lower falls. Right away, it was incredible to see the difference in bugs being so close to Lake Superior.

That night, I pulled into the River Mouth Campground. I always feel a little weird being at these campgrounds because there are no people my age around--it is mostly just young families with screaming children. It makes me feel even more alone than I already am. But after a week of chaos, traveling home from New Hampshire with my parents and going through hell and back with Maija, the solitude was nice.

Almost immediately I started making dinner outside, something I had been looking forward to for many months. After years of cooking on a backpacking stove a cheap one from Walmart, my new two-burner stove was amazing. In addition, for a graduation present I bought a Yeti cooler off of Facebook Marketplace. These are expensive, but so useful to my quality of life in the outdoors. I am finally able to cook the meals I've only dreamed of in the past!

That night's meal was spaghetti with lentil bolognese. Because my refrigeration space is still limited, I'm experimenting a lot with non-refrigerated proteins, like lentils. But as you can see, I included plenty of vegetables. This meal took awhile to make because the lentils take so long to cook, but it was so worth it.

It felt a little romantic, eating a spaghetti meal by candle light, and maybe it can be, even if I'm alone. It felt so good, after months of intense chemistry thesis work, classes, and working, to finally be able to be by myself in the woods and cook. In that moment I knew that I was exactly where I needed to be. I went to bed that night content.

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The next morning, it was raining, so I cooked my breakfast under my tailgate. While an incense was lit, I made blueberry pancakes, eggs, and tea. I naturally had woken up early and was ready to hit the ground running: I had a big day ahead of me!

My first hike of the day was along the Tahquamenon river, three miles out-and-back along the North Country Trail. It was nice to still be doing parts of the NCT even if Maija and I had bailed. I don't know what else to say besides that this hike felt right. I felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

When I got back to my car, I had a quick lunch at a rest area and spent some time along Lake Superior working on my net. The purpose of this cargo net is to provide additional storage in my small car. I started it in the spring when I was at school, and the two hours I gave myself some weekends to work on my net gave me so much hope for what was ahead. The net was a simple design, just alternating double-knots. Some may hate this tedious process, but I love repetitive things like this. It makes me feel productive while freeing my mind up for other thoughts, or giving me a change to listen to a podcast or call a loved one.

After several hours, I felt recovered enough for my second, ten-mile hike. I (stupidly) went back into swamps, where I hiked fast to avoid the mosquitoes and got drenched by plants overhanging the trail. I was pretty fatigued by the end, and scared of the bugs that awaited me that night.

Thanks, beavers!

I car camped in a spot east of the state park and was tucked in the forest alongside a remote dirt road.

It was remarkably windy, saving me from the bugs. But I instead was tortured by my thoughts. I made a realization that was significant enough to terrify me, but I couldn't do anything about it, include talk to anyone, because there was barely any cellular service. Once again, I was forced to be with my pain, this time very psychological. I am reminded of another quote from When Things Fall Apart: "When it hurts so bad, it's because I'm hanging on so tight." An hope that I'd held on for several of my remaining months in college to help me through the tough times, was falling apart. I invested so much energy into something I couldn't guarantee, and I was paying the price. I knew that more pain laid ahead.

Amidst this turmoil I managed to do some reading, pushups, and cooking, and I look back on that afternoon overall fondly. This may be surprising, but I look back on this entire story fondly, even when Maija and I were suffering immensely. I find it interesting that I'm not able to look back at my college years fondly but I can for my crazy trips; both were stressful and had fun moments, but only the latter felt right.

The next morning I packed up and went home, grateful to have explored new corners of the UP and of myself. I would say I was glad that the pain was over, but I knew it would come back with the ebb and flow of life; it always does.