Hiking is a way of life for me

Hiking is a way of life for me

In my lifetime of living in the woods and water country of north Wisconsin, I have had several things become deeply ingrained and embedded in my body and soul.

I was born in 1949, when many people who lived in Vilas County and the surrounding northern areas scraped by financially, the best they could.

For many of those residents, often both men and women of the family, it meant doing whatever had to be done in order to feed, clothe and house themselves.

That meant most, but not all, residents of this neck of the woods we call home cut their own firewood, picked blackberries, blueberries, raspberries and various wild cherries, fished and hunted, all in an effort to keep themselves fed.

Hunting and fishing, especially, were not just moments of recreation and relaxation. For many of the old-timers — and I mean the true old-timers who came here long before I was born — those activities, while considered recreation, were necessary jobs needed to keep a family fed.

It was still that way to an extent when I grew into my teenage years. Many of my peers and I picked berries, helped cut wood, caught fish, and, hopefully, in most seasons, brought home some ducks, partridges, and a deer to put in the freezer.

Thankfully, it wasn’t considered a job to hunt or fish or pick berries. If it had been, you undoubtedly would have found me shirking my duties one way or the other whenever I could.

Instead, I grew into all my years since then, truly grateful that I learned to do those things early and am still able to do them as I approach the age of 77.

One thing I did while growing up was to enjoy more and more every day of my life, the freedom to walk and hike practically anywhere and everywhere I chose in the woods of the Northern Highland State Forest.

Today, I still treasure my walking and hiking time as much as anything else I do in the outdoors.

Along with cross-country skiing in the winter, I can’t think of many other things I’d rather do. Following a winter in which I skied a little over 200 miles, as it adds up in my daily skiing log, I have continued to use my legs this spring and early summer to carry me to many favored spots in the woods in which I grew up.

Before the snow went away, I hiked any plowed backroads I could find, all longstanding friends of mine. Once the snow melted away, as has been the case every year for a long time, my choices for hikes expanded to practically anywhere I might choose to go.

I try to walk at least four or five times a week, usually for a couple of miles, though sometimes I get carried away and find myself sagging a little while completing a woods hike of four or five miles.

The thing is, I walk, not just because I can, but because it allows me to see some great pieces of the outdoors close-up and personal, like the ermine turned its summer brown I ran into the other day, or a doe and her two fawns that put my heart into my throat another day when they spooked from behind a balsam thicket not 15 yards from me.

I know I’m not going to catch a fish, shoot a duck or bring home anything edible to the table when I hike. Just seeing all that Ma Nature has to show is enough to make my day.

Sometimes I find myself daydreaming about the early explorers who first set foot on this country we now call North Wisconsin, and the Native Americans they encountered.

They found a land rich in timber, fish and wild game. They found lakes by the thousands, small creeks and even the headwaters of the Wisconsin River.

An enjoyable hike up and down wooded hills, along cricks — I still don’t call them creeks — sniffing the pleasing scent of balsam fir, encountering today’s residents of the woods like chipmunks, porcupines, coyotes, wolves, game birds, deer and bears, all of which I have had close-up meetings with, get me daydreaming of what this north country of ours looked like way back when.

Sometimes, a thing as simple as a rainbow arcing over an open valley just after a rain can be the highlight of a hike through the woods.

Seeing a long-rotting tree gouged into pieces by pileated woodpeckers is a treasure of a find, while the same could be said of finding a tiny hummingbird nest in a thick shrub.

Slow and quiet; that is my way of going through the woods, and I venture to say that in a mile of hiking, I see and hear more of the north country than all the people in the country zooming by at 55 mph or more put together see or hear.

It is a pleasure, a gift and a privilege to be able to do it any day and any time I choose. Think I’ll go do a little hike right now.