Somewhere in the ten miles from the visitor center at Mississippi National River and Recreation Area in St. Paul, Minnesota, across the river to Minneapolis, I crossed an invisible line. It would have risen like a wall of ice, perhaps a mile high, just 15,000 years ago — a line demarcating the extent of the last glaciation. I am following this glacial boundary into and through Wisconsin, where it snakes crookedly northeastward past Wausau, before plummeting due south beyond Madison, and finally hooking east. This line bisecting the state defines the route of the nearly 1,200-mile Ice Age National Scenic Trail, a path marked by ancient glacial pressures and what was left behind along the way.
I jumped state boundaries by crossing the St. Croix River into the tiny river gorge town of St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin. Here, the western terminus of the Ice Age Trail is found at Interstate Park Wisconsin; the friendly rangers at Interstate Park Minnesota will redirect you if you understandably mistake these two adjacent parks for one.
June 1 — the first Saturday in June each year — is National Trails Day. Yet like most trails in the National Trails System, the Ice Age Trail is fractured, splintered, and not always easy to locate. To date, only 660 miles of trail are formally completed, marked by the official triangular trail emblem. Segments are often vaguely linked by tolerant, informal access across private property, or by walking along roadways, following yellow paint blazes on trees or fenceposts.
That’s a lot of trail maintenance. Co-management is crucial. The Ice Age National Scenic Trail, established in 1980, is managed by the National Park Service in partnership with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and the Ice Age Trail Alliance, the Wisconsin citizen group originally founded in 1958 to champion creation of the trail.
At the Ice Age Center in Interstate Park (Wisconsin), I talk to Art and Sandy, friendly gray-haired local staff who point the way to the trailhead. Art recommends the Pothole Trail loop along the rocky bluffs above the river, cliffs known as the Dalles of the St. Croix.
“It’ll let you see how high the river once was here,” he said.
Look about the river corridor and you can find some of the potholes/Barbara Jensen
According to Art, the glacial meltwater pouring forth to form this river developed powerful eddies swirling with underwater debris, strong enough to break pieces of the underlying bedrock free, circling the broken stones around and around with such force that it carved deep holes into the stone riverbed. Potholes. This process simultaneously rounded the stones into smooth, spherical bowling balls called grinders. And sure enough, nearly 100 feet above the river’s flow today, I find multiple potholes carved into the stone beside the path, perfectly rounded wells filled with rainwater.
I peer into their depths, trying to imagine the intensity of those pressures. It’s like trying to comprehend the weight of that mile-high glacier, slowly retreating from this land, leaving behind its signature in the river gorges and rock striations and terminal moraines, the great piles of all it had been carrying.
I feel like an erratic — a nonlocal stone dragged here from elsewhere by the power of the glaciers. The draw is palpable, a fascination to follow this route all the way across the state. But Sandy told me only a handful of people thru-hike the entire Ice Age Trail each year. They’re called Thousand-Milers.
I meet a couple on my way back from the terminus point in the Dalles who explain why so few make it.
“If people think this is what the Ice Age Trail is, they’re in for a surprise,” the man laughs. “There’s stretches where you can be in water up to your knees.”
“That’s why some people do those sections in winter,” the woman smiles. “On snowshoes or skis.”
Part of the trail's beauty can be found at your feet, such as this Lady's Slipper/Barbara Jensen
They tell me the segment around Devil’s Lake is a favorite scenic stretch, with long, peaceful views over the forested hills at the edge of the untouched Driftless Area, the region never reached by the glaciers. Elongated drumlin hills and kettles (holes where glacial ice was trapped and melted, leaving small, deep lakes) are fascinating features in the southern part of the state. “We’ve done about 100 miles so far, section hiking – so only 900 to go!” they tell me.
I stop at Straight Lake State Park a few miles north. Here the Ice Age Trail rambles through mixed deciduous and conifer forest, between Straight Lake and Rainbow Lake. I hop and splash across huge stepping stones spanning the outlet of Straight Lake. The water flows through a stand of cattails, flooding over the lowest stones into a marsh musical with birdsong.
According to the fossils at the Ice Age Center, the original hikers of this glacier trail area were woolly mammoths. Their platter-sized footprints would fit these steppingstones better than my own, though I’m pretty sure this saturated soil would not support their four- to six-ton weight. They are the mascot species for the trail, a mammoth’s likeness adorning the trail markers.
As I wave off a cloud of mosquitoes, I wish I had their thick hide and hair. But the pressures of significant climate change and aggressive human hunting proved to be too much for the woolly mammoth. Their example has me wondering about our own resilience to similarly incessant burdens and concerns.
A day hiker named Daniel offers his insights. Daniel has traveled from the high desert of New Mexico, where he currently lives, to reconnect with friends he made when he lived in Madison.
“I pulled away from them during a particularly stressful period in my life,” he says. “I wanted to know if those relationships are still intact.”
While his friends are at work, he explores the segments around Loew Lake, Holy Hill, and Pike Lake, out-and-back treks near Madison.
“I like that the Ice Age Trail is not a ‘Triple Crown’ member,” he notes, referring to the Pacific Crest, Continental Divide, and Appalachian trails. “Those all follow a chain of mountains. I’m familiar with mountains, with tectonics, and volcanism — but I have very limited knowledge of how glaciation shapes the land and waters. I was surprised by the rolling hills here. Rising and falling through the countryside is a fairly novel hike for someone used to UP UP UP, down down down. The undulating waves…there’s something rhythmic to it.”
I ask how his hike is going, and if it’s been impactful to his expectations and hopes for his trip.
“Since I have no major agenda or deadline, I stop, pause, frequently, to explore an unfamiliar plant, or listen to birdsong. It echoes through the woods; I recorded some of it, to bring home with me. My friends and I live our lives at very different paces,” he observes, “and I’m worried about how to take the next step, that won’t crush me under the churning weight, that pressure that people live with.”
He’s found the Ice Age Trail to be a good reminder to slow down, notice and examine the effects of the relentless pace of the daily grind.
“I like this trail. It’s not hiking along a glacier…but it still meanders along that natural boundary. It reminds you. You explore the debris and the formations left behind. When that massive weight, pressure, recedes, it opens up new opportunities," he says.
“There’s just such abundance! So many different shades of green! Water everywhere," he continues. "I was seeking those signs and sounds of abundance — flowers, birds, frogs, even bugs. So I guess, overall, it’s been invigorating. Watching the world just burst into life, it has motivated me to…do the same. Why make it harder? Change your life, so that you’re in a place where you can burst into life more easily.”
Sturgeon Bay near the eastern end of the trail/Barbara Jensen
Compared to the rocky cliffs, potholes, and grinders of the western terminus, the last three miles to the eastern terminus of the Ice Age Trail are a walk in the park — Potawatomi State Park, overlooking beautiful Sturgeon Bay. Hiking along this edge of Lake Michigan to the calm of Sawyer Harbor the route follows the park’s Hemlock Trail through thick shady groves of its namesake trees. Last year’s fallen hemlock needles make the footing soft, easy going.
The trail ends atop an incredibly steep hill, a former ski run like a vertical wall, a cliff, where mountain bikers now hurl themselves over the edge in what looks to me like a desperate bid for time-limited weekend fun. But maybe that burst of adrenaline as they go rushing over the top is invigorating. Lets them escape the pressures of their workweek. Feels like flying, weightless, free.
Hike your own hike. The Ice Age National Scenic Trail offers a metaphor for considering how we are living, what burdens and fears we drag along with us, the heavy mental and emotional weight we carry, and the potholes we make for ourselves through our own harried swirling, grinding away at the bedrock of our own beautiful lives.
Comments
So that no one is left confused, let me make a correction: the eastern terminus iss at Lake Michigan, not Lake Superior.
Many thanks, Linda. We've adjusted our geography!