The Second Long NCT Hike - 1995

Everyone seemed to like last night's ancient history post. Since today's news is more snow, I'll just share another early NCT hike.

In 1995, we added my grad school housemate, Mathilda, to our hiking troupe, and decided to check out the western end of the North Country Trail. Prior to that time I'd only driven through North Dakota in the winter, and we had no idea what to expect. Except for the heat, we were delighted!

I'll start at the end. We finished at the western terminus in Lake Sakakawea State Park. There was no lovely sign there at that time, just a small post in the ground.

We were astonished at all the water. I had not previously realized that this was the prairie pothole region and there was lots of water and lots of waterfowl. I've always loved this picture. It just says North Dakota to me. Potholes and headwaters of the Sheyenne River behind us.

We started at the eastern edge of the Lonetree Wildlife Management Area near Harvey, ND, and hiked west. The "Mighty Og" was a privately constructed bit of roadside art that we found hilarious. It's gone now.

I'd love to show you lots of pictures from that hike, but I'll try to limit myself. Almost all the wildflowers were new to me. This is purple prairie clover.

The white pelicans were amazing. They remain one of my favorite birds, although they are so shy I have yet to get a truly decent picture of one.

My scariest night outside, ever, was on that trip as we survived an impressive thunderstorm while completely exposed on a bluff. And we'll never again find ticks problematic. We were covered with them all the time. We had to wipe quantities of them off each other at every stop.

The biggest problem was the relentless heat. It was over 100° many days in a row. If we couldn't find any shade (if we could, it was usually a single tree), we took to setting up our tarp at lunch and taking a snooze. We were super-thankful for the irrigation canal. We continaully wet our shirts and hiked until they dried- under a half hour, and then we did it again. In the evening we swam. It was always there so we had water to filter.

This was the first trip of many where my feet turned to hamburger. It was pretty awful. Mostly I just learned to walk anyway. It took 19 years, and many iterations of attempts to solve this problem, before we figured out that I needed to ditch the boots and use trail runners. The boots kept my feet too hot.

And at the end of these 134 challenging miles, I realized... I wanted to hike the entire NCT.

I had delusions that Chips would be able to do it all with me. Of course, dogs don't live long enough at the rate we were hiking. And his life would be shortened even more. But, to my knowledge, he still hold the record for the canine with the most unique miles on the NCT at about 1200.

Following this hike, I attended my first ever NCTA Conference to see if I wanted to get involved with this organization. Well... I think you know how that turned out.

I edited, did errands, washed dishes, blah blah.

See Allegheny NF- 1994

The First Long NCT Hike - 1994

Hunting up the picture I've used to advertise the Confidence Camp got me looking at some other old hike pictures. That trip was in 1996. The first long hike on the NCT was in 1994. Marie, her son David, and I hiked the 96 miles through the Allegheny National Forest in Pennsylvania. It was our first long backpacking trip and we made most of the rookie mistakes and lived to tell.

We had a blast, even though it rained almost every day, and we were almost constantly soaked. It was puppy Chips' first long hike too, and he loved it.



I was just learning how to use a 35mm SLR camera and most of the pictures from that trip are too dark, and they never did all get digitized. But I'll share a few. Here are Marie and Dave signing us into a trail register... probably our very first of who knows how many. I'm fairly confident of the "first" status because of the Finger Lakes Trail logo on the box. That means it was at the NY/PA state line.

Here Dave and I are resting on a rock with a plaque thanking the Allegheny National Forest by the Allegheny Outdoor Club. Interestingly enough, the trail here has been re-routed and the plaque has been moved although it's still on the trail, although not on this rock.

This is one of my personal favorites because it demonstrates how we spent almost every evening. I, in my hard-headed purist fashion, had declared that we would cook over a fire every night. I hadn't yet even bought a backpacking stove. The rain guaranteed that we had NO dry clothes after the third day. Every night we hung socks and underwear over the fire and roasted them. When pieces more directly over the flames got too hot, we'd move them farther out. A few things got singed, but we didn't actually burn up any briefs. It was worth it to at least start the next day in dry undies.

I can't find a color copy of this photo right now. It's not worth finding the slides and turning on the scanner. You'll have to settle for black and white. I felt on top of the world, and I sort of was! Chips was not about to let me get to a higher space than he was.

Now, you need to take a peek at two of these pictures to notice my hiking stick. This is the stick nicknamed "Chickenspit." It is now one of the curtain rods in my bedroom. See link at the end.

I hope you enjoyed, or at least tolerated, this trip down memory lane. I can hardly believe this was 32 years ago.

You can read lots more about it in North Country Cache, available from me.

I did minimal work today- several projects are in limbo until I get feedback from people. I started a new puzzle and read.

See The Project Done

Redbud in Winter

Just an urban tree ID, but hopefully I've sharpened my skill a little at recognizing this in winter.

Eastern redbud seems to grow this far north as an ornamental, but I haven't found any much farther north than Ann Arbor that are growing naturally. This specimen is an ornamental.

The seed pods are distinctive. I should have peeled one open to show you. I'll do that next time.

The twigs grow in a lazy zig-zag. Not very distinctive here, but you can clearly see that the leaves will be alternate, not opposite. You can also see in this and the next picture that they buds are very rounded, almost egg shaped.

I didn't do a good job of catching the specific things to look for when the uniquely shaped leaves aren't on the tree, or even more obviously, the pink spring flowers. But this picture does show the spots on the twigs- lenticels. And, yes, the Dollar General sign behind it. This is a planted street tree in Scottville.

I did take a picture of the bark, but I'm not even going to share it. I need to go back to this tree and find the characteristic that is distinctive and take a picture of that.

Stay tuned for more about the Eastern redbud, Cercis canadensis, in the future.

I was pretty good today. I worked on a number of things, had a Zoom meeting, started working on my next columns.

See a blooming redbud in Ohio

Delightful Cat Library

I have finished the jigsaw puzzle called "Cat Library." It was just the right level of difficulty and a lot of fun as well. It contains all kinds of subtle jokes that I find charming.

Here it is completed.

But each little shelf of books was an adventure in itself. Some of the books are complete jokes. This one is My Adventures with Alice: a Memoir by Cheshire.

But some of them are real like this one- Old Possums Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Eliot. The poems are the basis of the musical, Cats. This is the real cover. To the right are the complete works of Shakespeare bound individually.

This one is also real: Tournee du Chat Noir. It's a poster for the traveling shadow-play of the late 1800s. Chat noir is black cat in French. On some of the books that are spine out, I can read the titles. I know some are real. I have two volumes of the set of The History of our Country by Ellis, in the same bindings even. You can just see the edge of one of those in dark brown at the right. The redish ones you can see with the Chat Noir poster are Modern Eloquence a set of early 1900s after-dinner speeches. These make me think most of them are real. But the joke titles also make me wonder.

Here's another one for a chuckle. Puss in Boots is retitled Robber Kitten. But I can't quite read the "author."

At any rate, I really enjoyed doing it.

In other news: it was a great blustery, snowy day to curl up with a book and that is mostly what I did. Now I feel both guilty and stiff enough that I should get more things done tomorrow.

See Puzzling Christmas

Confidence Camp

This is today's big news for sure.

First, the photo. This is from 1996 in the Adirondacks. Do I look wet? I was soaked. We (Marie, Mathilda, and I) had hiked (more like crawled) over Lower Wolf Jaw that day in the aftermath of Hurricane Bertha. Marie was beyond miserable, and poor Mathilda was just hanging in there. I got our stove lit and made dinner. It was quite an "interesting" day. I wrote all about it in North Country Cache. This is at our "Falling Waters" campsite!

I used this picture today to promote what I've named Confidence Camp. This is a huge committment on my part, and as it turns out, on Cathy's part too since she has agreed to be my assistant.

I'll be leading a week-long session in May called Confidence Camp. The purpose is to help give participants confidence that if they misplace the trail or lose some important part of their gear, they will have the skills and confidence to find their way back to the trail or to some known feature such as a road, or, if this is not possible, to survive for at least 24 hours, and possibly more if necessary. This is not the course one needs to be turned loose in the wilds for a month with nothing but a knife. This is NOT designed to be a hardcore survival skills workshop.

I've been working on the curriculum since last summer. Marie and I cooked up the idea after reading When You Find My Body, the story of Geraldine Largay who lost her way on the Appalachian Trail and died, only 1/2 mile from the trail.

And today, I pushed the "post" button to promote it on Facebook. Response has been overwhelming.

It will be May 10-16. Contact me if you want the info packet.

In other news: I edited, I did errands and shopped, I went to bell choir, I walked. I may be tired!

Miles walked in 2026: 22

Ludington School Forest, various trails, 2.7 miles

See Electronic Maps Training