"Last night I followed a ski trail into the Lucky Boy Valley. It was dark and still, and the pines and spruces there almost met overhead.  During the day it had snowed, and the festooned trees were vague massed drifts against the stars.  Breathless after my run, I stopped to rest and listen.  In that snow-cushioned place there was no sound, no wind moaning in the branches, no life or movement of any kind."  – Sigurd Olson, "Wilderness Music"






Singing Wilderness

In among the great Sawbill, North Shore and Superior Trails, it doesn't take long to find the kind of remote-feeling snowy wilderness Olson talks about above.  Olson's was a deeper, more wild wilderness up in the Quetico, but for the suburban hiker used to the merging of neighborhood and trail, really only a few hundred yards into a north shore path enlivens the same mystery.

  It turns out I didn't have far to drive to find cross country skiing.  The Superior Hiking Trail 

hits the north shore highway at just about Lutsen proper, only a few miles down the road.  The problem is if you ski it along this stretch, you follow traffic noise as well.  So I turned back around to a cross  

country ski sign I had passed located no more than a quarter mile away from our turn-in to Carribou

Highlands Resort.  There was no name on this trail.  The small parking lot empty and unplowed. The trail itself had been groomed what looked like a couple of days ago though, and the all important two-track had been set, which turned the fresh snow powder to grease for skis.  One hard push off a foot and because the trail was flat, three, four, five feet forward depending.  A few small hills and dips after another and you begin to realize that you're the only one out here besides the phantoms of previously

crossed animals, their tracks shooting to and fro the safety of the inner forest.  When you stop to listen for the scuffling of small feet, or the bob of a limb in the wind, it is an unusual feeling to find the hush of nothing but silent pines. You know that you are no more than a mile from your own resort trail,

and no more than two hours away from dinner,   

but for the moment there is only you and the vague massed drifts against the open sky.