National and state parks: A place to unplug
There was no ranger station. No familiar brown sign pointing the way from
the highway, heck, it isn’t even on most maps yet! But it was there, as it always had been.
A beautiful forest-lined lake sitting in the
middle of northwestern Wisconsin farm country. An island of northwoods ecosystem just sitting there, undisturbed, yet
it had been vulnerable to become just another lake with roads cutting through
its forest and its shore lined with cabins.
But that threat was eliminated in 2002 when the state of Wisconsin made Straight Lake and 2,780 acres surrounding it, the state’s newest state park.
When my boys and I visited Straight
Lake State Park last week, we found that not much had happened during the
decade since. The only signs at the trailhead
touted it as a segment of the Ice Age Trail (a nearly 1,200-mile National
Scenic Trail that traces the terminus of the last ice age) Of course, that’s all by design.
The plan is to leave Straight Lake relatively undisturbed, In fact, the master plan, approved in 2009, is pretty simple. Straight Lake will give visitors a remote experience, quite different from most parks in Wisconsin. There will be a few walk-to and paddle-to campsites but no big drive-in campground. The sound of motors will be largely silent at Straight Lake.
We didn’t do a lot of exploring during our short visit to Straight Lake, but what we saw was very nice. There were a couple of huge boulders, known as glacial erratic, to climb on as we hiked through a forest of mostly pine and maple.
We quickly came upon Straight Lake itself, one of two lakes in the park. It was a pretty lake, with a small wooded island in the middle giving it some character. As I hiked, I thought of the new Lake Vermilion State Park near my home and how great it is that new parks are still being created in this day and age!
National and state
parks are created with the idea to preserve many of our natural wonders. They also give citizens access to nature - a
place to “unplug.” Not just some people,
ALL.
We are protecting these places, the plants, animals, geology, waterways, etc, both from ourselves and for ourselv
es. It is truly a wonderful
concept. When I was a kid, my parents
took my sister and me camping and hiking at many state parks in Wisconsin. I marveled at the high waterfalls at
Pattison, the rushing current at Amnicon Falls, climbed above the St Croix at
Interstate.
During my college years, I
spent more time in Minnesota’s parks along the north shore of Lake Superior,
exploring them and the Superior Hiking Trail which runs through eight of the
parks. Then with my own kids, I joined
the Minnesota State Park Hiking Club and in five years hiked every park in the
state.
Through these adventures, I have gained a tremendous amount of love and respect for our park system. My goal in writing this column is to inspire you, the reader to get out and explore these places for yourself. I firmly believe that the more time people spend in nature the more they will want to protect it. Then, hopefully, we will be able to keep up the momentum and create even MORE parks!
I’ll end here because my boys and I are heading-out out right now to spend the week hiking and camping on the shore! We need to unplug ourselves for a week!
See you on the trail!
In : State Parks
Tags: "minnesota north outdoors" state park national northwoods wisconsin "straight lake state park" trailhead hiking hike lake camping "lake vermilion" pine maple pattison "amnicon falls" st. croix virginia hibbing chisholm kids zach johns
Zach Johns is an alpine skier, backpacker, paddler and all-around nature lover who lives on Minnesota‘s Iron Range. Originally from Osceola, Wis., Johns attended the University of Minnesota-Duluth so he could ski every day and be close to the trails of his beloved North Shore. There, he earned a degree in Communication and was editor of the student newspaper. However, the real education he gained at UMD was in honing his outdoor skills. He took courses in subjects such as backpacking, winter camping, rock climbing and canoe tripping. By the time he graduated, that was all he wanted to do. In January of 1997, he moved to the Range where he met a group of die-hard skiers dedicated to making turns at Giants Ridge every single day of the winter (when they weren’t out skiing the big mountains of the west.) Throughout the late nineties he built a very impressive ski resume, taking several trips to Utah, Montana, Wyoming, California, British Columbia and Alaska. During the off-season, he took to the hiking trails. In 1997, he hiked the entire Superior Hiking Trail during the single season (what had been completed until that time) and in following years, took trips to Yosemite, Glacier and the Grand Canyon. He also made two attempts to climb King’s Peak, the highest mountain in Utah, but failed to summit both times. In 1999, he attempted the infamous 43-mile Kekekabic Trail through the heart of the BWCA and limped out after only ten miles with a hernia. He did finally complete the Kek in 2005, during one of the hottest weeks on record. Besides hiking, he also continued dabbling with paddling, making several canoe trips to the BWCA and became an enthusiastic (yet very novice) whitewater kayaker. He is now a father of two sons, Nick and Jackson, who accompany their father on nearly all his adventures. Both were skiing fairly soon after they could stand and from 2006-2011, the three hiked in every state park in Minnesota, 195 miles of hiking in 65 parks. Since becoming a dad, Johns has suddenly realized that you can’t just be out there skiing, hiking, paddling, etc. without also working to protect the very things you love. With that in mind, he founded an adventure club at work to get co-workers outside who might not otherwise be inspired to go. The club has gone on hiking, paddling, winter camping and cycling trips and annually go on a trash pick-up hike to celebrate Earth Day. He believes that once you get people out into beautiful wild places, the more likely they will be to protect them. He has also done a lot of volunteer work for the Superior Hiking Trail Association including adopting a backcountry campsite which he and the boys maintain twice a year. It is of extreme importance, he believes, to introduce children to the outdoors early. Not only is it good for them, but they will be the ones protecting these places once we are gone. Future plans? There are a few local goals to check-off including hiking the Border Route Trail in the BWCA and Isle Royale. Mostly, it’s just to take the boys hiking and camping in more of our national parks, skiing the big western mountains, and more of their usual seasonal cycle: Giants Ridge in the winter, Superior’s North Shore in the spring, South Shore in the summer and back to the North Shore in the fall.
