We failed.
Or we succeeded with an asterisk.
It all depends on how you look at it.
We walked down a seemingly endless trail until our feet throbbed and our spirits waned. We walked until we started to hallucinate and tree stumps turned into trolls. We walked to the point of near collapse and still couldn’t officially make it.
We were beaten by the land, the hills, the very earth of Manistee County.
The goal was this: hike across the county from Marilla Trailhead to Stronach.
In this, we failed (see tomorrow’s Day Two installment for the details).
But we succeeded in so many other ways that by the end of the ambulatory journey no one cared.
I’ve never tried so stupendously hard at something. My body and mind have never been so pushed to the limits and tested for endurance.
I’m still around to write about it, so I guess I’m OK, though I’ll admit I’m slightly changed by the experience. There is no other way to know the land as intimately as this. You are not a spectator anymore. You’re part of it, moving at its speed.
I feel I’m now more joined with the land around me.
I’m also very tired.
In the end, we logged an estimated 39 miles in three days, most of them while carrying 30 to 40-pound backpacks. From the countyline around M-39 to the big lake down M-55 is approximately 28 miles. This is where the asterisk comes in. Had we walked the side of the road straight across the county, we would have easily made it.
Instead, on Day One, we contended with the hilly bluffs and ridges along the Manistee River valley. On Day Two, it was the heat, the bugs and the Udell Hills. The foe on Day Three was ourselves.
Our exhaustion. Our blisters. Our pains.
But it was all part of the journey.
EMBRACING THE UNKNOWN
The three of us started out with such noble intentions and high aspirations.
These were completely obliterated after Day One.
Before I get to our grueling first hike, let’s go through the cast of characters for this particular adventure.
My brother, Chris, is a construction guy from Detroit. If you ever get to the casinos down there, take a look around at the drywall and acoustical ceilings and it might just be the handiwork of the company he works for as a project manager. He’s the more experienced backpacker, having logged several more trips to Isle Royale than I have. He’s also tackled part of the famed Appalachian Trail.
A few of the trips he’s taken to Isle Royal National Park -- an island completely devoid of cars in Lake Superior -- have been with John Moldovan, his friend from the old neighborhood, Livonia.
I’ll use his last name to avoid any confusion with my own. Throughout our trek, my brother constantly had to say our full names.
“John Moldovan, do you have the water pump? Take down the tent, John Counts.”
That sort of thing. This will make it easier.
Moldovan is currently a PhD candidate in molecular biology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he works in a lab doing stem cell research. Before that, he served for nine years in the Air Force, where he was stationed in Kyrgyzstan, Alaska and Little Rock, Ark.
While he was in the Air Force, Moldovan was a navigator, which means the mapping duties should have been immediately delegated to him.
Since the cross-county trek was my harebrained idea and I was in close proximity to set GPS coordinates, it was left to me, though.
Bad idea.
But I’ll get to that.
The mood was downright jovial when we got to the Marilla Trailhead Saturday morning. The beginning of a journey is always filled with expectations: “What kind of strange, wonderful, scary things will happen to me,” you think.
Our mantra, as we headed toward the Big Manistee River through the woods, was: “embrace the unknown.”
By the end of the day, I was cursing the unknown.
What we thought was going to be about a 14-mile day to Sawdust Hole turned out to be a lot longer.
It would turn out to be the longest hike any of us had ever taken. Eleven hours. Twenty miles.
There was only one way to describe it when we finally did get to Sawdust Hole: epic.
AS THE CROW FLIES
The bluffs drop dramatically down to the mighty river. An eagle soars out of trees and over the water across the valley (we saw three of them). The trees reach heavenward toward a fabulously blue sky.
The Manistee River Trail is truly rugged and beautiful.
Much of the trail seems uphill both ways, but it’s worth it. We made our way across the suspension bridge and followed the river south, where there are fantastic views of the river and some very nice camping spots.
Around 3 p.m, after five hours of walking, we stopped at one of these sites for a rest. We’d run out of water already, so we pumped some from the river with a water filter. Chris pulled out a four-piece fly rod and made a few casts. Moldovan and I took a nap.
We should have stayed there overnight. Instead, after a half hour, we packed back up and ended up walking another five and a half hours.
My main mistake was relying too heavily on the GPS unit, which said it was around 14 miles to Sawdust Hole from Marilla, where we would have to get the first night if we wanted to walk the whole county.
But it was 14 miles ‘as the crow flies,’ not as the actual trail went. My first mistake was assuming that because our destination was listed as 13.5 miles from Marilla on the North Country Trail that it would be roughly similar if we hopped over to the Manistee River Trail.
Around 5 or 6 p.m., it was obvious we weren’t making the kind of progress we had intended.
We were tired and weary, but still had a long way to go.
That’s around when Moldovan told us the story of Lance Sijan.
REMEMBERING LANCE SIJAN
As part of his Air Force training, Moldovan was required to read a book called “Into the Mouth of the Cat: The Story of Lance Sijan, Hero of Vietnam.”
Sijan was a 25-year-old Air Force pilot when his plane went down over Laos in 1967 on his 52nd combat mission. According to the book, he suffered multiple injuries, including a fractured skull and a compound fracture of his left leg. He didn’t have any food or water with him.
He survived for 46 days in the jungle.
He was captured and then escaped after overpowering the enemy.
He died getting pneumonia in his weakened state after being recaptured.
“We have, like, a few more miles to go,” one of us said. “Sijan was in the jungle for 46 days with broken limbs, crawling around on rocks.”
It became our rally cry. Whenever someone started to complain or baby cry, someone would say, “You think Sijan would be bellyaching like that?”
And there was a lot of time to complain.
We hoofed for hours, dogged tired, through the forest. At times our conversation was very animated (and, for the most part, many of the words unprintable in a family newspaper), but by the end of Day One, it was a silent trudge through the forest. We left the river behind us and reconnected with the North Country Trail. Here the woods were a lush, fertile green. The trail seemed interminable.
When you’re quietly hiking in file down a trail, you aren’t looking around you so much as you’re looking at the boots of the guy in front of you. If you’re setting the pace, you mostly look down at the trail.
Then, around mile 18 with nothing but some granola and filtered river water in your gut, the trees start talking to you. The enchanted elves and fairies of the woods come out to greet you and lead you to an imagined land of Barcaloungers, cocktails and steaks. You don’t have thoughts as much as you have short, quick jolts of mental activity that don’t connect.
“Just take another step,” you think. “Take another step. Another step. Step. Step. Step. Step.”
Then, someone says, “This sucks.”
“I’ve got blisters on my blisters already.”
“My hips are killing me.”
“Dude, think about Sijan. He had broken limbs, crawling around in the jungle. Don’t be such a wuss.”
We pushed on and finally got to Sawdust Hole where my old man, who was spotting us with his Jeep on our journey, had been waiting for hours.
We quickly set up camp and ate. No one was up for too much conversation. I slipped into my sleeping bag half-delirious.
There were serious doubts about whether or not we’d be back on the trail the next day.
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