dia 5

my sunrise

what the site looked like


what the site looked like under the circumstances



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i'll admit, i was pretty grumpy in the morning. I remember telling myself "fuck this i'm done. im going home". this was not to be exactly. i waited for the sun to come up so that i could have bragging rights. I watched the sun come up over lake superior after having slept on a hill overlooking it for free.
i got all of that except for what is generally considered a sunrise-viewing. the sun rose, yes, but all I saw was the sky get brighter and brighter. in fact, I dont think i saw the actual sun until a few hours later.
Eventually I had determined that i achieved what i went there to do and decided it was time to break camp and head back. before this, however, i decided it was best to dry my stuff out. i brought my stuff down the hill being careful both not to be seen and not to fall. i brought my belongings to a park bench and hung up the wet stuff on my bike and bench and bungee cords attaching them two.
I'm not sure exactly how camouflaged my place of sleep was since i had accumulated ALOT of mud on my shoes. so much, in fact, that there was at least an inch of mud protruding from all sides of my shoes. like my shoes were wearing mudshoes. i left a trail of muddy footprints everywhere i went, so it was very obviously me who walked down from the hill to the park bench and back several times. at this point i did not care.

it was not very good drying weather so i sat there for a little while as i ate a small meal of bread and peanut butter and when i had decided it was time to go i packed up and headed on my way.



I stopped at a small mom-and-pop diner where i discovered they would only take cash, and being hungry i ordered the cheapest thing on the menu since i diddnt have enough cash for more and it was a cash only place.
I headed to the munger trail with the scant nutrition i had but i was determined to make it from duluth back to minneapolis in one day. i was considerably grumpy.
the munger trail, like the gandy dancer trail, is a bike/walking "trail" that is a paved-over repurposed rail bed. the first few miles out of duluth on the aforementioned trail are all uphill which is great for a crabby attitude. as crabby and grumpy as I was, the scenery was absolutely beautiful. I would have stopped to take pictures but it was raining. so i diddnt.
at one point you reach a manmade valley between cliffs perhaps 50-75 feet high. easily bringing to mind trains snaking through hillsides in locations where it would be easier to carve through the rock than to build over it. once again, very picture-worthy, but not exactly possible under the circumstances.
there are areas of the trail where there are huge drops on either side of the trail. the trees are really tall, but next to the trail they give the illusion of everything being level with the trail.
the trail began to get wavy. by wavy i mean hills and valleys. pedal pedal pedal, then coast coast coast. at one point in this up and down interval I had something happen which had only happened once before.
I had just finished climbing a particularly steep hill and was ready for the valley. the valley was deceptively steep and at the bottom made a sudden turn. Getting to the top i was considerably tired and was extremely ready to coast down for a bit, as i said before. As the bike gained speed i was relieved of the pain of being insufficiently nourished as i grinded on and on. the morning air was wet and somewhat chilly, but the sweat and heat i had produced as a result of the climb made me uncomfortable in my rain shell. the wind on this descent changed that. the flora was especially green this morning and i remembered that the human eye can see more shades and hues and variations of the color green than any other color. i felt and still feel that this is meaningful in some way. as i coasted down the hill i accumulated a considerable ammount of speed partly due to the incline, and partly due to my load. i was going faster than felt comfortable yet i was already at the bottom of the hill at the trun. the wet ground concealed the gravel and sand at the bottom of the hill and this was the cause of my demise. I suddenly knew i had to hit the brakes before things went exceptionally bad yet when i hit my back brakes before i vit the sand, i unkowingly was already on said sand, and back wheel slipped out from under me. things happened so fast but Im pretty sure that what happened was that tried to keep myself upright but the back part of my bike hit a boulder on the side of the trail where I otherwise would have plummeted down the precipice. there was a magnificent explosion of camping equipment, food supplies and bicycle parts. I held on to my handlebars for dear life as i flew through the trees down and down. the bike's weight was what tore it away from me and as i tumbled through branches and leaves i remember seeing the cloud of my belongings spreading over the forest as i plummeted through the foliage.
all of a sudden everything went black. i woke up in a small clearing. i lay on my side in a seeming puddle of ferns. i felt nothing. i knew i must have been in shock, because i would most likely be in excrutiating pain, judging my the awkward angle my arm lay due to its etxra bend and the fact i was lying in a small, sticky pool of what must have been my own blood. of course, whose else could it be?
i remember thinking about the trail and how i was the only person i had seen on it all day. it wasnt quite midday yet, but how long would it take for someone to find me? I was so far down and my crash was such that i wasnt even sure that there would be debris indicating that someone had gone over the edge. I thought about my parents and my family and my friends who would not hear about my untimely {according to who,me?} demise until maybe a few days later.
on the other hand, i was glad to be fading in this otherwise beautiful spot. the sun's rays magnificently lighted what i had described as the pool of ferns. every time the wind came through it would create ripples along the tops of these short, prehistoric plants. i remember reading about how ferns were around before even the first dinosaurs. these ferns probably have seen much larger creatures such as mastodons and t-rexes meet their demise, and were as responsive to them as they were to me. not at all. in fact they might have been mouring their fellows who got crushed under the animals that landed on top of them. i was not worried, however since they were glad to see me, a future source of soil nutrients. soon them and myself would be one with everything else, and my concept of "me" would disappear, along with the concept of concepts, confusion and everything else humans use to think of ourselves as special.
i watched the dew drip from the leaves drip from hundreds of feet up, reflecting the sun's light waves (or particles dpenending on who you ask) creating small rainbows before splashing down on the leaves of the ferns which embraced me. i would fade in and out of consciousness and everytime i woke up the sun would be further along its path. as the sun began to set, and mosquitoes made their way out to go about their buisness, pollinating [mosquitoes are huge pollinators, they only get a bad rap from egg-laying females who have to drink blood in order to lay their eggs and as such are hated and misunderstood by people] and flying about their buisness. my glasses were broken and as such i could only faintly make out the silouette of what looked like a human form coming at me from the woods.
as the form got closer i made out a feminine form. her color was an earthy, burnt umber. not really a color i have ever seen on a human being before. her hair could probably be best described as long dreadlocks, reaching the ground, but in reality they looked more like vines, or the branches of a willow tree, somewhat melancholy, yet comforting at the same time. she wore no clothes, but did not bare a resemblance of human nudity. in fact, she looked more like she was wearing a form-fitting tubetop & skirt outfit made of slick mud.
she reached down and whispered something in a language unlike anything i had ever heard before. it sounded like waves lapping a gentle stream, leaves falling in autumn and crickets in the middle of the night. i thought again of my family and friends still alive, but thought also of those who had passed before me who I, as a human being, would never see in human form again. briefly a sadness overtook me, but she made me realise that this too, would pass, and that eventually I would see all my friends and family again, and we would all be one in a sense which only some could presently comprehend, but no one could totally understand until they were there.
she unwrapped a small bundle of leaves releasing an aroma which smelled of rotting flesh in a greenhouse full of blooming, pungent flowers.






I stopped in carlton under a picnic area to really do a good job of drying my stuff out from the night before. I took this opportunity to map out my day. i think that it was by this point i realised i wouldnt be able to make it all the way to minneapolis in one day and I proceded to find a suitable destination for the night. I followed the trail southward looking at all the state parks on the way and it was at some point that I found the "Daughters of the American Revolution State Forest". This had to be where I was to spend the night. I plotted out my course and headed on my way. I turned off the munger trail and headed to Bruno, Minnesota where I would then turn and head the last five or so miles to my night's destination.
5-mile incline!



jay cooke state park



fellow trail-goers

A note to people planning a trip down the munger trail. MOOSE LAKE IS FREAKING CONFUSING. i took me the better part of an hour to find my way back to the trail. when you are headed southbound, whe you see a sign that says "get back on trail a mile south on industrial blvd" dont pay attention to that crap. follow the bike path adjacent to the SOO line trail until it hooks back up to the munger trail. nobody I asked in town seemed to know where the hell industrial blvd is.




on my way there I passes a small brown sign that said something like "Military Road". it had more wording underneath, but by this time the shadows were getting longer and I was getting close to crunch time If i was going to register and set up camp at the Daughters of the American Revolution State Forest. more on the road later.
I made it to Bruno whose "downtown" consisted of a bar on one side of the railroad tracks, and a general store and an unlabeled building next to it. I stopped in at the bar to inquire about the state forest and to my surprise, nobody knew much of anything about it.
"maybe he's talking about that small plaque a few miles down te road from here, you know, where you can turn around? the place with the rocks?"
"oh you mean where everybody goes to piss?"
not a good sign. the Daughters of the American Revolution were beggining to make me question my own sanity. apparently not only was there nothing there, but nobody had ever even heard about it. I dont remember how it came up, but the rest area that was suggested to me, about a block away was determined to be a good place for me to set up camp. so I did so.
i returned to the bar where i got some dinner and did some chatting with the patrons. apparently ben, the backyard mechanic had good rates for his services, but was highly unreliable. just so you know. Back to military roads. Now, i couldnt find any information on this topic on my brief search of google search results, but apparently these military roads were built during the cold war in case the interstates were bombed out, the military would have direct access anywhere in the country using these out-of-the-way roads. i was hoping for something more exciting because I contemplated just making my way onto one of these roads and dilly-dallying about until i got arrested and thrown into solitary confinement being accused of usurping the american military might with my jars of peanut butter and tent stakes. such would not be the case. oh well.
Bruno Minnesota, a small drinking village with a fishing and hunting problem, as boasted by the t-shirts sold in the bar, was the birthplace of the first person to officially reach the north pole by way of snowmobile.