29/12/2025
Admittedly, I Pressed My Luck: A Misadventure In Hiking
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The first snows of the new-to-me Wisconsin winter have arrived– the ones detailed here technically they fell in late autumn– but with that has come a renewed vigor for cold weather.
I’ve always hated the heat, but honestly I had forgotten what a real winter entails.
During those first few snows, my partner and I tried a couple of the more ”technical” hikes we had mastered in fairer, drier weather, and found that we needed to sort out our “snow feet.”And the rapid-fire successive light coatings of snow told us that we’d better be quick about it.
With that newly acquired knowledge shoved into our hands, we beat a route to the waterfowl preserve just 2 miles down the road from our home– a nice flat affair with no mentionable difficulty.
Again, the snowfall was spectacularly spectacular. I’m talkin’ real winter postcard s**t.
All was well– until we saw the signs redirecting our otherwise delightful winter romp that read, “Winter Hiking & Snowshoe Trails,” complete with arrows directing us away from our previously well-known paths. And the distances were significantly less than those of the meticulously groomed trails set aside for those of the Cross-Country Skiing* community.
I’ve previously held no animosity towards Cross-Country Skiers. In fact, the first day we were still trying to understand the implications of the “Winter Hiking Trails,” we met a very spry 80-something Cross-Country Skier who “Loved seeing you young people out enjoying nature!”
I tried impressing on him that at 45, I wasn’t exactly a youngster that needed an adultier adult to yank a video game controller out of my hands, but with a third of a century on me he wasn’t entirely wrong, so I dropped it.
The reason that we’d met him upon the trail at the point we did was for one simple reason: We had said “F**k those signs” and plowed onward down the trails we knew by hand. And nothing happened.
No pop-up automated gun turrets attached to trailcams to thwart our progress.
This continued for several days, until I did one of my best magic tricks, which is called: “Where the f**k is my v**e?” I did said trick 3 f**king times. In the 6” deep snow. And each time was within 15 mins of the last time I’d dropped it.
Finding it the first two times was enough to make me reconsider my atheism. I now know that it was the universe giving me hope that I could, in fact, find it for a third time.
Spoiler alert: I couldn’t.
I’d previously said that we’d kept to the trails we knew, and which the Cross-Country trails followed. The truth is, after the second time losing the v**e, my partner took an “unmaintained path” that was nevertheless shown on the map, after I had told them to go on without me, and I’d walk the 2 miles home after finding it.
I figured it was a suitable punishment for losing the damned thing as I had.
Finally giving up on the third loss, I raced wheezingly to catch up with my partner who was clearly done with my s**t. I vowed to return the next day and continue my search.
They vowed not to come along, and for the very same reason. I can’t say I blamed them. The next two days I went back and forth and even crossed over to do the trails in the other section of the park.
I now know that I was fighting the onset of Covid the second day. That day something else happened. As I was emerging from one park to cross the road to get to the other, a truck appeared with “County Park Division” or some such official logo on the door.
It pulled forward ten or so feet forward to me as the passenger side window came down.
The driver I didn’t recognize. The passenger I did. It was one of the park employees that we had exchanged pleasantries with many times as we crossed paths while they were doing maintenance rounds.
He kept his eyes locked forward– not once did his eyes drift to me. The driver, however, did that thing where you hang your arm over the steering wheel and lean forward to speak past the passenger.
“Where you headed?” was his proverbial shot across the bow. I had no legal obligation to answer him– you don’t even need to answer that question if a LEO were to ask you. Still, I wasn’t quite feeling a fighting mood– again, I was unknowingly fighting Covid– but regardless, I didn’t answer verbally. I answered by pointing to the parking lot for the other part of the park.
“Ok, well you’re not on the winter hiking trail– you’re on the Cross-Country trail.”
“I wasn’t walking on the surface, I stuck to the ungroomed margins,” was my response in a feeble attempt to absolve myself of the transgression.
He shook his head in the gesture universally understood to be “NOPE,” while pointing at my feet. Sonuvabitch– he had me on a technicality. You see, where the trail crosses the road there’s a culvert with a ditch to either side.
Said culvert is just wide enough to accommodate the ski trail grooming equipment so it can cross the street and continue grooming the other side. There are no margins there, in other words. I began to repeat my assertion that I wasn’t on the trail anywhere but where my feet were currently– and guiltily– planted.
He cut me off before I finished my first word. “There’s winter hiking trails open over there,” he said pointing to the parking lot I was headed towards. I gave the quick chin up gesture that wordlessly registered I’d gotten the message.
They pulled off slowly, undoubtedly making sure I stayed on target.
I, of course, was wholly embarrassed. I’m normally one to stick to the rules when it comes to interactions with nature– it’s the one space in life where I can say I do so with regularity. Clearly this was not one of those times. I hurriedly did the short path on that side and called for a ride the two miles back home, as again, I was unknowingly fighting Covid and was absolutely deflated physically and mentally.
You see, the long winter hiking path on that side is roughly the same length as the short one on the other side. And he didn’t say “There’s designated winter trails throughout the park,” he clearly said “There are designated winter trails on THAT side.”
The next day I spent in bed fighting the ‘vid, which gave me a lot of time to think. I mulled over all the reasons why hikers were relegated to newly minted, much shorter trails, whilst the Cross-Country Skiers had free-reign
If it were environmental concerns, surely a footfall is less impactful than the few hundred pound roller they pulled with a many hundred-pound tractor to groom the trail. If it were environmental as-in: “People trudging through the majority of the preserve will disrupt the wildlife,” surely the skiers and tractor would be more impactful.
If it were the fact that they rent skis for those who don’t already have them, which may bring in a good amount of revenue, then what of the snowshoes they also rent and the users of which have to keep on the hiking trails?
I finally settled on the answer “Hikers would gouge the ski trails making it harder for them to groom.” This was unsatisfactory though as they groom the trails several times a day, the hiking paths cross the ski trails– and the ski trails roads– and aren’t snowshoes meant to keep you from going through the surface of the snow?
None of it made any sense, and for my neurodivergent ass to land on what essentially equates to “Because I said so,” is really out-of-character for me. I vowed to stop in the office the next time I was there and ask– respectively– and with the explicitly stated goal of my questioning was not me being granted access where others weren’t. I simply wanted an answer to my question: “Why?”
For a few days– after I had physically recovered– I stuck to the other side. I even got dropped off at the larger park much further away, as I was still embarrassed and not ready to make a move yet.
My partner finally made their recovery from the Covid a week or so later, and they wanted to start out easier than the more technical trails further afield offered, so we headed back to the preserve– and back to the side I had been cautioned against.
At the trailhead they have a visitor center with well maintained bathrooms, filtered water and a really nice collection of natural and human history specimens that we always start off at. Inside the large meeting hall was the employee that we’d exchanged the many pleasantries with. He was down at the far end, and if I had to hazard a guess, he wasn’t looking in my direction intentionally.
“Pardon,” I called out. “Yep,” “Yeah,” or “Hello” was their response, though not important. Enough time had passed that I wasn’t thoroughly embarrassed any longer– and I had noticed that the ski trail sign said “Ski Trails Closed,” on the way in, so I went for a different tack.
“I noticed the ski trails are closed, are they open to hiking?”
“Nope. If you can stick to the winter hiking trail that’d be great.”
“Yep, just making sure, thanks!” I replied. He followed with a “Thanks” in turn.
And so we made our way around the longer of the two winter paths and ended up back at the visitor center– we always do to fill our bottles with the filtered, chilled and wet goodness offered.
Inside was the employee we had exchanged the pleasantries with. “You see anything on the winter trail that needs attention?” he asked as he followed us out of the main entrance.
This was when I knew everything was right in my little universe again. You see, very early in what was to become our morning hike ritual, we had noticed a deep divot in the last mile of the longest path that I had turned my ankle in a few times. One day we were feelin’ chipper, so we constructed what was a very obvious “structure” over said divot, with “Please Fix!” scratched into the dirt with a twig.
The next time we saw him, he stopped and asked us if we were the ones who did such, and we happily replied “Yup!”
His response of “We thought it was probably you two!” was said through an ear to ear smile. It’s just one of those things that I– and my partner apparently– engage in. It’s fun, it helps build rapport with the fine folks who care for our public lands and resources, and whom I feel are some of the most important and least acknowledged of all public employees.
A couple things to add since this has happened over roughly the course of the last month or so and I’ve been writing this as it developed:
First, I have not gone back to look for my v**e– which, with an approaching large storm bearing down on us as I type– today was likely the last day to do so in a while as most of the snow cover was gone.
It’s essentially a littered lithium battery cell sitting out in a wildlife preserve– and that doesn’t sit well with me at all.
Second, the ONLY reason I didn’t do so today, was that only yesterday I saw the gentleman that cautioned me about staying on the trail, and who I now believe to be the site director, and I saw him as he was showing a family where exactly the winter trail starts and ends– it was as if it was pre-ordained, much like I believe our first interaction truly was.
Well, I saw him showing them the beginning, because I had done something yesterday that I had only done once before– taken the shorter trail. I did so because I already put 1.5 miles in at another site, then did the longer trail there and decided to finish my day with the shorter one.
Apparently I misread the signage and ended up walking the last 50 yards or so from the last sign to the visitor center on the BEGINNING OF THE GOTDAMN CROSS COUNTRY SKIING TRAIL.
He said something to the family that sounded like “But as you can see, people have been coming through there, so it’s basically shot anyway.” As he turned away from them and headed toward the office, he turned and locked eyes with me as he was mid-step. He did one of those “stutter of the knee as it reaches its zenith” steps and continued walking, clearly noticing who I was, but not wanting to discuss it further with me.
I will be sure to not make any of my previous mistakes there so as to not be banned from the place entirely.
And one of those mistakes is going to be a lot harder to make. You can see in the photo what the solution to my magic trick is. It’s a solution that my partners– yes, plural partners– had been suggesting for quite some time now, as they’re both absof**kinglutely done with seeing that trick.
* the capitalization of “Cross Country Skiing” is not a stylistic decision– rather, it is a decision based on fear– fear that the Cross Country Skiers will beat down the door for not giving them their due respect
