Nurnberg Trailhead, Early Summer
Friday • April 12th 2024 • 11:55:30 pm
Above all, don’t forget your narrated books, bring solar panels and extra devices and batteries.
The car is loud, dirty and exhausting, the worst home the lonesome you will ever have.
Ride it to the end of Highway 31, turn right on 10, and left onto N Stiles Rd.
Continue on Stiles to the end, turn right onto W. Towline Rd.
And after a moment, left onto N. Quaterline Road.
Quaterline will take you over to Nurnberg, it will be on your left.
Keep going forward, until the end at Nordhouse Dunes Wilderness Area.
Getting your backpack out of the car, is the final chore.
Once you take a couple of steps, you hit the dog mode.
You get happy feet, from the gravel.
Once you are out of the parkinglot, your first step onto woodland soil.
Will feel like, walking on pillows.
Most of your worries stay behind you, and you never find them again.
Your backpack is the best home, the lonesome you will ever have.
All the woodland creatures understand you, by your labored motion.
A lethargy born from the abuse, of your rat race.
In as far as they look, they see a hurt friend.
They will welcome you, personally.
If you brought enough bug spray, to quietly rest on one of the logs.
Chipmunks will come, to sing you their swift little songs.
There is a ridiculously small hill, but if it is your first time.
You won’t make it all the way up, you see the others, resting half way, sometimes.
We are creatures of comfort and endurance, but comfort is death.
When you enter a low-go, sedimentary lifestyle.
Your body begins shutting down, while bathing you in incredible comfort.
Couch and TV, become a drug when you are dying.
And food, food will never taste that good, even if you survive.
To try to give you an ounce of quack science, it begins when your endurance drops to zero.
And it takes 30 to 50 years, though it feels like nothing.
You can interrupt it, by calling upon your superpower of endurance.
You will slowly return to normal, so as long as you continue gaining endurance.
The people half way up the hill, you can see their backpack prints…
They had no endurance, just courage, heart, raw human magnificence.
Resuming the walk up the second half of the little hill, is even worse.
The sand keeps sliding, it feels like you are barely making any progress.
The backpack is heavy, but you already interrupted the sedimentary death.
Your endurance is bubbling up, and your body, begins resuming living.
The chipmunks can see how you can get so sick, you can push like this towards bad things too.
But that is no endurance art, that is just being a cog in somebody else’s clockwork.
It will feel like it is raining up on the hill, air will be heavy – keep walking.
Now you are inside a tiny wildness, the deer here are Royalty.
The old porcupines and wise raccoons, own these woods – you are a guest.
They may pay yo a visit, the deer come ion the evening.
The old porcupines, watch you at noon.
You will never see the raccoons, those are no garbage pandas.
They only come, to say goodbye.
Stay on the main trail, there are no shortcuts in the woods, be respectful
The opening you encounter, is the domain of the insects and frogs.
Keep going, take the left at the large fork.
if you travel forward, you enter the kingdoms, the castles.
Areas so magnificent, that it is almost too much to camp there.
The sharp hills the trail takes you around, are ancient dunes, now part of the forest.
Watch the sand, it will start getting lighter.
And then if you are not careful, you will be struck by the sunny dunes.
The Beaches; there is no describing, the beaches of nordhouse dunes.
But in your enchantment, the woods will consume the rest of your worries.
You will become a cast away, the kids that grew up in these parts won’t understand you.
Go left for isolation, or right for your kingdoms and castles.
Stay two months, drive home, and come back a month later for a warm Autumn.
Listen to your books all the time, inherit the culture of great beings…
Don’t go back, don’t, go, back, don’t… go… back… it is only forward from here.
You are charged with growing all the way up, until you become a great being, go forward only.