Outside Duluth

By Eric Chandler

Outside Duluth will take you on an armchair tour of one of the best regions for outdoor fun in the US. Join Eric Chandler as he takes you cross country skiing, biking, paddling, and running with his family near the head of Lake Superior. Chandler's stories are part essay, part guidebook and all fun. Find out why Outside Magazine named Duluth runner-up for the best adventure hub in the whole world!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eric Chandler
• Release date: Oct 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301173020

Eric Chandler

Eric Chandler has written for Flying Magazine, Silent Sports Magazine, Northern Wilds, Minnesota Flyer, and Lake Country Journal, to name a few. Literary journals like The Talking Stick and Sleetmagazine.com have published his fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. He’s a member of Lake Superior Writers, an Active Member of the Outdoor Writers Association of America, and an Associate Member of the Military Writers Guild.He’s also an Air Force veteran with twenty years of experience flying the F-16. He served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He enjoys cross country ski racing and marathon running. He lives with his wife and two children in Duluth, Minnesota.

Book preview

What Others are Saying about Outside Duluth

If you want to know what it means to live a fully engaged outdoor life in the North, Eric Chandler will show you. Hang on, because you’ll be panting through marathons, pumping up hills on your mountain bike, gliding along cross-country ski trails and riding Lake Superior on a stand-up paddleboard. A family man, an F-16 pilot and an aerobic adventurer, Chandler knows how to play – and write.

-- Sam Cook, Duluth News Tribune outdoors writer

Eric Chandler has a way of making the outdoor experiences he writes about accessible to everyone. He never comes across as an expert, is willing to poke fun at himself and, most importantly, brings his family along on his adventures. He is the epitome of the modern outdoor writer.

-- Shawn Perich, Publisher, Northern Wilds Magazine

Outside Duluth

By

Eric Chandler

Copyright 2013 Eric Chandler

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

1 - Grace from a Monk’s Hood

2 - Follow Your Nose

3 - Minnesota Half Voyageur Trail Marathon

4 - Meditation on Motivation

5 - Working on the Railroad

6 - Virtual Snow

7 - Oberg Mountain Playground

8 - Good Views

9 - Hiking Ely’s Peak

10 - Challenge Accepted

11 - The Old Man

12 - Biking: Silver Creek Cliff

13 - Migrate to Hawk Ridge

14 - Classic Korkki

15 - Chop Wood, Carry Water

16 - Biking: Gitchi Gami Trail

17 - Sailing Through the Portal of Doom

18 - Hiking: Bean and Bear Lakes

19 - Happy to Have Landed in Duluth

20 - Running on Park Point

21 - Green, White, and Blue

22 - Pulling a Pulk

23 - Bolder at Boulder Lake

24 - Why I Serve

25 - Grandma’s Marathon

26 - Biathlon Range Comes Back to Life

27 - The Permanent Rookie

28 - Pedaling the Piedmont Trails

29 - Mud Sweat and Trails: Backwoods Runs in Duluth

30 - Mr. Ferguson’s Legacy: The Lake County Demonstration Forest

31 - Cross Country in the City: Beginner-Friendly Ski Trails in Duluth

32 - Stand Up Paddle Board: Walking on Water

33 - Singletrack Paradise: Duluth Trails Plan Gaining Momentum

34 - Hikes for the Whole Family

35 - Cross Country Kids

36 - Kids and Bikes: The Evolution

37 - In Pursuit of Happiness

38 - Let’s Go Streaking!

39 - Logging the Good Times

40 - Rookie Family Goes Wild

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Dedication

To Shelley

1

Grace from a Monk’s Hood

I had a crummy day at work. So, I parked my truck at the south side of Hartley Park and walked up to the jersey barriers that mark the entrance to the trails. I thought a run would burn the carbon out.

An old man sat on one of the pieces of concrete, hunched over and looking at something in his hand. I thought he needed help. As I got closer, he stood up and walked toward me. He had a friendly, fit face, a baseball cap, and a hearing aid in each ear. His voice was clear when he asked, Are you a wildflower guy?

I was caught off guard and said, I can be, I guess.

He said, This is monkshood. He showed me the cluster of blue and white flowers he held in his hand. I’ve been watching a patch for about four years and it’s doing really well now.

I said, Well, that’s something. Take care, and turned to run into the trees. I’d never seen monkshood before, and I’ve spent a lot of my life outdoors.

There were no other cars at the end of the trail. That man was by himself and maybe he would’ve walked home alone, the sole viewer of those plants, as far as he knew. He took the time to reach out to a stranger and show him some flowers. I wondered if his age gave him a finer appreciation for beauty or he thought things were better when shared.

I thought of the time I drove from Alaska to Alabama when I had a month off in my twenties. I soaked in the Liard River Hot Springs in Canada. Rode my mountain bike above Jasper. Downhill skied at Lake Louise. Saw hanging glaciers near Banff. Learned what a loony was. Backpacked into Glacier National Park. Saw my first black bear. Caught some more spring skiing on the west side of the Grand Teton. Got a speeding ticket in Oklahoma. But, mostly, I remember being alone. It was an awesome month, but I didn’t have somebody to share it with. He’s on to something, I thought.

About a week later, I figured I’d go for a new dose of Hartley Park trail running to purge another bad day. After fifteen minutes of running and an incident with an unleashed good dog, I was truly toxic. I dialed up the pace to try to escape myself and pounded down the trail: overweight, middle-aged, and pissed.

There was a flash of blue and white. I stopped and smiled like a big dope at the patch of monkshood. I was suddenly and involuntarily happy.

Son of gun, I thought. I’m a wildflower guy.

2

Follow Your Nose

I let the tailgate slam down on the old GMC pickup so I can have a seat. Then there's an urge. It usually happens as I pull on my ski boots at the side of a smooth stretch of pavement somewhere. Maybe it's the cooler temperature that triggers it, but I'm compelled to stick the schnozz in the air and take a big old whiff. You can smell it. There is something in the air. Winter's coming.

I reach into the bed of the truck and grab the old rollerskis and get a face-full of scents. Old gasoline, rubber from the spare tire, and the definitely-NOT-new-car smell of a 1986 truck bed. I get a faint breath of the old Bike Nashbar lithium grease I put in the wheel bearings as I clip into the bindings. I take a swig of cold, plastic-flavored water. Gray, bottle-cage aluminum covers the outside; proof of summer bike rides long past.

Then, it's time to clip on the ridiculously obsolete bike helmet. As I do that, the rollerski gloves emit a pungent cloud. They reek of salt and leather. I didn't have much need for the terry cloth backing in the heat, but the cold causes my nose to drip clear like a faucet. Each wipe of the beak with these worn mitts reminds me of the smells of summer mileage.

The best olfactory treat for me is once you start to roll. I spent a lot of time out west where you seemed to get a lot of sickly, sweet sagebrush scent when you were out pretending to ski on a lonely, low-traffic highway. Your throat would get dry and coppery. What a blessing to move to Minnesota. There is absolutely nothing as refreshing as the smell of the boreal forest in the fall.

An overcast gray sky. Maybe some drizzle. Firs, spruce, birch. Green, yellow, red, white, and orange. There is an overwhelmingly cool, brisk, humid musk that fills your senses as you roll down the road. Tons of falling leaves and needles turning into humus. Biomass. It reminds me of training for high school ski season in New Hampshire. Or rollerskiing in Alaska in the strange, low-angle light of mid-day in late summer. The smell of this fragrant, clean rot fills my lungs and anchors me in the here and now, on the verge of winter, even while I remember the past.

Later on, I'll bet people that I can sniff the cold winter air and