The Freakin' Destination

With their kids grown and careers foundering, a couple undertakes a summer-long hike of the entire Ice Age National Scenic Trail in Wisconsin. Over 1,000 miles in length, the Ice Age Trail showcases perhaps the world's most stunning array of distinctive landforms left behind from the most recent glaciation many millennia ago. The advance and retreat of the ice sheet left behind a hummocky topography, pitted with kettle lakes, and strewn with erratic boulders. A non-geologist might...
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With their kids grown and careers foundering, a couple undertakes a summer-long hike of the entire Ice Age National Scenic Trail in Wisconsin. Over 1,000 miles in length, the Ice Age Trail showcases perhaps the world's most stunning array of distinctive landforms left behind from the most recent glaciation many millennia ago. The advance and retreat of the ice sheet left behind a hummocky topography, pitted with kettle lakes, and strewn with erratic boulders. A non-geologist might rather describe the resulting landscape as "trashed¿ in much the same way as a rock star leaves his hotel room: scarred, broken, utter chaos. Piles of detritus over here, pools of fluids over there." Our novice backpackers expect and welcome the challenges of hiking this rugged, yet often beautiful, landscape of hills, woods, waters, and prairies. Not so much the long stretches of lonely road where the vanishing point fixed on the horizon taunts them like a carrot on a stick. They came prepared for the blisters, muscle aches, and mosquitos. Time and again, however, challenges they never could have anticipated threaten to upend their goal of reaching the elusive destination. Only their faith - and some timely serendipitous gifts - keep them pushing onward.