Minnesota Hiking Club
#47 - Lake Maria State Park
Date Hiked: March 13th, 2025
Other Hikes That Day: Lake Carlos State Park
Wanderloon Ranking System Score: 2.67
As I entered the gates for one of the State Parks closest to the metro area, that was the prevailing thought in my mind. A W-coded park whose brown highway sign on the 94 I’d passed a dozen times on the way to others, left me with only two parks and one more day of this self-imposed one-season challenge deadline to go.
It’s safe to say I wasn’t fully invested in the park itself at this point.
While that had very little to do with the awkward fellow hiker encounters I had during this quick loop, it also reminded me why fitting in the Midwest is difficult as an autistic person. Where I went to university, you never made eye contact with someone walking by. Years of living here taught me that people will verbally greet you whether you look or not, and that’s where the social anxiety of autism meets the pressures of the social contract and putting on the mask of politeness. But, in an odd contradiction of neurotypical expectations, when I forced myself to acknowledge the presence of a passing hiker, each one of them stared through me like I’d flipped them off with the One Ring on my finger. Dammit, if they’re going to insist I play Midwest Hello Verbal Tango Tag, at least don’t make me feel like Queer Isildur when I do!
This is also among the trails that Minnesotans hiking in March downrate because of the mud, as if several layers of tundra hadn’t just occupied the lands for a considerable amount of time. Granted, yes, Lake Maria State Park’s Hiking Club trail was the muddiest I’d found in my speedrun to that point (it would be quickly usurped on the next day finale), but Reviewer Culture would give a hike one star because they got mosquito bites in a state that literally calls itself the Land of 10,000 Lakes… Oh wait, they do that too. What are you expecting? Mud pontoon bridges and Biodome but with mosquito nets instead of glass? Maybe I’m just not online enough to get it, and I’m fine with that, but don’t expect to find an AllTrails review from my account in the desert complaining about heat and sunburn being the trail’s fault.
Just kidding, I’m never going hiking in the desert.
Lake Maria State Park is less than 100 miles away from home, which is why I saved it for a time when I knew I’d be utterly exhausted, and therefore wouldn’t have much farther to go after the trail’s completion. The trail itself, while obscenely muddy at this time, was a mere two miles to quickly knock out. While it doesn’t loop around the namesake lake, the back end breaks through the dense woods for a lovely view. At the trailhead, it looks like they’ve invested a lot in the visitor center and education therein, which helped this hike not feel like an odyssey through a time portal to a frozen dimension.
As someone who grew up in South Jersey I never understood the rule that one must make eye contact
ReplyDeleteFour years of uni in Philly still taught me that one must avoid it.
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