Minnesota Hiking Club #19 - Lake Shetek State Park

 

Minnesota Hiking Club

#19 - Lake Shetek State Park

Date Hiked: February 9th, 2025

Other Hikes That Day: Camden State Park

Wanderloon Ranking System Score: 3.58

You know what? I'm happy that Fort Snelling and Lake Shetek are back to back. Yeah, I said it, you can't stop me. It's not just the subjectivity of this ranking system, and how fallible it can be, and how it's entirely dependent on how I was feeling and what I was experiencing at the time, and how even though I prefer trails with distance and elevation gain these two ended up in the highest third of the countdown. On the surface, it makes absolutely no sense. With the rating system the way it is, it shouldn't make any sense. This entire hike took 20 minutes at most because I had to cross a causeway with winds that would've frozen Superman in place at the Fortress of Solitude in order to walk around a flat, tiny island, then get back in my car, hopefully not with any parts of me breaking off and shattering like icicles made of glass for Hollywood effect, and going the hell home while trying to remember why I was doing this to myself on purpose. 

But...

The hike is on Loon Island. 

On a day where I needed a serotonin boost so badly that I could've invented a Zoloft popsicle; on a day where people from Jupiter (Jupitarians? Jupiterese? Jup-Lords? Jupanese? Jujuwhawhats?) would've considered it too intense for a winter vacation; on a day where I visited a snowy place named Camden and didn't immediately remind myself to get a tetanus shot; on a day where nobody had any business doing a Hiking Club trail, I saw that I was hiking on a place called Loon Island, and instantly, everything was a little bit more okay for a while.

Isn't that what all the advertisements tell you that nature is supposed to do? 

Get out in nature, it's an anti-depressant, it's a cleansing of the soul, it's the therapy around you, isn't that what they say? (Take your meds, drink your water, don't stop those to do these things, please.) 

The barren landscape evoked the opening of Fargo, especially season one. The frozen lake surrounding each side of the causeway led me to believe that Mr. Wrench and Mr. Numbers might've had Wish Malvo upside down with a big doofy bandage on his forehead, barely aware that he pissed off the wrong people at a strip club before he went nighty-night in the hidey-hole of icy death. I even made a short video with the Fargo music playing while I did nothing but walk on this causeway because I am nothing if not a referential tramp of the trails. I'd share it, but every time I've tried to share a video, it's been a failure of Don Chumpf proportions. 

This hike is so short, My Adventure Challenge would barely let it qualify toward the 365 patch because it counts for the minimum distance necessary in order to be a valid hike. Nothing about it makes any sense whatsoever. 

But, Loon Island. Game Over. Argument: Invalid.