Minnesota State Parks Revisited - Nerstrand-Big Woods State Park

 

Nerstrand-Big Woods State Park

Date Hiked: June 6th, 2025

Trail Hiked: Hidden Falls, Fawn, Hope, Beaver, Maple Big Woods, and Fox Loop 

Distance Hiked: 10.6 miles

Elevation Gain: 830 feet

Duration: 3h 21m

I have previously described the Hiking Club trails as the appetizer for what the rest of the park has to offer. Afton, for instance, had a small loop that teased the prairie, woods, and some of the ridges along the river, only to later unveil longer, more difficult trails with better views that made the Hiking Club trail disappear like mist upon the morning on the lake. 

In this case, the Hiking Club trail is like getting dessert first and then wondering why they're so hesitant to bring you the meal you ordered in the first place. 

Maybe that sounds mean, or harsh, or like I don't want the park to exist anymore, and that'd be fair, given that I don't often extend any level of hostility or negativity toward state parks, especially in this day and age. And I admit the possibility of everything just seeming lonely and cavernous as I felt isolated and distant from everything and everyone no matter what I did could also have been an influence to my experience. 

But while the Hiking Club trail itself was quite good, well-maintained, and traversed the land near the small waterfall with a good quality short hike, going deeper into the woods of the Big and Nerstrand variety only made me feel like either I shouldn't have been there at all, or that nobody else spent much time doing so. 

Granted, this is June in Minnesota. The mosquitos were thick and the humidity thicker. The morning dew is replaced by the sweat of the grass, the trees dripping like they'd just filmed a Gatorade commercial. Cedar: Just Do It. If you're from the Midwest, you know exactly the kind of day I'm describing. If you don't, imagine the woods where you're from. Put them through a rainstorm. Get bit. Feel like spiderwebs are wrapping you up like you're about to get paralyzed and taken to the Cirith Ungol. Throw all your clothes in a swamp then put them back on. Take cold water, heat it up like you're about to make soup, then dip your face in it and try not to overheat. Do all those things, then go try to walk a hiking trail that is spongy, muddy, and mostly is made of tire tracks going through six-inch grass, and that was June 6th revisiting a state park for me that day. 

If you want a hike that's longer than a novice jaunt, I'd suggest staying on the falls trail and doing that five or six times, unless you're really into unkept, deep woods mosquito farms. I'm not saying I dislike the park itself, only that the upkeep and maintenance seems to stick to the initial trail most are likely to traverse upon arrival. While that's not necessarily bad for first visits and just starting out, my mission around this time was to pick the most difficult trail a park had to offer and add that to my verified complete list. I sure got that, at least. 

Minnesota Hiking Club #18 - Nerstrand-Big Woods State Park

 

Minnesota Hiking Club

#18 - Nerstrand-Big Woods State Park

Date Hiked: January 1st, 2025

Other Hikes That Day: Rice Lake State Park, Sakatah Lake State Park

Wanderloon Ranking System Score: 3.92

It was New Year's Day, and I was alone.

We established that in the previous two entries, but it is impossible to talk about this hike without that context. 

I don't care about the World's Biggest Non-Event, but for the previous two years, I had spent that time with my special people. For reasons that are irrelevant to this medium, I was not, and it would've been really easy to be swallowed by that pit. This day is what led to the January 4th trilogy, which as you will likely note, none of those have yet reached this list. And somewhere along the way, I decided to do all of them in a single season. 

But this trilogy of hikes was just a means of not falling into a pit of despair and longing. It became mystical, and though I didn't stop missing my people at all, I found something to do with the energy, and that's the theme of this entire series. This is how I spent the time and energy that came out of being far away from my special people, and a descent into dense woods and frozen waterfalls truly kickstarted the concept. This was, by far, the best of these three. 

All three are within a reasonable range. Before I started going to the one farthest away and working my way back as a concept, Nerstrand-Big Woods was the closest of the three, and I don't think I even decided to do all three when I initially set out. i just wanted a place to be that wasn't in my own head, listening to the sound of water swallowing me and finding it even ironically endearing. 

Nerstrand-Big Woods State Park preserves magical forest in an area of the state where that kind of landscape isn't expected if you don't know where to look for it. I know I tend to be sentimental and a bit flowery with my language with the parks I really like, but this one truly is descending into a New World Fangorn without murder by swallowing or stomping, naturally. The loop shape isn't complicated, looking like a stone giant champion bowler trophy, but its sub-3 mile length is deceiving, for it is not a quick jaunt, especially once ice on the terrain is factored in.

The first notable sight along the trail is the waterfall, and early in the morning on a lonely New Year's Day, it didn't make everything okay, but it allowed me to forget about the gnawing in my soul for a little while. The fog of the latter two trails this day wasn't quite as present, but it gave the woods of the big and Nerstrand variety an even more ethereal feeling than the circumstances of the day already provided. 

This journey was never meant to be some kind of diary, as the people reading this initially are already aware of the emotional context, but this Hiking Club speedrun was never just about completing the hikes themselves either.