Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory
Duluth, Minnesota
Trail Hiked: Hawk Ridge
Distance Hiked: 4.31 miles
Elevation Gain: 272 ft.
Duration: 1h 34m
This was not my intended destination for this hike.
Wait, I don’t have those, I’ll rephrase.
I settled for Hawk Ridge because I’d wanted to head north to get some miles on the SHT with fall colors prevalent and summer nuisances, not so much. But, one nuisance that plagues this area from Memorial Day to Labor Day was having a revival tour. Damn. I hadn’t even seen that pop up on my Ticketmaster. I felt left out.
But also, when the 61 was a standstill well short Two Harbors, I joined several others turning around in the median, now considerably less motivated despite my major milestone goal mere single digits from being achieved, and I wanted to do it somewhere special to me.
Instead, I settled for Hawk Ridge. Plenty colorful, decent enough trail, and all the road dust you could ever hope to need an inhaler for.
I feel like I’m giving the place an undeserved bad rap. It’s not wilderness with a vague throughway like Brewer, rather well developed with some great views of Duluth and Gitchee Gumee. It just wasn’t what I wanted that day, so I sleepwalked through it like a New Yorker finally going to the Empire State Building for the first time. “It’s great and all, but I’ve seen it a hundred times.”
All the same, I still hit 2000 miles for the year, and 41 days earlier than last.
It’s hard to go wrong with a park in Duluth, don’t let my malaise convince you otherwise. Sometimes autists gonna autist, it just wasn’t what I wanted for such a milestone.
That said, I couldn’t ask for better fall colors on my camera. We in Minnesota only get them for about 9.87 seconds, so it’s good to appreciate the fleeting moments before they become soggy slippy dippy hazards compiled on hiking boot bottoms like they want to live vicariously through you to become a spontaneous hockey player.
Hey, it’s Minnesota, even the leaves are stereotypes sometimes.
Look, trying to pop the readers with silly hyperbole aside, I’ll say this: it would’ve been really easy to be bitter. Not just this day but the year and change preceding it, and I don’t think people would blame me if I had been. I still have moments, but they’re just as fleeting as the ennui for Hawk Ridge on this hike; when years prior, people would’ve been sick of dealing with its backwash.
I hit 2000 miles 41 days earlier than last year as I said, but that’s just as much a hiking goal as it was personal validation for the work I’d done in therapy and pushing myself to be better… not just as a hiker, but as a person who no longer gets bogged down in sick cycle carousels and lingering resentment.
I’m a year older and I’m not slowing down. I don’t need bitterness as fuel when radiant enthusiasm is a default.
Only one more Proclaimers queue to go for my yearly goal!*
(From that point, I’m significantly closer as of this writing.)
