Month: June 2016

I’ve resolved to once again make the most of the summer here. In Minneapolis you see people extracting as much of the brief season as they can. (I call it a brief season but last year it continued into November).

The park system wins awards year after year. They proffer the visitor with what are essentially large vehicle-exclusion zones. Maybe this is part of what’s pleasant about them. Walkers and cyclists are safe from speeding vehicles and noise and exhaust fumes.

Anyone can bike, jog, walk, swim, wade, sail, fish, kayak or canoe. Every restaurant and cafe makes a patio of as much of the sidewalk as they can get away with.

New neighborhood festivals seem to pop up each year. The elms, despite having been decimated by Dutch elm disease, make green linear cathedrals of the residential streets. The lilacs and crabapple blossoms explode all at once to inaugurate the season. The peonies and mulberries sustain it.

The trails are swimming with walkers and families enjoying the music and movies and beer. Strong, fast bikers and joggers maneuver among them, chasing the workout they crave.

The lakes are surprisingly healthy – I spotted four species of turtles recently in one day. Overhead in a cottonwood tree a tiny vociferous oriole was doing its thing.

Kayaking the chain of lakes is the essence of summer in Minneapolis. You paddle big open Calhoun, nature-y Isles, secluded Cedar, and swampy Brownie Lake. You read your book in the middle of the lake. Once you get back to the boat launch you can enjoy a well-deserved beer at the waterside restaurant, even if they do make you buy some nuts with it because of a liquor law that some nincompoop politicians thought up.

I packed up a much smaller backpack this time and climbed down to a great secluded spot in the metro stretch of the Mississippi. It was dusky when I set out and getting dark very quickly but I had my headlamp.

It had rained recently and the ground was soft. The bank is steeply inclined so having a small pack was very advantageous. After a good deal of clambering I eventually found two suitable trees in the area that I had scoped out before.

I set up my guyline between the two trees. When I tried suspending the hammock I realized the trees were too close together. Fortunately there was another tree nearby at the perfect span. Ultimately because of the slope, the angle of the trees and the third, unneeded tree, it was a complex arrangement. But it worked out great. I tied down the tarp at four corners and was protected from the gentle rain that came down intermittently overnight. I was comfortable and dry the whole time and I enjoyed listening to the rain from inside my cocoon.

I knew i was secure and had privacy. No one could get near without first shining a light on me, then somehow clambering up or down to reach me, then noisily lifting my tarp to see what was underneath. In addition I was confident in my hammock and in the trees, rope and knots.

I wore synthetic athletic pants with no underwear and a polyester tee shirt. I had one square of sleeping pad under my head. As I set up I noticed there were no mosquitoes so I bundled up my hooded synthetic jacket and used it as a pillow. I did not need the bug spray I had bottled up, nor the mosquito netting, nor my hood to suspend the netting over my face. This was good because temperature-wise I was comfy all night and would have been a little warm in the jacket.

I slept well. In the morning I awoke to dusky, cloudy skies at sunrise. I went back to sleep. At around 0710 I got out and packed up. As I packed up I watched crew rowers doing their morning practice on the river. I liked being invisible from the trails and cliffs above and from the river below.

This was a good trial that I fit into a window after work on Friday but before other obligations on Saturday. It cost me nothing. The only thing I got dirty was the bottoms of my shoes, and even those were not bad. I spent the night outside. I saw light come over the river valley in the morning. And I reduced my pack weight and volume quite a bit from the much larger backpack I had used before.

I am building up confidence for longer trips. In camping skills I have no training or mentorship. But I do have diligent research and a good deal of trial-and-error.