In May 2017 Dave and I took a road trip around Lake Michigan. We camped for five nights, somehow entirely in Michigan, and saw three Great Lakes and Green Bay in the process. We put 1,000 miles on my 1994 Ford Thunderbird and she performed like the majestic beast of her namesake throughout (minus a loose battery connector and an aging door hinge.) This was both our first big camping trip together and our first overnight backpacking excursion ever. We wanted to strike a balance between a long, unsupported backpacking trip and the security of car camping. It worked out beautifully, honestly.
Dave and I usually try to take a big trip around Memorial Day with just the two of us. We’re both fortunate to have a lot of family and friends spread all over the country, so most vacations end up overlapping with a wedding or a reunion or we wind up running all over while our friends show us their cool city. Don’t get me wrong, that’s all very rad. But the ideal trip is one where we wander into the woods, cell phones are definitely not useful, we can carry everything we need and wildlife is the only thing that can demand our attention. That’s how we came to backpacking.
I grew up directly in the woods. Our house was set at the edge of 100 acres of pristine, second-growth Illinois woodland. I didn’t know until much later that I was growing up in the most beautiful place in the world, but now I live in an urban environment and I realize what I don’t have. Because we lived in the woods we never really went camping as kids. What was the point when I’m already surrounded by the forest all the time anyway? We did have some experience sleeping rough when we loaned the use of our land to the Boy Scouts every year, but mostly camping was not a major part of my childhood.
Fast forward a few years and I’ve been living in Chicago for almost a decade. Urban canyons are cool and all, don’t get me wrong, but there is a real and tangible connection to the earth that I do not have. Day hikes are helpful, but what I really need is a deep immersive experience, and renting a cabin on AirBnB isn’t cutting it anymore. I announced to Dave that we would become backpackers. Confused but amenable, he agreed.
It worked, too. I still try to find a little bit of the natural world in my day-to-day life but I also know that if need be, I can pack everything I need onto my back, wander into the woods and do just fine for a few days. I know that I can have a deep, immersive outdoor experience that will leave me feeling recharged and the mobility that comes along with backpacking allows me to seclude myself from the other campers. Solitude is one of the major reasons to go to nature. Solitude is so important.
That’s how Third Coast Hikes got started, really. I know I am not the only Midwesterner stuck further from the natural world than she would like to be. Out west backpacking is (I understand) a fairly common way of life. Here in the Upper Midwest and across the Great Lakes region, we are limited by winter. Can you go camping when a polar vortex has landed right on top of everything within a 300 mile radius and you won’t see a double digit temperature for two weeks or more? Yeah, probably. But would you enjoy it and is it worth that? For me, it’s a hard pass. I wanted to create a place where I log the day hikes, camping trips, excellent parks and public lands I visit and share them with others. Illinois really is more than flat, vast cornfields as anyone who has visited Starved Rock State Park can tell you. Besides that, the prairies are some of the most beautiful, richest sources of wildlife available in the U.S., so what’s the problem with flat land? If for some reason you associate the outdoors with big water, don’t worry because the Great Lakes are the largest reserves of freshwater available anywhere on this planet. Maybe I’m biased, but the Midwest really is great.
