MIRROR, MIRROR…

Sit and be still until in the time of no rain you hear...a stream unheard before and you are where breathing is prayer.

As we transition from autumn to winter, many of us sense a changing of the guard from boats to boots, swapping our paddles for ski poles. Vigilant as always, we cast our eyes on the sky, whether that’s wishing for rain to make a river sing or hoping for snow to seize the day on skis. We’re moon-eyed romantics and gamblers both, hitching our happiness on atmospheric conditions beyond our control – increasingly less predictable and more volatile in the wake of climate change. December begins with the darkest nights but ends on the brightest note of hope for better times ahead. And while the holidays can be crazy making as we miss the meaning by frantically shopping, cooking, baking, decorating, and waylaid in travel delays, the physical earth offers calming solace in its fixed cycle from equinox to solstice.

Most of Wisconsin’s state parks and forests inspire year-round recreation from camping and rock-climbing, swimming and bicycling, hiking and skiing, and paddling quietwater or whitewater. More recently, fat-tire biking, snowshoeing, and skijoring have gained popularity, and select locations have responded in kind.

The state forests especially excel in the time-honored transition from paddlesports to cross-country skiing. The Black, Bois Brule, and Flambeau are all named after rivers known for their fabulous rapids, ranging from Class I to III, and each of these state forests offers many miles of groomed trails, loops, and thrilling hills.

The state parks are less rambunctious, often situated on great and small lakes, or on slow-moving rivers. There are too many to list – a most privileged difficulty! – but the reality of limited budgets pinching staff, equipment, and infrastructure imposed by an austerity-based state legislature, combined with the new normal of infrequent or inadequate snowfall, means that groomed trails are not to be taken for granted anymore.

Few state parks are as renowned as Mirror Lake, on the outskirts of Wisconsin Dells, for its ample opportunities and exquisite landscape. The 60’-tall sandstone cliffs along the skinny lake will take the breath away of quietwater paddlers, and the precipitous slopes of groomed trail past old-growth white pines will thrill a skier’s soul. While the hallowed interior of Ishnala – an inimitable supper club rock-perched above the water within the park – closes the last weekend in October, winter revelers will delight in candle-lit trails to hike or ski before warming up to a cup of cocoa next to a fireside.

The park’s varied trails are laid out like an uppercase letter L lying down, such that its long side runs horizontally and its shorter stem points up. Eventually, there are 18 total trails. In winter, there are 3.5 miles of hiking/snowshoeing trails in the central interior of the park. Combining the Cliffwood Coulee and Echo Rock trails allows for exploring an intimate gorge set in a wonderland of utter enchantment worthy of shooting a remake of Dr. Zhivago. Additionally, there are 2.5 miles along the Bluff-Canyon and Lakeview Ridge trails on the north side of the lake, where mindful meditation is accompanied by the steady beats of snow crunching underfoot as wind rustles through stately boughs above. And from the sublime to the ridiculous, the icy ooze of frozen water percolating out of porous sandstone outcrops is practically phantasmagorical!

Over the years, Mirror Lake has become known as a skier’s paradise. The so-called “red” trails alone comprise 7.5 miles of relatively flat terrain through prairie with easy to moderate conditions. Turtleville and Fern Dell are particularly popular, whether folks are training for the Birkie or just glad to be getting out at all – call it “carpe ski ‘em.” The Northwest Trail (2.25 miles) is the steepest of all and offers more solitude, as it courses along a peninsular ridge in the middle of the park but apart from its better-known attractions. Alternatively, the Ishnala Trail (2 miles) loops up and down some steep terrain, too, including an extraordinarily scenic sequence of descending into a canyon sided by sandstone walls. All of the trails are rolled out for skate and classic skiing, but when snowfall is fickle or the base is skimpy, groomers tend to cater to the former.

A tale of two old dams, how the state park came to be is a story entwining natural and cultural history, each inseparable from the other. The first dam was a wall of glacial ice that slowly encroached on the area some 19,000 years ago. This impenetrable mountain blocked the nearby Wisconsin River, which in turn back flooded the central plains of the state in an enormous basin called Glacial Lake Wisconsin. It is believed to have been approximately the size of Utah’s Great Salt Lake and to have lasted for several thousand years. However, eventually, the weather grew warmer, causing the great glacial wall to melt. Torrents of water, sand, and gravel bored through the tiny valley of Dell Creek, a small stream that, before the glacier, flowed southeast towards the Baraboo River. This furious flood tore through the soft sandstone, carving much of the picturesque cliffs now found in the park. It also impeded the creek, rerouting its orientation to the northeast.

Let’s skip ahead to the 19th Century. Little Dell Creek gets dammed again, now by logs in 1860 for milling flour (and later in 1925 by concrete, which still stands today). Not technically part of the park, visitors might wish to step back in time at The Grotto, a mini-cave next to the dam with a flurry of lurid graffiti that once was an in situ saloon aptly dubbed “The Hole in the Wall” – one of the original taverns in the Wisconsin Dells area. With no running water or plumbing, it was more hideaway than hi-de-ho. All the same, this is where the original flour mill was located, and local farmers brought their grain to be stone-ground. They would beat the heat within the cool recesses of the cave and have a cold one.

From the late 1800s to the early 1930s, much of Mirror Lake was a popular resort area for the wealthy and elite – think Dale Carnegie winning friends and influencing the Ringling Brothers of Baraboo. In its heyday, there were pavilions and hotels, bathhouses and boat rentals, and a subdivision of summertime cottages smack dab in the woods in the burgeoning tourism boom. The most famous and only remaining of these cottages was designed by none other than Frank Lloyd Wright, native son of Wisconsin. (The quaint one-bedroom can be rented, but it’s pricey and comes with no room service or valet parking.) In the wake of the Great Depression, the state purchased the land and later developed Mirror Lake State Park in 1966, so named for its glass-like, tranquil waters.

To be sure, much of December is spent indoors (lest the seconds spent braving the cold between the parking lot and the storefront entrance or house of worship be considered “outdoorsy”). We spend a lot of time decorating, cooking, and traveling. Doing, doing, doing. It’s a time of frantic anxiety and feeling behind, a seemingly endless list of tasks from one to the next. Too often, we ask “what’s next?” without wondering what’s now. We rush through the month as though it were something to get done, rather than a space to be present in.

Meanwhile, the natural world bends its knees in solemn calm.

The word solstice is derived from the Latin for “stationary sun.” It is, as T.S. Eliot wrote, “the still point of the turning world.” While the solstice is only one day long – the yin complementing its yang is the equinox, which literally means “equal night” – the sentiment can be applied to the whole of December itself. Recreationally, there is a transition from one season to the next, both in spirit and in body. It is a bold but subtle transition—a held breath.

Despite the holiday bedlam, or precisely because of it, we’d do well to do little at all but be outside and get wonderfully nothing done on that to-do list. Presence instead of presents. To “sit and be still,” to catch our breath and receive the gleeful glitter of first-fallen snow, heaven-sent from answered prayer. December holds that space for us, inviting a time of quiet reflection. On a stream unheard, where better to do that than a lake named Mirror?