Birke Nordic Walking

Julie and I headed north at 4am on Friday to do some nordic walking clinics on the Birke Trail.  We were meeting up with the Ski and Tea women, our north woods counterpart to HOW, led by Juli Lynch and Linda Cook. Yes, it was the Juli, Julie, Linda, Linda show for the weekend.  We weren’t sure how many folks would come out to walk with us in the woods but I was excited to have my first experience on the Birke. I was not to be disappointed

At 8am we had 27 women waiting to walk with us.  A few more than the 12 we had expected.  It was a beautiful morning, they were pumped to try the poles and we headed up the hills and into the woods.  Most of them are cross country skiers so it was a relatively easy transfer of movement to nordic walking. After 3 miles in the woods we finished with tea and fresh blueberry scones at the Moose Lips Cafe.  yummy!

The afternoon was spent kayaking on the White River, a trout stream north of Cable.  After a delicious dinner at the Angry Minnow we fell into bed so exhausted that we never heard the “big” storm that came through during the night.  Guess we were a bit tired.  Good thing we slept well because the Saturday morning clinic also exceeded our expectations. 

Total walkers: 66!!!!  Men, women and children, ages 7 to 70’s. I was blown away!  Somehow we actually had enough poles to go around, I think it was the stone soup scenario,  and after introducing everyone to walking the nordic walking way we took off into the woods.  It was amazing to walk with so many people with poles in their hands and they were all very good students. Wow!  What an experience.

We sold lots of poles and one pair is even going home to Hawaii. I’m looking forward to going there to do the next expansion of the kingdom!