Vadnais Heights, MN

City Streets and Sidewalks

Run Time: 48:13 + 2-minute kick

Doesn’t Willow Lake look like a perfect body of water around which to run? On Street view you could see a path going all the way around the lake, even cutting across one section on some sort of bridge, which you can see in the photo. Mere blocks from my hotel — what luck!

Not so fast, Cochise. To get to the path, you have to cross private property — a parking lot belonging to HB Fuller Company, an adhesives manufacturer which has likely been dumping chemicals into Willow Lake for a century or more. I’m reading Silent Spring right now — I know how this works. You make it look like a pristine wildlife refuge from aerial view, but then you pump byproduct underground into the water rather than pay millions to have it disposed of properly and legally. Despite the signs indicating surveillance cameras, I trotted across the parking lot to the path, which was accessible through a gate being guarded by two humongous Tom turkeys, who gobbled warningly and pointed to the No Trespassing signs.

It actually was some kind of wildlife sanctuary or aviary or protected wetlands, though I am still suspicious of the Fuller family. Fuller rhymes with Sackler. The lake was fenced in, or I was fenced out. I ran along the fence till I got to a sidewalk dead end and finally gave up and ran on residential streets. It was fine — nice little homes between industrial and office properties. The dark skies never turned to rain, and no wildlife was disturbed, and no laws were broken. Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes, some of which cannot be run around, even if there is a nicely manicured path encircling it.

I had driven from Fargo to Duluth to St. Paul that day, so I got to see quite a few lakes along the way. I crossed the great North Country Trail, or near to it, where I stopped to take a leak in the trees. The North Country Trail is 4800 miles long and doesn’t get near the attention that the Appalachian, Pacific Crest, and the Continental Divide Trail get. CDT is 3100 miles, PCT is 2650, and App is 2190. And the NCT skirts Cleveland, so it ain’t for sissies. Maybe I’ll run it when I retire.