Cathcart gave a presentation, “My Relationship with the NCT,” at the May 3 general membership meeting of the Marquette Area Chapter of the North Country Trail Association at the Peter White Public Library.

Cathcart, who lives in Ishpeming, talked about his trip hiking across the NCT in the Upper Peninsula.

“I love talking about the North Country Trail,” he said about the trail that stretches 4,800 miles across eight states from North Dakota to Vermont.

Blue blazes along the NCT define it.

Terry Cathcart of Ishpeming has hiked across the U.P. via the North Country National Scenic Trail. Cathcart continues to hike along Lake Superior. (Photo courtesy of Terry Cathcart)

However, that doesn’t mean everybody knows about it.

“I’ve lived here for 20 years, and didn’t know about the North Country Trail,” Cathcart said.

A political event affected him In 2016, when former President Donald Trump faced Hillary Clinton in the presidential campaign.

“That was trauma for me — and something in me wanted to reach out to an alternative world,” Cathcart said. “And that’s what the North Country Trail seemed like to me.”

He also attended an NCTA meeting in Marquette in 2015, where he attended a workshop on long-distance hiking that spurred his interest.

Cathcart, who grew up in Grand Marais, Minnesota, started to think about walking across the entire U.P., although his eventual trek took place in segments of about three days at a time.

He was 68 when he started at the Mackinac Bridge in 2016, with the goal being to make it to the Montreal River

Cathcart said he had some hiking experience, but not of the long-distance variety.

“So this was a new venture for me,” he said.

Cathcart split up his trek by walking in sections, his first being from Lake Michigan to Lake Superior. But he didn’t make it, which Cathcart suspects was due to improper shoes that led to wet feet and blisters.

That’s not conducive to a comfortable hike, even a short one.

Fortunately, a commercial fisherman took him 40 miles out of his way to get Cathcart back to his truck.

“Transportation is an ongoing challenge when you’re hiking alone,” Cathcart said.

He adjusted by learning to make plans along the way, and got a lot of help from his wife, Sue, as well as friendly strangers.

The trail, though, gave Cathcart — who called himself a religious man — a memorable experience beyond the discomfort.

“Something about this immersion, and silence and solitude — it’s just going deep,” Cathcart said. “There was the beauty of the forest, and all the different kinds of forest.”

It makes a person think.

“Did you ever imagine trees as companions?” Cathcart asked the audience.

His “to do” is about things he can get done, he said.

However, Cathcart said, “Walking the North Country Trail has been playful. It is kind of like playing in the woods as a child.”

He also described it as a “sacred sanctuary” where he communes with things eternally.

“I know that this relationship has been fantastic for my soul,” Cathcart said.

He did have to adjust his culinary tastes along the way, acknowledging that he rarely cooked along the trail. He did, though, develop a taste for beaver dam water — a beverage not typically found in restaurants.

Lifestyle lessons he learned from hiking the NCT, he said, include not checking his email, and discovering that “indeed there is an alternative world that also has stories to tell.”

Cathcart finally made it to the Ironwood area in 2020, but has not stopped his hiking journeys. He is hiking the Superior Hiking Trail, which runs through Minnesota overlooking Lake Superior.

Perhaps it will be as he described the North Country Trail: a prayer — “where you’re paying attention to the present moment and place.”

Segments available

The Marquette Area Chapter of the NCTA is looking for “trail adopters” for segments of the NCT by performing occasional maintenance work. The segments include:

≤ segment 2: parking area before before Beaver Pond to Silver Creek Bridge, 2.7 miles;

≤ segment 3: Silver Creek Bridge to Rumely Road, 2.4 miles;

≤ segment 4: Rumely Road to Peter White Road, 3.5 miles;

≤ segment 5: Peter White Road to end of Segan Road, 2.9 miles;

≤ segment 7a: Mangum Road to west of Sand River, 2.3 miles;

≤ segment 12: Tourist Park to Forestville Trailhead, 4.3 miles;

≤ segment 15: County Road 550 to Wetmore Landing, 1.1 miles;

≤ segment 16: Wetmore Landing to Little Presque Isle Point, 1.6 miles;

≤ segment 26: unnamed road to the McCormick Wilderness, 4.25 miles; and

≤ spur 5: Sugar Loaf, .6 miles one way.

For more information, visit https://northcountrytrail.org/trail/michigan/mac/ or email mac@northcountrytrail.org

Christie Mastric can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 250. Her email address is cbleck@miningjournal.net.