Glacier Hills County Park: Overnight in the wilderness!
December 8, 2024 | Topics: Places
By Eddee Daniel
It was pitch black inside the cabin. In the middle of the night I woke up (as usual) to answer the “call of nature.” No light, not even starlight, filtered down through the tree canopy and into the windows. Lying still, snuggled into my sleeping bag, I felt like I was in a black hole, into which my whole life up to that point had collapsed, never to escape. Just as I was about to rise to go outside to pee, I heard a faint scratching. It stopped. Then the pitter-patter of tiny feet, making their way from one end of the cabin to the other. We are not alone!
My flashlight banished both the mouse, or whatever it was, and the impression of being in a black hole. The close quarters of the A-frame cabin came crashing back to reality. Something thumped against the roof outside and then again, as if some ornery creature was throwing stones to drive away us interlopers. Trying not to disturb my wife, I squeaked open the screen door, then creaked open the solid wooden door, and stepped outside.
If I thought it was going to be lighter outdoors, that thought was immediately dispelled. There was no moon, no stars, and—most surprising—no artificial lights of any kind. When I turned off my flashlight I was back in black. But not an oppressive darkness. Little skitterings in the underbrush enlivened the night. The air was fresh and redolent of autumn. My feet crunched dry leaves and kicked hickory nuts—likely the culprits, I decided, responsible for battering our roof.
Wow! How lucky I am, I thought. Although I’m only a half-hour from home I might as well be in some far-off wilderness. In no hurry to return to my sleeping bag and wanting to savor the luxuriant and teeming midnight silence, I skipped the nearby porta-potty. walked up and over the hill to the bathrooms in the main lodge. The soft whoo–whoo of a distant owl serenaded my progress. Returning to bed, for the rest of the night I slept like a log fallen in the misty forest.
You might wonder why we chose to spend two nights only a half-hour away from the comforts of home in a cabin the website describes as “cozy” and “rustic.” My midnight sojourn in the lightless wilderness is a large part of the answer; when the call of nature took on several layers of meaning. Communing with the owl and with the invisible animals scurrying through the leaves; squirrels? Raccoons maybe. Or opossums, foxes, white tails, coyotes. Who knows? Breathing the lush night air is another. Rising at dawn to a world shrouded in fog, out of which the fully saturated autumn colors of foliage emerged like a phantom forest, is yet another.
You don’t have to spend the night in one of the available cabins to enjoy Glacier Hills County Park, however. Most people don’t, in fact. It is a full-service park with picnic areas, shelters, ball courts, a playground, and a magnificent sledding hill. But, for me, the natural features are what make it a special park. Its rugged terrain contains kettles, kames, an esker; ponds, marshes, and a bog; as well as boating access on Friess Lake. It’s almost as if you took the 30,000 acres of the Kettle Moraine State Forest and distilled them down into a 140-acre park.
Maximizing the time available to enjoy the park is certainly a reason to stay overnight. During the one full day between our two nights in the cabin we hiked every trail and explored every corner of the park, went kayaking on the lake twice, and still had time to take an additional hike on the nearby Holy Hill Segment of the Ice Age Trail. The autumn colors were not quite at peak, but they were spectacular nevertheless. On this occasion, I especially liked the ridgetop trail that runs around St. Amelian’s Bog, where autumn felt most intense.
Glacier Hills is no less captivating in other seasons, as I think you can tell from the selection of photos. And although the picnic areas, playgrounds, and shelters are often dormant during the off-peak hours I tend to go, I’ve almost always encountered fellow travelers on the popular hiking trails. If there is sufficient snow, the sledding hill, one of the best in the metropolitan region, is often bustling.
If you do want to stay overnight, the park boasts nine cabins of varying sizes, including several newer ones that are described unabashedly as “tiny.” (They really are!) We stayed in the only A-frame, which seemed like the perfect (not-tiny) size to us. No running water, but it did have electricity. In fact, it included a TV, which we never turned on. If I wanted to watch TV I wouldn’t have driven half an hour away from home to a cabin in the woods!
“As a species, we are most animated when our days and nights on Earth are touched by the natural world. We can find immeasurable joy in the birth of a child, a great work of art, or falling in love. But all of life is rooted in nature, and a separation from that wider world desensitizes and diminishes our bodies and spirits. Reconnecting to nature, nearby and far, opens new doors to health, creativity, and wonder. It is never too late.”
~ Richard Louv, The Nature Principle
For more information about Glacier Hills County Park go to our Find-a-Park page.
Glacier Hills County Park is just one of over 140 parks and preserves you can find in southeast Wisconsin using our Find-a-Park map.
Eddee Daniel is a board member of Preserve Our Parks.