The devil isn't home

I've hiked to Minnesota's most legendary geological wonder, the Devil's Kettle, on just two different occasions: once during early fall and once during mid-summer; once with my partner and once alone; both times near sunset. Both visits left me with a heavy and compelling feeling that morphed out of the initial spiritual awe I felt from the surrounding wilderness en route, including its companion lower falls just south of the mouth of the beast. I'll tell you about this amazingly powerful force of nature if you've never seen it or heard of it, and if you've been there, maybe you can relate to some of my reflections.

The Devil's Kettle is a gnarly pothole carved by glaciers right below where the Brule River's upper falls are sliced in two by a large outcropping of volcanic rhyolite while snaking down to Lake Superior. The falls on the right drop down like a normal, powerful waterfall and crash back into the river, but the falls on the left swirl frantically into the pothole, where at first, second, and twentieth glance the water seems to disappear forever. For a long time, scientists speculated that the water travels to Lake Superior via an underground cavern or lava tunnel, but the extra-hard rhyolite and basalt composing the region have rendered those theories unsatisfying to some researchers. Visitors have been spinning tales of the water's fate for decades as well as throwing physical objects and dyes into the river in hopes that they'll reappear upstream or in Lake Superior, with local lore even claiming some people pushed in a car a while back, although nothing ever reappears. Then, in early 2017, hydrologists at the Minnesota DNR shattered the mystique with science by announcing they think the solved the mystery. According to the hypothesis, the water's disappearance is something of an optical illusion, and based on identical water volume measurements at the top of the kettle and at the river below, the water is probably popping right back up and continuing with the rest of the pack after some sort of brief detour--not hydrating the lizard people down in Hollow Earth. The same grit and rocks spiraling violently around the whirlpool that carved out the kettle when it was just an eddy on the river most likely shreds and dissolves anything falling into it, the hydrologists said, and later in the year they're supposed to test it with a large quantity of dye that won't easily dissolve. It's no surprise it can destroy solid objects if you've ever approached the lip of the kettle. It's violent and intimidating in both sight and sound, like demons doing laundry.

To access this demon tub, you head north for about 14 miles on Highway 61 from the dreamy harbor town of Grand Marais until you're surrounded by wilderness again (which doesn't take long to achieve on the North Shore). From Judge C.R. Magney State Park, you get on a small portion of the Superior Hiking Trail beginning at a trailhead within the park. The hike in from the short, bridged spur trail to the main trail gets dramatic very quickly, winding around bends with mesmerizing, sweeping views of the Brule River starting almost instantly as you cross the bridge. The view to the south reveals Lake Superior peacefully drinking from the river, and to the north, the Brule drunkenly barrels down the rocks, gurgling with quiet rage.

The Brule's alternating rapids and calmer sections stretch beneath the length of the high gorge ridge the trail is set upon, carving through a massive canyon of stone walls and breaking the quietude of the secluded boreal forest with an ambience of rushing water prominent throughout the first quarter of a mile. Numerous small footpaths have been carved away from the trail over the years to stunning vistas overlooking the river. Sunlight streams in at compelling angles, casting golden tones onto birch bark and ancient, mossy spruce limbs that look like swampy old men reaching out to hand you a Werther's Original. A quivering canopy of birch, aspen, poplar, and maple gives way to glimpses of the sky, which in its most romantic state is overcast and dripping with precipitation, much to the delight of the mushrooms growing underfoot. The horizon itself is mostly disorienting, but it's spiked with the needle-point tops of evergreens. Sometimes a bald eagle is soaring in the open spaces.

You sense you're not in an average forest here. Everything is tinged with an esoteric sense of power and wisdom, and the trees feel sentient. The indigenous humans who were here first shared that with the forest day and night, and on this mere mile-long hike, you're just a tourist of the ancient forces that always have been and always will be at play. You are much more impermanent and insignificant than the woods up here, and those woods won't hesitate to reveal this to you. Still, there's a deep sense of protection you can tune into when shrouded by those conifers if you're open to it, the reassuring sense of benign, gentle giants looking out for you. The birds and chipmunks feel like comrades and the mushrooms nod politely as you pass. You can trust your surroundings. None of them or us are immortal in the end, which cultivates some kinship.

That's just the first third or so of the hike, though. After a sharp turn in the trail where there's a gorgeous lookout of the sweeping, expansive land below, you'll gain about 800 feet of elevation before you get to the kettle, and ascend 169 stairs in the process. Butterflies start churning in your belly because you know what's coming, but are not quite sure what to expect. The tall wooden staircase you descend looks foreboding and exciting. Soon after you step off of it, a spur trail to the left takes you to the first level of exhilaration, which is found in the gushing lower falls that pummels the rocks and river below it. The falls aren't exceptionally tall, but they are exceptionally forceful and fast, and you can get close enough to feel their power. When you stand facing them on the flat rocks leading to the edge of the river, being blasted with the ghostly mist is something you don't soon forget. There's a good chance you're really being sprayed with the tortured spirits of water molecules that were swallowed by the kettle, and it makes you grin involuntarily.

There is a wooden sign that says Devil's Kettle is 700 feet away once you get back on the trail. Already shaken and exhilarated from the sensory overload of the falls, you might become uncontrollably giddy--although that could just be me. Both times I've stood near that sign and looked up at the final staircase, my heart has started racing even harder than it already was, and I found myself running up the stairs. The rumble of the lower falls gets dimmer, then around 20 yards later the roar of the upper falls and Devil's Kettle really starts picking up. All of your senses go on alert, and you anticipate seeing it around every bend--it's the longest 700 feet you've ever walked. Finally, it appears through the trees. Its presentation is anti-climatic for the level of drama on display. One moment you can't see it, and the next minute it's right there in front of you. It almost feels like a red curtain should have been pulled back to reveal it more sensually, but as you approach the designated lookout points for it, the raw starkness of its unending, relentless motion hooks you in and makes you come to your senses about how much you fantasize that you're equal to or in some way in control of the wilderness surrounding you, but you are not even on the same playing field.

Although this part of the river seems so phantasmagorical, it really has no form or personality, there is no devil inside, and the whirlpool is neither your friend nor your foe. Our personal relationship with it exists inside our minds and is tinged with our humanity, but the kettle does not give a flying shit about your humanity. It's moving faster than anything you've ever witnessed, which feels pretty frightening: at its peak volume, the water can move at a rate of nearly 200 cfs (cubic feet per second!). It overwhelms your senses and mangles your sense of reality. Centuries of folklore and legends are reduced to feeble attempts to make sense of a power we can't, or don't want to fathom. Facing the kettle down, it's no longer the question of where the water goes that's so tantalizing, it's the mystery of its cold indifference in the face of extremes. Eventually, you realize the kettle is laughing at you. It's important that you laugh with it.

They don't turn the Devil's Kettle off for the night. As it approached dusk during the time I was there alone, I had the strange sensation that as the sun was going down the river would calm and the kettle would be switched off. My humanly need to be back at my campsite after dark felt like a pathetic little offshoot of my embarrassingly mortal sensibilities in contrast with that behemoth. Whether it's 3 p.m. or 3 a.m., the river churns and the roar is as loud as ever, and it doesn't rest or take refuge. It might even become louder in the night. There are no quiet hours, just unchecked wildness laughing at us eternally.

The time I was with my partner we climbed as far out on the rocks as we could to gain a closer view, which set my mind reeling with terrible thoughts. When I stand there facing the falls, I always feel something sinister. That's also an illusion. Apart from vividly imagining myself falling into the void (a fantasy thousands have no doubt had before me), what I'm really feeling, I realized, is a blow to the ego. It's a faint resentment of the nature of the wild compared to the nature of my humanity. More accurately, it's that the wild is not constrained by a "nature." Nature is what we call the stuff we want to possess and blend into. The wild is what I'd call the true underlying stuff that we can never level up with or pin down. It's neither above us nor below us; it's the ultimate bare experience of being present and in the moment. It has no past or future. The physical shapes and characteristics can change, and roaring kettles that swallow water whole can be carved out by time's chisel, but the energy itself is always there, never created or destroyed, just displaced or given new outlets. To some religious people, that type of black magic is like the devil's work.

On both visits, the distinct feeling I've had sink in when I turn around to head back south on the trail is a darkness. But it's an uncommon form of existential darkness that I welcome, a unique experience of fear, insignificance, and mortality that civilized life can't possibly tap into. As I hike back through the forest, I see the other side of the trees, and the trail takes on a different character. Everything looks unfamiliar, and I wonder if I'm on the right path. Suddenly, nothing feels like it's offering protection or friendship, and I'm compelled to run the rest of the way back to the parking lot. The sun is my only remaining advocate, and even that is disappearing. Even the songbirds know they're no match for this place at night and are silently tucked into their nests, and I envy the way they fit in here and have a place while I stick out like a sore thumb. My footsteps and heartbeat are as loud as the river, and I feel a faint sense of doom in the back of my mind as I contemplate how easy it could be to die by a vast number of encounters or errors. And yet, it still manages to be blissful.

None of the darkness I'm feeling can obliterate the more tightly held love that burns deep inside of me for these forces. Deep down I know that in a way, I do belong here and am happy here in the truest sense, but that civilization and humanity has placed a hundred miles in between ourselves and the wild so we view it as spectators and have difficulty being present with it. Out here, fright and happiness are not mutually exclusive. The detached appreciation we're afforded is both the source of frustration and a route to a deeply personal glimpse of the sublime nature of reality being reflected back at us.

#wilderness #minnesota #minnesotastateparks #nature #exploration #adventure #hiking #superiorhikingtrail #philosophy