Good morning.
Juneteenth in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a possibility of afternoon showers and a high of 87. Sunrise is 5:16 and sunset 8:36 for 15h 20m 23s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 93.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Lakes Advisory Committee meets at 3:30 PM, the Finance Committee meets at 5 PM, and the Parks & Recreation Board meets at 5:30 PM.
On this day in 1814, Fort Shelby is dedicated in Prairie du Chien:
During the War of 1812, Missouri governor William Clark recognized the location’s strategic importance and sent approximately 150 soldiers to build the fort. The fort did not remain in American hands for long; British troops with the assistance of 400 Indians took the fort on July 20th and renamed it Fort McKay. After the end of the war, the British burned the fort, but the Americans constructed another building at the site in 1816 and named it Fort Crawford.
On this day in 1865, over two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, slaves in Galveston, Texas are officially informed of their freedom. The anniversary was officially celebrated in Texas and other states as Juneteenth. In 2021, Juneteenth officially became a federal holiday in the United States.
While I’m a cyclist and not a hiker, there’s much to admire about dedicated hiking. That commitment is apparent from the hikers in Colleen Leahy’s story Thru-hiking the Ice Age Trail: Why some hikers become ‘thousand-milers’ in Wisconsin (‘Hiking the entire Ice Age Trail has exploded in popularity since the 2010s’):
Wisconsin’s own 1,200-mile Ice Age Trail was recently designated a National Scenic Trail.
Since the 2010s, thru-hiking the Ice Age Trail has exploded in popularity. From 2012 to 2018, more than 100 people thru-hiked the trail — compared to 76 thru-hikers total in the first four decades of the trail’s existence.
The first-ever thru-hiker has been cited as Earl Shaffer, who hiked the entire Appalachian Trail in 1948, 11 years after trailblazers finished building the trail from Maine to Georgia.
Thru-hiking started to become more mainstream in the 1990s and really exploded after the 2012 publication of Cheryl Strayed’s memoir, “Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail.”
Still, why would someone choose to put themselves through the physical pain, dirtiness and occasional dangers that come with living outside for months at a time?
Melanie Radzicki McManus, who set a record in 2013 for the fastest-known time thru-hiking the Ice Age Trail, joined WPR’s “Wisconsin Today,” and explained how she felt throughout the hiking process.
“When you get on a trail, all you have to do day after day is walk, eat, go to sleep,” she said. “It’s amazing how relaxing it is. I don’t think people spend enough time with themselves or their thoughts.”
Thru-hiking likely has similarities to multi-day riding, and if so, then one can see that thru-hiking would be relaxing.
Sound of Space Data: Crab Nebula Sonification: