It’s about 600 paces from the parking lot up to the top of Inspiration Peak near Urbank, in southern Otter Tail County.
Up — 400 feet up — is the key word in the preceding sentence. For most flat-landers those 600 paces, and 400 feet, are highly aerobic. Perhaps even inspirational.
The Department of Natural Resources has placed two benches, around the 300 and 450-pace mark. You may ponder your thundering heart and sucking lungs while being inspired on those welcome benches. You may even grumpily meditate on the foolishness of some members of your race as you gaze at the few cigarette butts carelessly tossed on the otherwise clean and paved trail. Who, you may wonder, would smoke a cigarette when their respiratory system is in hyperdrive?
In the 1920s, central Minnesota’s original curmudgeon author, Sinclair Lewis, hauled himself up the big hill. From the top he wrote: “There’s to be seen a glorious 20-mile circle of some 50 lakes scattered among fields and pastures, like sequins fallen on an old paisley shawl.”
Lewis told his readers that he cherished the “enchanted peace and seclusion of this place for contemplation.”
Well, OK.
At the time Lewis visited the hill, the locals called it Leaf Mountain. At 1,750 feet above sea level it was the tallest hill in a range called the Leaf Hills. An early missionary to the area translated the Ojibway name for the hills to be Rustling Leaf Mountains. But Lewis popularized the name Inspiration Peak and that’s what it was called when it became an official State Wayside Park in 1932.
But the Ojibway had it right. Today you can stand on top of the hill and look down on a grove of quaking aspen. If you listen you can hear the leaves rustle. And you can look out over the vista Lewis described and see, if not 50, many lakes sparkle amid the forests of Otter Tail and Douglas counties.
If you are inclined to be inspired you can contemplate the immense glacial forces that scooped out those lakes and piled sand, rocks and boulders 400 feet deep below your feet. If you allow it to, it can take your breath away — if you have any left.
Then you can head down the trail, among the burr and red oaks and, at the bottom, enjoy a picnic on the grassy and shaded picnic grounds.
