Finding ‘Trail Magic’ in a Battleground State on Election Night

In the first 720 miles of my ongoing 1,200-mile hike across, down, and then back up the battleground state of Wisconsin, I have seen more signs about Kamala Harris than for her. I left the state’s western edge in early October, heading eastward into a bricolage of political paraphernalia so red it was easy to forget anyone was running against Donald Trump, much less that this was one of seven states on which the entire nation might swing. Her taxes would be high, the signs said, his low. Her borders would be open, his secure. The seeming coup de grâce of my understanding of Wisconsin’s electoral importance came only on Saturday, from the laundromat window of the historic little city of Portage. Staring into a sea of Trump signs on a vacant lot across the street, I noticed a handmade rendering of Harris, who had sprouted horns and sported a demonic scowl. From a distance, the text around it reminded me of some Howard Finster missive; I needed to make 18 more miles by sundown, so I didn’t squander the steps necessary to get close enough to read the script.

But in the last 72 hours, or my last 100 miles, a blue vapor has slowly drifted into my roadside diorama—not purple, exactly, but not pure red, either. I’ve seen recycled 2020 signs, the top folded down to hide Biden’s name, like history’s page turning, and even fluttering yard flags, responding politely but definitively to all those banners proclaiming “Fuck Your Feelings” with “We Won’t Go Back.”

This morning, on the tail end of a three-day rainstorm, one such blue Harris/Walz placard arrived right on time. I’d gone to bed without water, with an algal explosion making the lake nearest the night’s camp undrinkable. Other hikers had mentioned a black mailbox full of Gatorade—the kind of generosity we call “Trail Magic” out here—six miles into the day. Understanding this was a dry stretch, some stranger 20 miles outside of Madison had decided to help, stuffing Gatorade into a mailbox and even inviting folks to use two spigots connected to their house with a note. In the predawn Election Day rain, I kept steady watch for said mailbox, knowing that, if I missed it, nine more miles would pass before I again reached water. And then I spotted that blue Harris/Walz sign, maybe the fiftieth I’d seen in an entire state, and intuited that the mailbox must be nearby. It was.

I don’t mean to imply that the rural Wisconsin Trump voter, with their “Take America Back” slogans so often surrounded by thickets of “No Trespassing” placards, wouldn’t give me water; they have, would, and likely will again. It’s just to say that, after a month here, none of them had suggested it was OK to show up at their house in the dark, take what I needed from their stash, and move along. For a moment this morning, on a country road whose name I no longer remember, I understood again that the battleground has always been less about our vote or the yard sign but about the kind of world we want to create for one another. Need some water? Here. I was, at least for a spell, sated.

Read all our election night dispatches here.