From the end of the driveway it’s exactly 10 miles around the lake. The mix of asphalt pavement and recently improved multi-use path through the middle of Detroit Lakes takes me in a circle of rolling hills each Saturday that I’m lucky enough to be down here for my weekly long run. Each trip around the water is a test of my endurance but always seems to be the best run of the year. Where the grind through the gritty edges of expanding housing additions in suburbia in the pre-work morning tests my determination during the week, this relaxing jaunt at a home away from home takes me around a water that has been part of my life — many of my angling and outdoor experiences — since I was a child.

The path starts at the cabin, where as a kid I spent endless days fishing bluegills from the dock with my cousin, and later my younger brother, and quickly crosses the culvert which dumps Sucker Creek into the main lake. It’s a juncture where May nights began many successful walleye seasons as the fish would chase spawning shiners up into the shallows of the crystal-clear flow. From there, it’s a rise into the first wooded ridge, where the south side of the road remains undeveloped, and deer and the occasional fox seem to know the safety of the “No Trespassing” sign on the property. Down the rise and around the bend comes the bluff, the last true stretch of untouched lake shore, likely due to the steep cliff which drops to the water. While it probably will stay that way for a bit longer, a number of realtors’ signs have the tree-covered five-lot listing for sale, knowing that someone will eventually bite, like the muskies lurking on the edge of the sandy flat below.

Next comes Long Bridge, a crappie haven I’ve gone to for fast action since I was old enough to hold a fishing pole. In both summer and winter, panfish are plentiful, with the occasional rogue muskie or walleye lurking at the base of its pilings. I remember reading once in an Outdoor Life article about another fisherman’s time spent there as a kid in the summer and suddenly felt that the landmark provided not only just a fast way to town, but also a connection to a bigger world of anglers.

It’s a mile to West Lake Avenue, which first crosses the canal to Muskrat Lake, where every Memorial Day weekend a group of four of us would cram into the old Grumman Sportsman and find our secret stash of largemouth bass before the connection got too weedy or shallow when summer settled in. The new path recently completed by the city starts at mile four and runs all the way to the pavilion, passing notable restaurants and the public beach, before a sharp turn at the big building takes me off the water’s edge and to the high school at mile six.

From there, the hills return along the north shore with tall old burr oak trees and the multi-use path bends to its close where most mornings an osprey sits in the top branches overlooking the shallows at the start of East Shore Drive. Sometimes, the grey and white raptor has its shoreline breakfast in talon by the time I show up and the bird often greets me with a series of high-pitched screeches. By this point, I’m either ready to be done or putting on what’s left of my afterburners trying to make it up the first slow rise to the start of mile eight, depending on the morning or how I slept the night before. This weekend, it was the latter, as I had shed considerable seconds from my eight-minute mile and hoped to finish the trek in under 80 minutes. Up and down things go until the final turn and one last push up a short steep hill where I often see a pair of jet-black squirrels. The downhill slope and the last quarter mile of welcome flatness allows for a strong kick over a final two minutes and change of running.

This weekend’s 10-miler was the best of the year so far, as I clocked in at 7:57 per mile, but as always, it was the memories of fishing my favorite places on the water, the birds in the trees cheering me on, and the sights of so many wild things that brought me full circle on one of my favorite trips around … in our outdoors.