- [Emily] I was out playing bar league volleyball with a buddy and I was like, "dude, do you know any trails in the Midwest I could do that's over a thousand miles long?"

And she told me about the Ice Age Trail.

Everybody I talked to they're like, "it's a pretty flat trail."

No, no, no, no, no.

- [Narrator] Microplastics shed into our diets when we rip open a plastic package, pop ice cubes out of an old tray, or drink from a throwaway bottle.

(introductory music) - [Announcer] Funding for this program was provided by: Safe Basements of Minnesota, your basement waterproofing and foundation repair specialist since 1990.

Peace of mind is a Safe Basement.

Live Wide Open.

The more people know about West Central Minnesota, the more reasons they have to live here.

More at livewideopen.com.

Western Minnesota Prairie Waters.

Where peace, relaxation, and aprinities await.

And the members of Pioneer PBS.

- I was out playing bar league volleyball with a buddy and I was like, "dude, do you know any trails in the Midwest I could do that's over a thousand miles long?"

And she told me about the Ice Age Trail.

Everybody I talked to they're like, "It's a pretty flat trail."

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Let me tell you this trail is so hilly.

So that's how little I knew about it.

I know that it's rare for people of color to feel comfortable outside sometimes.

Especially since like, I live in Duluth which is mainly white folks and so I rarely ever see people like myself on the trail.

And I was like, "well, if I can inspire other people of color to get out there and keep getting out there, you'll see more of, you'll see more people who look like you."

Like, yeah, there's some people that don't like being alone in the inner city.

And if you take your country folks and be like "you have to go to times square by yourself and figure your way through New York."

They'd be like, "I don't know, man, I don't know about that."

It's the same way, just the unknown going the opposite direction.

You gotta find your way through the woods.

"I don't know, man, I don't know about that."

- She has always loved the outdoors.

She's always been so adventurous that nothing surprises me that she wants to do because that's just the way she is.

She wants to see it all.

Her last hike I volunteered to be her drop-off person.

And so she didn't tell me the whole story.

We're driving up the shore because I thought I was dropping her off at the end of the Gunflint Trail.

No, we were dropping her car off at the end of the Gunflint Trail and then taking her to Ely so that she could walk, she could hike from Ely to the Gunflint Trail.

And so we didn't get to Ely until it was like 11 o'clock at night and it started to snow.

So I said "Where are you going to sleep?"

"Oh, I'll find someplace to sleep on the trail."

There's no cell service.

And it was cold and it was raining and snowing virtually the whole time.

So I did not have contact with her and I knew the weather was not good.

I knew she was out in the middle of virtually nowhere.

Those kind of, those kinds of trips, this is nothing compared to those.

- I started, I planned for about two months for this trip.

So getting my gear, finding, looking at the route because really I knew nothing about this route.

- Emily reached out to me on a female mushing website.

And so she, she just threw it out there that if anyone was looking to borrow her a sled dog she was interested in doing a 1200 mile hike.

And I thought, "Of course, I'd be interested in doing that," because my daughters, who are dog mushers, had a mentor, a female mentor and they wouldn't be able to do what they, they've done without that.

And so, so Emily came out to the farm and, and met Diggins.

The minute her and Diggins met it was like magic.

She went on some training runs with her and camped overnight up near Duluth and it was perfect.

- So if you want a technical term of the way that I did this trip it'd actually be called "Cannicross."

Cannicross is running, hiking, or walking with a dog attached around your waist.

Diggins only carried her own stuff.

If we, if we had some trail magic happen and I didn't feel like taking my pack off, I'd shove it in her bag and she'd look at me like "That's not mine."

- My first favorite story and picture was of Emily and Diggins in a tent on New Year's Eve and they're both looking out at the night sky and just enjoying New Year's Eve together on this remote part of the trail, I mean, it was just like, "okay, this is the beginning of their adventure."

- I created an itinerary.

Look, that itinerary went right out the window.

After the first week I got a bum knee the first week and so I had to take a zero day after, on day six and I was like, "Oh, we've already screwed up the schedule."

My quad was pulling on my patella tendon and so my knee was off track, my knee cap was off track.

And it really, it hurt so bad.

I'd never had any issues before in my life.

I have a buddy and she's a decathlete so she does really long, long, long marathons.

Like, "how do I get through stuff like that?"

She's like, "You just push through it."

She's like "Use KT tape, wrap it as best as you can, whatever."

she's like "And try to keep pushing through it."

I was bummed because that was all, that was the first week in.

You know what I mean?

I had two months left.

I was like, "Am I going to finish this?"

It's the mental game.

I always tell people "Your body will adapt to the trail, but you have to, you have to agree to your mind changing to get through the trail."

The most surprising thing was the people that I encountered on the trail.

The people of Wisconsin came out of the woodwork everywhere and would leave me food, water, I got a couple extra pairs of socks from folks who knew where I was before I would know where I was going to be.

- I was contacted to shuttle her when she got to the Mondeaux esker in Taylor County.

The next day I got to hike a section of Mondeaux with her.

With my snow shoes I led the, led the way and cut trail for her for about three miles.

She's just amazing.

To take this, to take on a through hike, first of all, is a unique group of people.

There's, I think there's, maybe a little bit less than 300 people that have through hiked the trail nonstop from one end to the other.

But to do it in the winter, she's only the second person and the first woman to do that.

She got hit with two weeks of very sub-zero weather and she was hiking all the way through that and it's just amazing to me that she had the endurance to do that.

- Got down to, the windchill was like negative 50.

The air temperature that I saw the lowest was negative 37.

And so we had to stay inside and I felt like we were just missing out on the actual purpose of the this trip.

Being outside all the time but for my safety and for Diggins' safety, all these people pitched in and let us stay in their homes.

The goal of this is not to be crazy, frostbitten, no-fingers, no-toes Emily after this, the goal is just to finish this trail.

So I had to change my mindset a little bit after that.

(soft guitar music) (snow crunching) This is where we're going to stay tonight, so excited.

If you're looking for a trail in the Midwest that will give you a little bit of everything, this is the one.

You'll hit flat parts, you'll hit a lot of road walks, and then with, with the glaciers it's a terminal moraine, right?

It's not flat, it is not a flat trail.

You'll hit, you'll hit some really long hills, you'll hit a lot of switchbacks.

You'll hit a lot of streams.

You'll hit a lot of lakes.

You'll hit a lot of marshes.

You'll hit the prairies, you'll hit the savannas, You'll hit the Coniferous forest, you'll hit every, you'll hit everything here.

There was one night and it was after a long day of post-holing, gone slow all day.

And we got into this hemlock forest and we got to this, this high point and it's so quiet in there and it was awesome.

And the hemlocks are so beautiful.

I think we, we, we had, we hadn't even touched 15 miles yet for that day and I was like "Diggins, I think we need to stay here tonight."

I just pointed, I pointed the tent door to the west and the sunset was just, the colors were just, because we were so high up, we could watch the sunset forever, pretty much.

And then the moon came up behind the tent and it was like someone had turned on their headlamp, or sorry, their, their car light.

It was so bright, the moon just shining in right through the tent.

It was, it was nuts.

And then we're just laying there sleeping and the wolves are howling around us.

It was just this perfect, everything was just, it was one of those like moments in a movie where you would see like that person's outdoors.

That person's living outdoors.

And I will, I will never forget that.

That was awesome.

(gentle guitar music) One of the things about solo hiking or hiking alone is just coming back to kind of center of yourself and who you are.

When you're, when you're by yourself, right?

There's nobody else to really fight with.

I mean, I had a dog but, she'd really, she rarely did many things wrong.

- [Cheri] She's been really possessive of Emily and I think she thinks she's Emily's mom, for sure.

- Somebody doing a box drop for me.

And she reached across and Diggins nipped her hand.

And I was like, and, and, and when I met, I mean, when I met Diggins, she's the sweetest.

She's so sweet.

She is really a sweet girl.

And then it happened again I was like "this is not a one-off," I'm like, "we have a nipper, I don't know."

And I talked to Cheri, I called her a couple of days ago I'm like, "just to let you know, this is what's developed."

She's like "she did that with her puppies too."

And I'm like, "Oh my gosh, was she my mom?"

She thinks that she thinks that I'm her puppy, I don't know.

We became a duo so it's fine.

I kept a journal.

I tried to do it every single day.

And then every day I would make a "it's day whatever" video and just take pictures along the way as well.

My Instagram just had such a small following, it's just my friends and people who knew me from, like Glensheen and working at work.

And after the first week, 1000 people were following I was like, "oh my gosh, this is, this is nuts."

And the next week, 2000 people were following.

And I think we're pretty close, Like nine people following this journey.

My grandpa pretty much printed out every article, every news clipping, every social media post, he printed about, he made a binder of, of, of this stuff.

It's just, it's just so good to know that they're still my biggest cheerleaders.

And they have been for a long, they have been for 28, 28 years strong.

(gentle piano music) (crowd cheering) (applause) (air horn blowing) It took a long time.

And you just remember all in one collapse, all of these memories of the cold, and the wind, and the everything else that comes together.

So the biggest emotion is just at the end when it all comes crashing down at once and then saying goodbye, pretty much to my best friend.

I call her my associate, but we made it to best friend level.

When I would meet people and they would be like, "Oh, you're so inspiring, I could never do what you do."

I'm like, look, I love, I love Netflix, I love my couch.

I know I seem thin right now, but I love food.

I love to sit on like Saturday morning, sleeping in, plopping right down on the couch all day, bag of chips.

I love it.

I've been like that since I was a kid.

That's why I like to encourage people that this, the outdoors is, you don't have to be some like crazy, huge, brand wearing, whatever outdoor enthusiast to, to, to want to do this stuff.

You can love sitting on your couch and eating chips and watching Netflix.

You can binge watch as much as you want, just still get outside.

The people who feel connected to this trip, I hope that they feel like we, I hope they feel inspired.

And I hope that I hope that fire lasts a long time, I hope they can carry it and pass it on to somebody else.

I swear, I'm like, especially with, I always encourage parents.

Like "your little kids are watching what you're doing, man.

If you're outside, they'll probably be outside."

I didn't just fall from a stork and then all of a sudden love to be out in the outdoors.

This is passed down through my genes, passed down through my line, my family.

What I'm really looking for is a kid who is 10 years old right now and when they find me when I'm 38 and they're 20 years old and they're like, "I saw you and you did the thing.

And I knew that when I turned 20 years old or 18 that I wanted to do something like that, you did."

(music ends) - [Mary] So we looked at 12 brands of beer that draw their water from all five of the great lakes.

And we also looked at 12 brands of salt that were just purchased here in the Twin Cities, but they're globally sourced.

All of them had it.

It really is ubiquitous.

(swing clarinet music) - [Announcer] Which fish species is native to Minnesota, and which is the invader?

The answer is coming up right after this.

(electronic marimba music) - [Narrator] We may be consuming as much as a credit cards' worth of plastic every week.

That's what researchers are telling us.

These synthetic polymers are in the salt we shake on our food, the beer we drink, and even in the air we breathe.

- In the 1970s, globally, we were making about 30 million tons of plastic a year.

When I last checked, I think the 2018 numbers, it was 360 million tons.

Plastics are so ubiquitous, they're everywhere.

And so it's not terribly shocking to find that they're getting into our, our food and beverages.

- [Narrator] Over time, plastic breaks down or chips off into small particles called microplastics.

They range in size from five millimeters, which is about the end of an eraser, down to one micron.

To compare, you can fit 1000 microns on the tip of a pencil.

Anything smaller is called a nanoparticle.

Microplastics shed into our diets when we rip open a plastic package, pop ice cubes out of an old tray, or drink from a throwaway bottle.

- If you compare tap water to bottled water, the ingestion annually, if you just drink tap water alone, is something like 4,000 particles.

But if you drink bottled water it could be 90,000.

So it's like a 22 fold increase.

There was a study that looked at the amount of plastics that's introduced when you open and close a bottle.

So they opened and closed the bottle once, maybe 10 times, and a hundred times.

And they found that you can actually be introducing microplastics just by that action.

I went around to different grocery stores to buy, buy all different types of salts.

And this one has a grinding mechanism here so talk about like how packaging can contribute, the, the grinding mechanism is made out of plastic.

So just the act of grinding the salt like this, you're probably adding little tiny bits of plastic.

So these little activities, these little behavioral things that we do might be introducing microplastics when that was never the intention.

If you've ever sat in an open window where the sunlight is coming in you can kind of see all the little dust particles in the air.

A proportion of that is likely synthetic polymers.

And it can come from all kinds of things, it can come from just walking on the carpet that gets unbraided, or your clothing, or your bedding.

- [Narrator] It's even in the mesh that is meant to prevent erosion along waterways and at construction site.

- But this stuff just stays in the soil and then you can see the grass kind of growing around it.

And so over time, it's just going to break down into tiny particles and either become part of the soil or washed into the creek.

The first time we really knew about microplastics being a contamination issue is when researchers, biologists, found this stuff in the guts of seabirds that live far away from human settlements.

So they were finding a laysan albatross with it's crop and it's stomach just full of plastic refuse.

- [Narrator] While she was a University of Minnesota intern, ecologist Mary Kosuth heard about a U.S. geological survey of three great lakes: Superior, Huron, and Erie.

The study found an average of 43,000 plastic particles in every square kilometer.

She contacted researcher Sherry Mason, who told Mary about another 2014 study that tested 24 brands of beer made in Germany and all contained plastic particles.

In 2015, New York researchers found plastic in all the 15 brands of salt from China that they tested.

- We were thinking "Well, we could do the same thing here."

So we looked at 12 brands of beer that draw their water from all five of the great lakes.

And we also looked at 12 brands of salt that were just purchased here in the Twin Cities but they're globally sourced.

All of them had it.

It really is ubiquitous.

Now we're starting to look more at consumer products and atmospheric fallout is something that's really gained a lot of traction since 2015.

They've since looked at cities in China and Iran, they've looked at London, even in really remote places.

They found them on the Western Antarctic peninsula so they really span the poles.

They found them in the Tibetan plateau which is like 13,000 feet above sea level.

They found a plastic bag in the Mariana trench, which is the deepest part of the ocean.

So it's kind of astonishing how far reaching this material is.

Everyone wants to know, "okay, so if it's there, fine, but what sort of effect that have on us, on our, our health?"

And that something that we don't quite understand yet.

Three main issues really with plastic as far as the health affects go.

One of them is the fact that they can, they're made with things like UV stabilizers and additives, colorants, brominated flame retardants, there's all kinds of things that are added to plastics that when they break up they can kind of leech into the guts of, possibly humans, but also other organisms.

Another problem is that when they're in the environment they can be, they can kind of act as, they adsorb or take in things like, like PCBs, or DDT, or heavy metal.

- [Narrator] Research is ongoing into plastic chemicals' impact on fertility, children's brain and organ development, and cardiovascular and immune systems.

If microparticles are a problem, how do we get rid of them?

- The wastewater treatment plants are sort of like a sieve that try and capture as much as possible.

And they actually do a pretty decent job of it.

They're able to sift out something like 72 to 99%.

There's still an enormous quantity that ends up getting into the water.

So if you were to walk into your house and you would find that it's flooding because you have the tap on, probably the first thing you do isn't to go and grab a mop and start cleaning it up.

Probably the first thing you do is you would shut off the tap.

The vast majority of the plastic that we use is actually for packaging, it's like 39%.

But packaging becomes a waste as soon as you receive the consumer product.

(upbeat guitar music) - [Narrator] Silicone is an alternative to throw away plastic.

Even though it's made with synthetic polymers, it's reusable and resists high temperature so it won't shed particles as easily.

Reusable bags, bottles, natural fabrics, bar soap, glass storage containers, and buying in bulk are other options.

- In the 1960s and 70s when we started going from reusable cans and bottles to one-way cans and bottles, people had to learn how to throw them out because they just weren't used to it.

And when plastic bags first hit the grocery stores, people didn't like them because they didn't stand up and they were flimsy and they had problems with it because they were new.

We learned to use these single-use plastics and they've made our lives more convenient.

And I get that, but I spend most of my work days looking in a microscope and I see the consequences of those actions.

And I tested my snow last winter and we found some plastic particles in it.

Weighing the pros and cons of those, I personally just don't think it's worth it to, to sacrifice our health and our children's health.

And whenever I hear something like, "Oh, it'll take 400 years for the polystyrene to break down."

What does that even mean?

We don't truly know what happens to it.

What we do know is that when it's left in the environment, depending on the condition, it just breaks into smaller and smaller parts.

And they're, they're going to, they're going to be around for a long time.

So if we want to do something about that future, then we need to start making changes now.

(swing clarinet music) - [Announcer] Which fish species is native to Minnesota and which is the invader?

The invader is: Round Goby.

How do we tell invasive Round Gobies from native Sculpins?

Adult Gobies are light gray with dark blotches.

Sculpins are brown with mottled blotches.

Gobies have a fused pelvic fin resembling a suction cup, which no native fish have, and they have a prominent black spot on the first dorsal fin.

Round gobies have fine scales on their bodies.

Sculpins have none.

Why are Round Gobies a problem?

The three to six inch long invasive Gobies attack and take anglers bait, out-compete native fish for food and spawning habitat, and eat their eggs and fry.

They might also help spread avian botulism.

Where are Round Gobies found?

The invasive species is found in Lake Superior, but not yet in Minnesota's inland lakes.

We can stop these invaders from infesting more lakes and streams by cleaning up everything we pull out of the water.

It's a simple drill.

Clean in, clean out.

Before leaving a water access, clean your boat and water equipment.

Remove and dispose of all plants and aquatic species in the trash.

Remove drain plugs from your boat, drain bilge, live well, and bait containers and keep them out when transporting your watercraft.

Dispose of unwanted bait in the trash.

If you've been in infested waters also spray your boat with high pressure water, rinse with very hot water, dry for at least five days.

Stop the spread of AIS.

Funding for this segment was provided by the Aquatic Invasive Species Task Forces of Wright, Meeker, Yellow Medicine, Lac Qui Parle, and Big Stone counties.

(gentle marimba music) Funding for this program was provided by: Safe Basements of Minnesota.

Your basement and foundation repair specialist since 1990.

Peace of mind is a Safe Basement.

Live Wide Open.

The more people know about West Central Minnesota, the more reasons they have to live here.

More at livewideopen.com.

Western Minnesota Prairie Waters.

Where peace, relaxation, and aprinities await.

And the members of Pioneer PBS.

- Congratulations.

- Thank you so much.

Thank you, thanks so much.

- Emily, what are you going to do tonight?

- I'm going to shower because I smell real bad.

(laughter) - Soak your feet?

- My sister barely hugged me last night, she said I smelled too bad.

So I'll probably do that.

Find a bunch of food to eat.

For people who know me, I know I'm a little smaller than probably the last time you saw me.

Probably eat a little bit of food and- - Eat a lot of food.

- Sleep, yeah.