A thru-hiker's diary from Wisconsin's Ice Age Trail reads like a wildlife sound reel: distant thunder, three wolf packs howling at sunset, snorting White-tailed bucks, and Sandhill cranes calling across Dog Lake. The recurring theme? Whether hikers should listen to music at all.

The writer pushes back on the internet consensus that earbuds ruin your connection with nature. Their approach is practical: low-volume earbuds, one out when passing other hikers, both removed for a chat. And there's a genuine scientific-ish reason to keep the tunes going — earworms. During a silent, frosty morning on the Pacific Crest Trail, "Frosty the Snowman" lodged itself in their head for ten miles. Music, they learned, is the best defence.

Then there's the survival story of the MP3 player. Caught in a torrential downpour near County Highway F, the device got waterlogged when a jacket pocket failed. It spent a night inside a sleep-sock, incubated on top of a foot like a penguin egg, then rode a shorts pocket for a day along the Mondeaux River eskers. Three days later it resurrected — display dead, one button broken, stuck on shuffle — and fought off earworms for the rest of the hike.

The trail itself delivers plenty without headphones. Out of Rib Lake, a string of pickups loaded with baying hounds passed by; the next morning their kennels sat at a trailhead, hounds sounding off in the direction of the route. (A shuffle of "Dueling Banjos" would have been fitting.) Near Mueller Lake in Polar, the nature-versus-technology argument flipped: a lakefront neighbour ran a monster outdoor sound system playing 70s Spotify playlists for three hours. If earbuds disconnect you from nature, they apparently don't disconnect you from man-made noise either.

There's wildlife drama too. Camped at an overgrown five-way junction of disused dirt roads, the hiker was woken at 1:15 AM by a low, rumbling growl from an unseen, apparently large animal. Fifteen minutes of call-and-response later, it padded off. Morning research confirmed the likely culprit: a badger. Wisconsin is, after all, the Badger State.

For walkers considering the Ice Age Trail, the account is a useful field guide to its quirks. It's a work in progress — one three-mile out-and-back near Grandfather Falls got skipped on FarOut commenters' advice, replaced by a ten-mile road-walk. Town stops matter: Rib Lake offers a gas station, Java Journey cafe, a True Value, Dollar General for resupply, and rooms at Camp 28. Trail magic exists too — fellow IAT hikers shared their campsite at Wood Lake County Park and cooked gnocchi with pesto and freshly foraged Chicken of the Woods mushrooms.

Transport-wise, note that hitching isn't always easy: outside Rhinelander, an hour of thumbs got nowhere, Uber failed, and a local cab saved the day.

As for the headphones debate — the verdict here is that a little background music doesn't mute the wilderness. The wolves still howled, the badger still growled, and nobody at Mueller Lake drowned out the 70s FM rock blaring from the shoreline. Hike your own hike, but maybe pack a spare MP3 player. Original reporting by The Trek.