What if you could take your love for biking and nature to create a unique and thriving business? Meet Adam and Mica Harju, the dynamic duo behind Dirt Candy Designs, who turned their passion into a successful bike trail building company, building extraordinary trails across the United States and in Aruba. Join us as we uncover their inspiring journey of starting a business from scratch, overcoming challenges, and balancing their work and relationship along the way.
Discover the fascinating art and science behind bike trail construction as Adam and Mica break down their process of working with the land to create natural and accessible trails. From Adam's lifelong biking experience and his talent for spatial relationships, and Mica's conservation core background, their combined expertise makes them the perfect team for this one-of-a-kind venture.
Whether you're a hardcore biker or simply intrigued by trail building, you won't want to miss this insightful and inspiring conversation with the energized team behind Dirt Candy Designs.
What if you could take your love for biking and nature to create a unique and thriving business? Meet Adam and Mica Harju, the dynamic duo behind Dirt Candy Designs, who turned their passion into a successful bike trail building company, building extraordinary trails across the United States and in Aruba. Join us as we uncover their inspiring journey of starting a business from scratch, overcoming challenges, and balancing their work and relationship along the way.
Discover the fascinating art and science behind bike trail construction as Adam and Mica break down their process of working with the land to create natural and accessible trails. From Adam's lifelong biking experience and his talent for spatial relationships, and Mica's conservation core background, their combined expertise makes them the perfect team for this one-of-a-kind venture.
Whether you're a hardcore biker or simply intrigued by trail building, you won't want to miss this insightful and inspiring conversation with the energized team behind Dirt Candy Designs.
Welcome to Stories in Life. You're on the radio with Mark and Joe. We share stories that affirm your belief in the goodwill, courage, determination, commitment and vision of everyday people.
Mark Wolak:
Our goal is that through another person's story you may find connection, no matter your place in life. Stories we select will be inspiring and maybe help you laugh, cry, think or change your mind about something important in your life.
Joe Boyle:
Join us for this episode of Stories in Life.
Mark Wolak:
Today, on this episode of Stories in Life, we're going to hear from a young couple who are building single-track bike trails all over the country. Their company, called Dirt Candy Designs, is located in Grand Marais, Minnesota, but they've built really remarkable trails in Minnesota, Idaho, Texas, Colorado and most recently in Aruba. I met Adam 10 years ago. He was a skipper of a steel sailing ketch and Mica was employed at the North Folk Schoolhouse. They started this business from scratch. We're going to hear about what's that like for them and also get to know them a little bit about their passion for trail bikes and trail biking in the United States. Welcome, Adam and Mica. We have with us Adam and Mica. Joe, you and I have been talking about visiting with them for a day or two.
Joe Boyle:
They have a good story to tell.
Mark Wolak:
They have a great story to tell. Do you want to kick us off?
Joe Boyle:
Sure, the name of your company is Dirt Candy Designs and you build bike trails. Okay, how did it start? How did you get it off the ground? Was it a passion project?
Adam Harju:
Yeah, i think we're passionate about biking and really enjoy trails and what trails provide to people. But the whole turning it into a business thing kind of happened pretty organically up here in Grand Marais. There was just a need and there was no one to do it. I was kind of at the point where I was ready for a little bit of a career change, so I decided to jump in and kind of learn how to do it and make it happen And within a couple of years it was already to the point where I was so busy where I was like I need some help. Fortunately Mica had she had been a former conservation core worker and so also had that experience. Okay, that was a great idea. Thank you, yeah, i think it's a nice way to do it. Okay, i think it's a good way to do it. You know passion about trails So it was just a very natural, you know, mesh of us working together.
Mica Harju:
When Adam was on his own for about a year or two and in his off time he'd be like let's go, let's go. You know, i don't have any trail to build, you know, let's let's go travel for a month. And I always had the nine to five jobs. So I'm like, well, i can't really do that. And so it was. It was a, it was a nice opportunity for us just to like kind of join forces and go into business together, and that way we could be working together but also playing together.
Joe Boyle:
So so did you maintain your nine to five job in the meantime, or did you jump off?
Mica Harju:
I jumped. I jumped off a cliff, Joe, You know, in the beginning I kind of was the steady, "steady Eddie paycheck while Adam explored, you know, trail building. And then, once he said he got busy and this was actually going someplace, then we decided to going on it together And I said goodbye to North House Folk School, where I was working, and we went full time.
Mark Wolak:
You know, what I thought was kind of cool is that one of your hashtags was "couples that play together, stay together." That was pretty cool And you know, Julie and I have we've had kind of the same belief system. You got to have fun together to keep things going. So one of the curiosities I'm sure our listeners are going to have is you work together all day. right, you're doing some really heavy lifting. This is not like paperwork. You're doing some really heavy lifting. It's stressful. How do you turn it off at the end of the day? How do you go from working together to just relaxing like you are tonight?
Mica Harju:
Yeah, good question. It's definitely something that we've been trying to work on through the years to to create that balance between work and just the relationship, part of our life, you know, and so I feel like the best thing for us is like physical activity.
Mica Harju:
And it sounds crazy after being so physical all day long, but to get on our bikes and go for a ride And it's like once we get on a bike and on a trail it's like everything else kind of melts away And you're just really focused in on where you are and what your body is doing and just having fun and being playful And it can kind of just de-stress you know the day. That's what I feel like.
Adam Harju:
I would agree completely. I was going to say ironically, it's like getting on our bikes at the end of the day is the best way to, like you know, go forward into the off time.
Joe Boyle:
So you guys have been riding bikes for many, many years.
Adam Harju:
I grew up riding bikes, racing mountain bikes and stuff like that. Mica came to biking much later in life.
Mica Harju:
Yeah, i mean, like growing up I had like the 10 speed, you know, but I really wasn't into mountain biking until my adult life. So I don't know, you kind of influenced me to get into it And I kind of tried it and thought, wow, this is great. And then, once we started building trails, i really immersed myself into it, obviously, and just embraced it even more.
Mark Wolak:
Yeah, you can tell that you guys are, you know, definitely doing this together. One of the team. People have to go to see your website because there's some really cool videos on there of the projects that you've had. So you know, we'll make sure that we keep sending people that direction. It's Dirt Candy Designs, right, Dirt Candy Designs.
Mark Wolak:
One of the things in there that captured me was you let the land define what you do, and you know, for a lot of people that are busy really busy lives, busy jobs that to me was like being really present in the moment, looking at nature as not something to fight but something to listen to. So tell us a little bit about how you do that. Anything come to mind when we talk about that?
Mica Harju:
Well, that's kind of the backbone of how we approach trails. Adam has a wonderful gift of spatial relations, like as we're walking through an area. A lot of times we'll design trail And so, even before the equipment is out there, we're just walking through the woods and trying to get a feel and envision, like what an experience on a bike or hiking you know we do hiking trails too but how that would feel for someone And just kind of letting the landscape speak to us. And, we find in building it's so much easier and the product is so much better when you work with nature, instead of just trying to force it into something that we might have thought that this would be good here Instead, like how can we work with what Mother Nature is providing us to really enhance the experience all around? So it's kind of we kind of feel like we're it's a canvas and we're artists, so to speak, and just we're kind of painting these trails, you know, through the landscape and trying to bring out and enhance the natural elements that are just present there.
Joe Boyle:
Keep the beauty there and allow other people to get in there and see that beauty.
Mica Harju:
Absolutely, absolutely yes that accessibility and for them to experience it themselves.
Joe Boyle:
So how does that all work? How does it start? You wanna put a bike trail on a specific beautiful piece of land. What do you do to get it from an idea through the actual trail?
Adam Harju:
It's a long process, for sure, and usually it comes, you know, the idea is spurred by some local enthusiasts, at whatever park or forest or you know whatever, and they start, you know, kind of working it through the layers of local government, trying to get approvals, trying to get some input from the community as to whether this is like a viable project or not. Once they get to that point where they're like yes, we wanna put trails into this park or this forest land, that's usually then when we would get the call to come in and do some design and conceptual work to try to like figure out what exactly can fit into this land. And then from that point on, we go to like doing the actual like on the ground, designing, and then the project usually goes out and to bid and different contractors will bid on it, and then that's when the building happens And then it kind of gets turned back over to the local clubs to like maintain and nurture that trail.
Joe Boyle:
So you earn your money creating the actual trail, that's okay. Yeah, no maintenance afterwards. You move on to the next one.
Adam Harju:
I mean we do, you know we do. Part of our job is definitely doing some like rehab on trails. We've done a fair bit of that over the years. We have done some trail maintenance, you know. So there is a need for that because a lot of these trails happen in areas where there might not be a huge volunteer base or sometimes you have these weather events that lead to like having to come in with just heavier equipment to bring it back to its original you know state, Yeah.
Mark Wolak:
So I'm going to go back to something Mica said, Adam, She said that you have this ability to kind of see it. It's kind of an intuitive skill you've got there. What is that about? I mean, where did that come from?
Adam Harju:
That's a good question, because I've never been like an artist growing up. That was my least favorite thing to do is to try to create something. I just felt like I wasn't good at it. But somehow just sitting behind the controls of the excavator feel a lot to me like sitting behind the handlebars of the bike, and so when I'm looking at that landscape I can just feel and imagine what the feedback that I'm going to receive on the bike, even before I'm digging through that dirt. So it's kind of a magic in my head. But, it works. And, I think it's really a good for us. it's valuable that I can do that, because it definitely creates a better product at the end. I know what riders are going to feel before we even start getting rid of the top soil.
Mark Wolak:
So I saw evidence of that on one of the projects where you had this bridge you were building. It looked like four by fours and maybe two by sixes or some incredibly big bridge you were building. And in the middle of the bridge it turned and went yeah, so is that what you're talking about? It's an intuition on your part. You can see that.
Adam Harju:
Yeah, yeah, exactly, whether it's like a bridge feature like that which was kind of one of our like wow, that was a big project, that was a 60 foot bridge over another trail, but even, or even just like, oh, we just need a little bit more dirt on the right side of the trail right there. So, like you know, when you're riding through it, it just gives you that little bit of like extra. You know grip to like get around that corner faster or just to make it feel smoother. And you're not, like we're saying before, you're not fighting the nature, Like nature is just taking you through the woods.
Joe Boyle:
Yeah, What was the first trail you built? Which one?
Adam Harju:
Ah, that's a good one. Up here in Grand Marais at Pincushion Mountain Recreation Area. We built about nine miles of trail there over a three year period And that's kind of where we cut our teeth, you know learning about, you know different trail construction, And it's a good, challenging place to build because there's bedrock, there's great dirt, there's, you know, a little bit of everything. So we've kind of it was a really good kind of proving grounds for us to kind of get our bearings and figure out how we do all this. Yeah.
Joe Boyle:
Are you able to quantify how many people use your trails in a given season?
Adam Harju:
Wow, boy, that's a good question. I don't know, And you know it definitely depends on the area and you know some places we've built, you know, just naturally because of their location, get higher ridership than others. But you know, I mean it's definitely, you know, in the thousands of people every year on most sections of trail.
Mark Wolak:
Yeah, So on the nine mile trail, because I'm thinking, you know, most people don't even walk nine miles.
Mica Harju:
Right.
Mark Wolak:
So now you made a trail for biking nine miles. What were some of your surprises on that? You know, as the builder of that. What were some of the things where you you know you looked at what could have been a failure and you turned it into a win.
Adam Harju:
You know, I think on that particular trail there was a lot of bedrock and you know, up here on the North Shore in Minnesota, wherever there's bedrock the water tends to find the surface. You know, it just comes out of the ground in the bedrock. So that was like one of our biggest challenges, i think, was just managing where that water is going to magically appear every time it rains or the snow melts or whatever. And then we found areas that were just like the best dirt we've ever seen on the North Shore And it's like totally random. So it's like, oh, suddenly now we found this amazing like vein of dirt. We're going to just we're going to build like berms and it's going to feel like a roller coaster instead of riding over bedrock, you know. so just being able to adapt, i think, is pretty, pretty key.
Mica Harju:
That was teachable. Teachable moments for that. Especially in the beginning days where we were just trying to learn as much as we could, and so that trail taught us a lot.
Joe Boyle:
So what year was that your first trail?
Adam Harju:
I think that started in about 2011.
Joe Boyle:
Where do you see it going? You know where did it come from in the last, say, 20 years and where's it going to go in the next 20? Is that a fair question?
Adam Harju:
I think that is a fair question. You know, and I think you know when you, when you talk to some of like the industry you know professionals or old timers or whatever they say but one of the biggest you know impressions in mountain biking in the last 20 years is the trail itself. You know, more than any of the gadgetry that we put on our bikes, it's the quality of the trail and the diversity of trail has really kind of just opened up opportunities for all spectrum of riders. So you know, i think that that's like the biggest change we've seen in the last 20 years is like wow, now there's a trail that's fun for like literally almost anybody. You know it's really neat where you know, when I was riding as a you know, young teenager or whatever, it was just like literally do your trails and forks roads There was like there was nothing that resembled anything that we're doing today, and so I think that's kind of just been a really neat evolution to watch and just seeing the variety of people getting into the sport is super satisfying.
Adam Harju:
Where is it going? That's a good question. I think it's just going to keep, kind of like the umbrellas getting bigger and bigger. So you're seeing more and more like just manicured bike parks, like you know, big city infrastructure, you know, with metal bridges and stuff. That's like literally artwork. And then there's also like trail systems that are like trying to kind of go back to the roots and trying to get it like kind of like you'd call it old school and just rug it and more raw and natural, and so I think it's just the umbrella keeps growing And I think that's what kind of makes it a neat industry.
Joe Boyle:
Do you consider go ahead, Go ahead.
Mica Harju:
I feel too like where are we going? I feel like bike trails are becoming what like baseball fields were, you know, into communities and towns and cities. You know the amenity of a lifestyle was like a tennis quarter, basketball quarter, baseball field, and now add in mountain bike trails. Really do feel like it's headed that way.
Joe Boyle:
Skate park, stuff like that.
Mica Harju:
Exactly.
Joe Boyle:
Yeah, right.
Mark Wolak:
Before we leave that arena. One of the things that I'm thinking about as you're talking about that then, is sort of this complexity of sophistication and then the simplicity of just being with nature. I think of you and the design work that you guys are doing as more towards a simplicity of nature. What's your thought about that?
Adam Harju:
Yeah, i think that's probably a pretty accurate assessment. You know, i think we work best, we do our best when we're like as far off a grid as possible, like that's kind of our niche is to just really just be well into the woods, whether it's designing or building, like oftentimes you know, camp on site in the woods for a month at a time, you know building a trail, like away from our normal comforts of home or whatever. And so like I mean I would agree with your assessment that like the more nature, the more rugged, the better for us. That's just, that's our jam.
Joe Boyle:
Sounds like a really cool lifestyle.
Adam Harju:
It's fun.
Mark Wolak:
Okay, as we transition to the rest of Adam and Micah's story, we certainly learn that they each bring a contribution to the work they're doing. We were a little intrigued with what is this spatial awareness that Adam is talking about. A person with spatial intelligence has a cognitive ability that allows them to perceive their surroundings a little differently than most of us. A person with this kind of awareness can easily and accurately understand their physical position relative to themselves, their environment and the people around that environment. So it would make some sense that Adam would be really good at managing that heavy equipment and figuring out the best way to do that, as he's looking at the woods, looking at the trails and thinking about the best way to go forward. So we're going to listen a little bit more to how that skill plays out into their business. But also we know Mica brings some unique talents to this business, and so we're going to be listening, for what is it that she brings that's unique, that she might share with us in the second half of this story.
Joe Boyle:
And now it's time for stories in life, art from the heart, deep thoughts from the shallow end. Each episode, we bring you a poem, a song or a reading, just for you.
Mark Wolak:
For our deep thoughts from the shallow end. Today we picked a poem by David Whyte, a poet who works in leadership in Northwestern United States, and this poem is called Lost, and we think this poem really fits what Adam and Mica do for a living. So here we go. The poem again is called Lost.
Mark Wolak:
"The forest breathes, listen it answers I have made this place around you. If you leave it, you may come back again saying here, No two trees are the same to Raven.
Mark Wolak:
Well, folks, we've reached the end of another episode and we want to give our special thanks to Adam and Mica Harju for sharing this time with us and giving us so many things to think about. So special thanks to both of them. I just think they were cool.
Joe Boyle:
They were really cool and so many people could learn a lot from those two. So we hope you enjoyed this episode of Stories in Life on the radio with Mark and Joe.