Kevin Koch -- ​The Driftless Land
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Gibraltar Rock & Columbia County, Wisconsin

9/10/2020

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Gibraltar Rock is a 200-foot sandstone cliff overlooking Columbia County and the Wisconsin River.
     A half-dozen raptors rode the thermals just beyond the 200-foot sheer cliff face at Gibraltar Rock State Natural Area near Merrimac, Wisconsin. This, no doubt, was the best way to take in the views of the sandstone bluff and the valley farms beneath, as well as the Wisconsin River and the Baraboo Hills on the horizon. For Dianne and me, it would take a full day of  hiking, bicycling, and touring by car just to dip lightly into what southern Columbia County, located about 30 miles northwest of Madison, had to offer.
     We started our day at Gibraltar Rock, hiking a four-mile leg of the 1100-mile Ice Age National Scenic Trail. The Ice Age Trail winds through Wisconsin, roughly following the end moraine of the last glacier. The Gibraltar Rock segment of the trail pads upward along a slightly twisting trail softened by pine needles dropped from towering white pines. The soil is cushioned, too, by sand that had been ground up and dropped by the continental glacier that once topped the 200-foot bluff with another 1000 feet of ice until its retreat 10,000 years ago.
      Gibraltar Rock itself is a sandstone butte, formed in shallow Ordovician seas 450 million years ago and then uplifted along with the rest of the Midwest. More tightly compacted in comparison to neighboring sandstones, Gibraltar Rock held together when water and ice eroded the surrounding bedrocks, resulting in the 200-foot cliff face.
      Ten thousand years later, Dianne and I enjoyed the results, eating our packed lunch at the cliff overlook while watching raptors glide in the updrafts.  We sat on a natural stone bench a safe and comfortable ten feet from the drop-off, but wondered at the scattered, gnarled cedars that overhung the cliff face like reckless gawkers.
     Later, we swapped our hiking gear for sandals and shorts and drove the short distance to the south shore of Lake Wisconsin, a 7200-acre reservoir on the Wisconsin River impounded by the Prairie du Sac hydropower dam. The dam, southernmost of 25 hydroelectric stations on the Wisconsin River, has been generating electricity since 1914.  Today the lake above the dam is a haven for boaters and fishermen, kayakers and canoeists.  Below the dam, the Wisconsin River flows naturally, dam-free and unobstructed, for 93 sandy miles from Prairie du Sac to its confluence with the Mississippi.
      We took a casual walk to watch cars, trucks, and motorcycles disembark from and load onto the cable-drawn Merrimac Ferry that crosses Lake Wisconsin and returns every 15 minutes from mid-April through November.  Listed in the National Register of Historic Places, the ferry dates back to 1851, when it began linking the “settlements” of Madison and Baraboo along what is today Highway 113.  It is the last remaining ferry among 500 that once plied across the Wisconsin River at various times and locations. The State of Wisconsin has operated the ferry since 1933. The price is right: vehicles, bicycles, and foot passengers alike cross the lake for free.  Indeed, the ferry is the official pathway across the Wisconsin River for through-hikers on the Ice Age Trail.
     Lake Wisconsin may be an artificial wide spot on the Wisconsin River, but not far upstream once sat Glacial Lake Wisconsin. This glacial-period lake, 160 feet deep and eight times the size of  Lake Winnebago (Wisconsin’s largest modern-era lake), was fed by the Wisconsin River and dammed by a wall of glacial ice.
     As the glaciers melted, the river wore away at the ice obstruction, and when the wall of ice finally gave way, Glacial Lake Wisconsin drained quickly and catastrophically, carving out the renowned Wisconsin Dells, flooding the lower Wisconsin River valley, and even barreling down the Mississippi River and deepening its valleys. When the lake was fully drained, the deep, clean, shifting sands of the lower Wisconsin River and its valleys—the famed “sand counties” of Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac—were left behind. 
      Standing on the shore of today’s Lake Wisconsin or viewing the river from the distant Gibraltar Rock, I could only imagine the long-ago wall of water plundering down the valley.     Our final venture for the day sprawled out over 23 miles of countryside via bicycle. (Columbia County publishes a bicycle route map with 14 loops on low-traffic roads, with routes ranging from 10 to 34 miles.) For a long while we passed in view of the Gibraltar Rock cliff face, experiencing the sandstone bluff from the valley base upward. Later we reached some inland lake country roads winding between Crystal and Fish lakes. Recent rains had flooded shoreline marshes and boat ramps. Along a stretch of road closed to vehicle traffic, lake waters were spilling across farm field fences and flooding into fields through an eroded nine-inch canyon in the pavement.
     A series of hill climbs took us back out of the lake country till a final, steep descent led us back to the Wisconsin River, where we’d parked the car. We’d covered a lot of ground in a single day.
We got a taste of Columbia County on foot-trails ascending Gibraltar Rock, at Lake Wisconsin watching the ferry transporting cars across the Wisconsin River, and inland, by bicycle, watching floodwaters racing into fields.
    I thought back to the raptors, though, circling beyond the cliff face while we ate our lunch. They’d seen it all—the cliff, river, and valleys, the wall of ice at the glacier’s edge and the deluge of water racing downstream when it all gave way.
     Theirs was a more patient existence than mine, taking it all in, circling in the thermal updrafts over time.

August, 2020
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Gnarly cedars line the overlook path at Gibraltar Rock State Natural Area near.
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Lake Wisconsin is the southernmost dam-impounded lake on the Wisconsin River.
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The Merrimac Ferry, free to vehicles and foot-passengers, has been crossing the Wisconsin River since 1851. It is the last remaining ferry on the river.
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THE DINKY TRAIL & BIG GREEN RIVER

6/29/2020

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Streams gush fully-formed from springs along the Dinky Trail, joining to form the Big Green River
            The Big Green River arises from numerous gushing springs in Grant County, Wisconsin, and rushes headlong to the nearby Wisconsin River. Perhaps this clear trout stream takes its name from the rich, emerald green of the river valley, a green so brilliant and plentiful in late spring it seems as if the other colors of the palette have departed.
             Departed, too, but still commemorated, is the narrow gauge railway that once chugged up the river valley.  Known to locals as the Dinky Line, the long-defunct railbed has by now disappeared into the landscape.  But its general path is marked today by a back-road bicycle route known as the Dinky Trail, established in 2015, running 16 miles between the towns of Fennimore and Woodman.
            On a day of pastel-blue skies that only late May and early June can produce, Dianne and I laid out a 35-mile bicycling path encompassing the Dinky Trail.  Starting from Lancaster, we climbed a slow ascent past woodlands and corn fields, past two historic churches—Mt. Zion and Mt. Ida—and then began a two-mile descent on County K, laying off the pedals and letting the rear freewheels whiz like the casting sound of the trout fishermen’s reels we’d soon encounter.
            Ordinarily we would have rolled on down to Woodman, where we often disembark from the Wisconsin River on kayak outings, but instead we cut the downhill short and turned right at the Green River Road and onto the Dinky Trail, following the river valley gently upstream.
            From 1878-1926 the Dinky line clawed up the valley from Woodman to Fennimore, but after it was disbanded its railbeds were deeded to adjacent landowners, beginning its long subsuming back into the landscape.
            The Dinky line was once part of a 92-mile narrow gauge rail (with a three-foot rail-width) that traversed southwest Wisconsin. In 1882 the rest of the line was converted to standard gauge (at 4 ft 8 in.), but the Dinky route was too steep and included a horseshoe curve to navigate the hills that prevented its conversion.  So the 16-mile stretch of the narrow gauge Dinky Line remained as a link between the standard gauge rail line along the Wisconsin River at Woodman and the uplands rail line at Fennimore, carrying mail, produce, livestock, and even school children between the two towns.
            The Dinky was Wisconsin’s longest-running narrow gauge line until it was finally disbanded in 1926. Today Fennimore commemorates the Dinky in the old depot museum with vintage ticket booth and telegraph switchboard, model trains, and photos of the Dinky.  The museum grounds display a 1907 narrow gauge engine, replica water tower, and a functioning children’s miniature-scale rail line.
            But that wasn’t on our minds as we cycled up the river valley.  Instead, we passed the time on the long, slow climb admiring the green-saturated swells of wooded knolls and grassy pastures. Here and there an old fence bisected the fields, but elsewhere the pastures stretched unbroken, dotted here and there by oaks and grazing cattle.
            Along the road a spring erupted from the base of a wooded hillside, gushing from the rocks a foot wide and six inches deep, then splashing down small waterfalls enroute to the Big Green River.  The Big Green is fed by numerous such springs, some of which pump thousands of gallons of fresh, cold water per minute into tributary streams, creating excellent trout stream habitat.  We stopped for a while to watch a dozen or so anglers wend their way upstream.
         Bradd Sims, Fisheries Biologist for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, explains that the high water table amid the hills, valleys, and bluffs of the Driftless Area act like a water tower pushing water out through cracks and fissures, through springs, at a constant chilled temperature of about 50 degrees.  According to Sims, “The good spring flow and steep gradients keep the streams aerated, making for good for trout habitat,” especially for naturally reproducing brown trout.
           A 1970s easement purchase program gave anglers access for moving along the stream bank without trespassing.  In the 1980s riprap was added for streambed protection and better habitat. The Big Green River has eight miles of public easement, making it one of the more heavily used trout-angler streams in the area.
            For us, this was neither a day devoted to fishing nor to railroad memorabilia.  But a bicycle ride on the gently climbing Dinky Trail along the Big Green River offers a chance to ponder how the landscape connects the past and the present just as assuredly as rail lines, back roads, and bike routes connect people and towns in the Driftless.
 
-- June 2020
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Verdant hills, valleys, and grasslands provide a pleasant distraction on the uphill bicycling climb.
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A sign in Fennimore, WI, announces the back-road trailhead of the Dinky Trail.
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Numerous cold springs unite to form the Big Green River, a favored trout fishing stream with public right-of-way near Fennimore.
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The long-defunct Dinky narrow-gauge rail line ascended through the Big Green River valley in southwest Wisconsin.
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Sinsinawa Savanna Restoration

4/22/2020

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An oak savanna, such as the one under restoration at Sinsinawa Mound, blends prairie and forest ecosystems.  ​
       Ronald Lindblom, Land Stewardship Director at Sinsinawa Mound, has a copy of the Sinsinawa Land Ethic statement displayed prominently in his office.  Among its Guiding Principles is the statement, “Land is sacred.  We are stewards, preserving the land’s natural resources.”  Lindblom points to it and says, “Every day I look at it and think: ‘What am I doing?  I’m doing this.’”
       What Lindblom and his staff are doing—among other stewardship tasks—is restoring a 26-acre section of oak savanna on the Sinsinawa campus.  Sinsinawa Mound, home to the Sinsinawa Dominican sisters, once boasted a natural progression of prairie, oak savanna, and mature woods that was common to this area.  Settlement changed all that. Prairie, by and large, was converted to agriculture and towns, and the suppression of fire led to overgrowth in remaining savannas and woods.
        Prairies and woodlands once stretched across vast areas of the continent, but oak savannas occurred in niche ecosystems such as the Driftless Area.  From Dubuque to Madison, the rolling hills were home to a grass-and-woodland blend in which the prairie was dotted by hardwood oaks.  Prairie fires kept other forest trees at bay, but thick bark protected the oaks, resulting in scatterings of majestic lateral-branched hardwoods amid a rolling mat of tallgrass and prairie flowers. 
       Along with fire, elk provided a second maintenance crew on the oak savanna, says Lindblom.  The prairie had its bison and the woods its deer, but the Driftless Area was once home to the densest concentration of elk in North America.  As grazers, elk helped keep the savanna free of competing woodland species.
       Sinsinawa Mound was subject to the same Euro-American settlement pressures that altered the rest of the landscape, says Lindblom. Even prior to the Civil War, the area’s oaks had been cut for fuel and construction.  But at Sinsinawa, the savanna regrew in non-developed parcels once ownership was transferred to Samuel Mazzuchelli and the Dominican Sisters in the 1840s. The second-growth oak savanna sprouted from acorns already in the ground, awaiting the right circumstances.  And since oaks require open canopy to regenerate, the clear-cut savannas ironically provided the right conditions for regrowth. 
       But other conditions had changed.  At Sinsinawa, as across the Driftless Area, the loss of prairie fire and elk “opened the gates,” says Lindblom, and invasive tree species rushed down from the north and up from the river bottom, choking the savanna and woodlands with maple, cherry, box elder, and elms, not to mention an influx of thick, thorny bushes in the understory.
       The recent deaths of several old oaks provided a wake-up call to Lindblom. Fearing an oak blight infestation, Lindblom invited a specialist to Sinsinawa to examine them. Instead, the specialist simply said that the oaks had died of old age.  Many of these oaks from the 1840s through 1860s still grace the landscape at Sinsinawa, but they are coming to the end of their lifespans.
       The overgrown woods and aging oaks provided a double problem: with no fire and elk to clear the shaded ground, new oaks would not regenerate to replace the old.
So Lindblom is trying to help nature along.
       “We are creating a video in reverse,” claims Lindblom. “If you took out all the trees that were less than 40 years old, you’d see what the landscape looked like 40 years ago, and so forth back 70 or 100 years. We’d like to get the savanna back to the way it looked 150 years ago,” shortly after the Civil War.
        The first step, commencing in December 2018, involved removing invasive plants and all non-oak trees with trunks less than 6 inches in diameter.  After controlled burns planned for 2020-21, Lindblom and his staff will monitor the natural return of oaks and prairie grasses.  Then they will repeat the process with removal of non-oak trees with trunks of less than 8 inches diameter, another controlled burn, and so forth, gradually restoring the landscape to an oak savanna.
      Gradual restoration is important, though.  The current landscape is like a living organism, Lindblom explains, and “we don’t want to shock the system by doing everything all at once.”
Lindblom pauses and ponders.  “Some people ask if it is ‘natural’ to restore a landscape. Why not let Mother Nature take its course?”  Lindblom explains, “Not much of the natural world remains, so while it is artificial to restore nature, it is up to us to manage what is left.”
        By cutting trees we are “putting more light on the ground,” Lindblom explains. “Ideally we want our own oaks and prairie plants to regenerate from the native seed bank that is still in the soil, but we don’t know yet what will still be there. It is tempting to seed the area, but we prefer to wait. Our goal is to wake up the savanna that used to be here,” he says.
       As the Dominical sisters consider their legacy at the Mound, the concept of land ministry has emerged to help carry out their mission. 
       Other restoration goals include recreating the natural landscape progression from prairie to savanna to old growth forest that existed when Mazzuchelli obtained Sinsinawa Mound.  Lindblom is working to replicate the original ecosystem proportions on 160 of Sinsinawa’s 452 acres.  Sinsinawa’s agricultural land, encompassing 246 acres, is already certified organic, with a focus on permanent cover.  
       With much of his work underway and more to come, Lindblom and the Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa are in the process of putting some of the land into the Mississippi Valley Conservancy to secure its preservation into the future.
       After restoration, Lindblom hopes to see the oak savanna offering habitat to more prairie bird species like grasshopper sparrows and sedge wrens alongside savanna species like the northern shrike and Bell’s vireo. One way to measure the success of the restoration will be through monitoring these indicator species. 
       “They’ll tell you by showing up if you did it well.”

-- April 2020
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​Many of the oaks at Sinsinawa Mound date back to the decades just before and after the Civil War.  Photo supplied by Sinsinawa Dominicans, Inc.
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​Oak seedlings need sunlight to sprout. Restoration puts sunlight back on the savanna floor.  Photo supplied by Sinsinawa Dominicans, Inc.
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Some of the oaks at Sinsinawa have reached the end of their lifespan. Thinning of the underbrush and small trees allows oaks to regenerate. Photo supplied by Sinsinawa Dominicans, Inc.
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Mississippi Mounds: Native American Burial & Ceremonial Mounds Line the Upper Mississippi River

3/8/2020

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​The Dunleith Mounds of East Dubuque are visible on the bluff when traveling East across the Julien Dubuque bridge.
        The snow-encrusted brush and loose branches piled into a long-demolished farmhouse’s foundation took a while to set aflame, but when the bonfire took off, it lit and warmed the prairie above the Mississippi River. 
        It was “Bonfire on the Bluff” night at Casper Bluff south of Galena, IL, an archaeological site of 38 Native American conical and linear mounds—including one magnificent Thunderbird mound—cared for by the Jo Daviess Conservation Foundation.  Candles placed along the trails ushered night-time visitors to blufftop views of the Mississippi brooding beneath.
        The bonfire was near, but respectfully distanced from, an elliptical Native American earthwork constructed between 700-1000 AD.  Earthen enclosures like this were used for rituals, dances, and gathering spaces.
        That night amid the candle-lit trails, we were not the first to revere and admire the mighty river.  Native American burial mounds constructed during the Woodland Period from 200 -1100 AD dot the length of the Mississippi in the Driftless Area along, attesting to the long draw of the sacred river. Human presence along the river dates back 10,000 years, long before mound-building began.
            It occurred to me then how many mound sites I had visited over the years, all within 250 river miles.
                                                            
        Furthest north on my personal list is Perrot State Park just north of Trempealeau, WI, home to more than a dozen mounds.  A trail rising 500 feet above the river culminates at Brady’s Bluff, where several extraordinarily-preserved mounds tower above the river. 
          Above the town of Trempealeau, archaeologist Ernie Boszhardt once showed me platform mounds constructed by Native Americans from Cahokia (near today’s East St. Louis), who were moving up the river during the Mississippian period, around 1100 AD.
       Downstream from Trempealeau lies Effigy Mounds National Monument near Marquette, IA.  I can’t count the number of times I’ve been there.  In one of the most significant Native American sites in the nation, Effigy Mounds preserves almost 200 burial and ceremonial mounds, 29 shaped as bears and raptors. 
        My most recent visit was with a friend who’d not been there before. We hiked to the Marching Bears formation featuring ten bear-shaped mounds arranged head-to-tail in single file pointing southward 450 feet above the Mississippi.  Three raptor effigies accompany the bears, their wings spread as if in flight and their heads pointed toward the river beneath the bluff.  Two of the raptors scout out ahead of the marching bears while the third corrals the rearmost into line.  The largest bear measures 137 feet from nose to tail, and the largest bird’s wingspan is 212 feet.
       Burial and ceremonial mounds were meticulously constructed.  Burial chambers were dug into the landscape, and mound soils of varying types and textures carefully layered above to withstand erosion through the ages.  Soils from the river bed were carried basket by basket up the bluff trails—perhaps the very one we’d hiked—to be placed upon the mounds, suggesting the sacred regard given to the Mississippi.
       While most such burial mounds are located on bluffs above the river, the Effigy Mounds Sny Magill Unit lies at river level, several miles south of the bluff-top mounds.  Here 100 conical, linear and effigy mounds have withstood a thousand years of repeated flooding.  When I returned from a three-month stay in Ireland a few years ago, on my first day home I walked amid these mounds with my wife Dianne to reorient myself to my own sacred places.
       On Dubuque’s north side, 32 mounds grace the Little Maquoketa Burial Mounds site on a bluff a short distance from the Mississippi.  East Dubuque is home to the Dunleith mounds, where four magnificent burials keep watch over the Mississippi.  Prairie restoration at the site has returned the mounds to their original look.  These mounds are clearly visible on the Illinois bluff when driving east across the Julien Dubuque bridge.
       I have encountered burial mounds in the bluffs at the Mines of Spain.  Once, on a woods hike by myself, I came upon a depression I assumed was a lead mine of the type the Mines is known for.  But when I spied three adjacent mounds, I had a sinking feeling that the depression was a long-ago desecration of the grave.  But I have no way of knowing.
         I’ve taken students hiking at Bellevue State Park.  The northern end of the bluff offers an iconic overview of the town and the lock and dam alongside it.  A southern overlook is reserved for burial mounds scanning the Mississippi.
      The river bluffs above Albany, IL, harbor 26 mounds constructed between 200 BC and 300 AD.  The mounds are located in a 205-acre state historical site of woods and prairie.
        The Black Hawk State Historical site in Rock Island memorializes the Sauk village that prospered there before the 1832 Black Hawk War.  But it also preserves burial mounds that long pre-date the village.  I once visited these mounds before retracing, by car, the 500-mile trek of Black Hawk War. 
      No doubt I have overlooked many mound groups, and I have not even mentioned mound locations away from the Mississippi.  These are merely the ones I have visited along a 250-mile swath of sacred river.
                                                                             
        Just before it was dark enough for the bonfire at Casper Bluff, Dianne and I gazed quietly at the Mississippi from a bench among the mounds. From here it was easy to imagine sacred burial mounds once lining the length of the river.
       And why not?  In Dubuque the Linwood and Mt. Calvary cemeteries lie near the Mississippi as well. Hasn’t the river mesmerized us for 10,000 years?  
       I try to be cognizant of cultural appropriation these days.  I make no assumptions about the lives and ways of the indigenous peoples who built these mounds.  Instead, I focus on what I believe we hold in common, though it often bears repeating, reminding, and re-teaching. 
        That the land that holds our dead is sacred. 
        That the land that bears and cradles our lives is sacred.
        That sacred lands be treated with reverence.

-- February 2020
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​The Effigy Mounds National Monument near Marquette, IA, preserves nearly 200 Native American burial and ceremonial mounds.
Picture​The Albany Mounds are located in a 205-acre woods and prairie State Historical Site in Albany, IL.
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Trempealeau Mountain in the Mississippi River is part of the view from the mounds of Brady’s Bluff in Perrot State Park, Wisconsin.
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A late-autumn view of the Mississippi River from Casper Bluff, south of Galena, IL.
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Whiting Forest of Dow Gardens Allows Visitors to Enjoy the Bird's Eye View

12/8/2019

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The rope hammock suspends visitors 25 feet above the Whiting Forest floor in Midland, MI.  Visitors can get an upclose view of birds.
       Suspended twenty-five feet in the air, my wife Dianne and I took turns lying back in an oversized rope hammock in the canopy walk amid the pine branches of Whiting Forest of Dow Gardens in Midland, MI. Beneath us strolled forest visitors, and among us flitted a range of Midwestern birds chattering about their fall migration plans. On this September weekend, Whiting Forest was hosting a major regional birding festival, but in between events we hung out for a while in the trees.
      Whiting Forest is part of the adjacent Dow Gardens, a botanical garden located on the former estate of Grace and Herbert Dow.  Herbert Dow was  founder of the Dow Chemical Company still headquartered in Midland, not far from Lake Huron. The Dows built their family home amid a sprawling property purchased in 1899.  In 1936, a few years after Herbert’s death, Grace created the Herbert H. and Grace A. Dow Foundation, and eventually turned the family property over to the Foundation to be operated as a botanical garden (with no direct ties to the chemical company).
       Today the 110-acre Dow Gardens boasts 35,000 annuals and 22,000 flowering bulbs laid out in geometrical patterns amid a wandering stream, ponds, and gently rolling hills. On this early autumn afternoon red Canna and Sunpatiens and yellow-petaled Brown-Eyed Susans popped brilliant against a light-blue sky. 
       The weekend we visited also featured a temporary outdoor metal origami sculpture exhibition by Santa Fe artists Jennifer and Kevin Box.  Amid the garden’s blooming treasures were origami-like sculptures of swans, butterflies, ponies, and bison.
          The 54-acre Whiting Forest became part of Dow Gardens in 1991—also by way of Dow family descendants—and was opened to the public in 2004.  The forest includes a mix of planted and natural regrowth red pines, tamaracks, and assorted hardwoods on lands that were logged in the 1870s and later reforested.  
      Kyle Bagnall, Advanced Learning Program Manager, calls the forest “a green oasis in an urban area,” although the city of 44,000 and surrounding area boasts several additional significant green spaces and wildlife refuges as well. Whiting Forest’s bird diversity is particularly pronounced, with native woodland species mingling with migratory birds in a flyway that emanates from nearby Saginaw Bay.
       In 2015, prior to Bagnall’s arrival, the Foundation commissioned the design of a handicapped-accessible canopy walk to bring visitors into the tree level and to overlook the surrounding landscape, pond, and apple orchards.  Ranging from twenty-five to forty feet in the air, the ¼-mile elevated canopy walk brings visitors eye-to-beak with birds at tree-top and mid-branch levels.  “Encouraging play at any age,” says Bagnall, the canopy walk also features two wooden tree pods and the rope-netted hammock for those wanting to nest for a while amid the pines.  
      When Bagnall came on board in 2017, he brought with him a combination of environmental education experience, birding enthusiasm, and historical awareness that perfectly suited Whiting Forest. With a college degree in Public History, he is aware of the need to preserve the legacy of the founding Dow family.  His environmental education experience was honed over twenty-two years at his previous position at the nearby Chippewa Nature Center. And birding has been in his blood since he was a small child, when his father would wake him for 4 a.m. local birding expeditions.  Kyle started making his own life-long birding list at age 10.
      At Whiting Forest, Bagnall soon set about planning the first Birding Festival for Dow Gardens. Like everything Kyle does, the event bustled with activity. Local and regional experts led over 150 participants to enjoy activities such as bird banding at Chippewa Nature Center, viewing herons, gulls and other waterfowl at the Nayanquing Point Wildlife Area, searching for woodland migrant species at the Pine Haven Recreation Area and Albert Szok Preserve, and scouting coastal birds along Lake Huron’s Saginaw Bay. Kyle himself blended history and nature, helping birders spot migratory species in Midland County’s historic cemeteries.
         Dianne and I hopped on board the two-mast Tall Ship Appledore, setting sail for Lake Huron’s Saginaw Bay, as part of yet another outdoor excursion.
        Indoor sessions included presentations on raptors, wetland preservation, “birding by ear,” and creating a bird-friendly yard.  Additional Festival workshops included nature writing, art, and photography. 
Culminating the festival was the keynote address by David Allen Sibley, author and illustrator of the New York Times best-seller The Sibley Guide to Birds, a work that participants look upon as the premier guide to birding.
 
        On Friday evening, nearing sunset, Dianne and I sat quietly at a table outside the Whiting Forest Café, while other festival-goers mingled nearby. Bagnall chatted with everyone.  Soon his phone buzzed, a text from birders in the nearby forest who’d spotted some specimens Kyle would want to see. 
       We all flocked, then, to the canopy walk, where the setting sun was bringing out new voices. Forty feet above the ground, we listened to the nighthawks.         
 
-- November 2019
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The 1/4-mile  Canopy Walk at Whiting Forest of Down Gardens puts visitors at bird's-eye view.
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​A pair of origami swans grace the Dow Gardens during a metal sculpture exhibit.
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​The Dow Gardens of Midland, Michigan, is awash in color in the early fall. 
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A GEOLOGICAL ROAD TRIP ACROSS DUBUQUE COUNTY

10/22/2019

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​Horseshoe Bluff at the Mines of Spain offers a vertical view 450 million years into the past.
           A geologist draws conclusions from the evidence and a writer draws a story from the details, Dale mused as we stood in line at Dubuque’s north-end Dairy Queen, about halfway through our recent geological road trip. 
            Dale Easley is a geologist who is also a gifted writer. I am a writer with a deep interest in geology. Over the years we’ve struck up a friendship that crosses disciplines and academic institutions (Dr. Easley is a professor of Natural & Applied Sciences at the University of Dubuque; I am an English professor at Loras College.) It was about time, I thought, to put his geologic vision to work on my home landscape. So we set out on an afternoon’s drive across Dubuque County, stopping at several locations to talk about rocks and homespun bedrock philosophies.
 
Horseshoe Bluff Quarry
            We are looking up from the base of Horseshoe Bluff, an abandoned quarry at the Mines of Spain, fronting a 200-foot sheer downcut through 450 million-year-old limestone formed in a shallow Ordovician seabed.
            Dale points out the neat horizontal layers. “One of the first things that I noticed as a geologist when I came here 15 years ago was that the rock layers were not folded like I’d experienced elsewhere,” he says, recalling the mountains where he’d schooled in North Carolina and Wyoming.
           In more stressed landscapes, rock layers have been twisted by the buckling and shifting of continental plates, he explains.  Midwest bedrock, on the other hand, formed in gentle ocean bottoms and then ever-so-slowly uplifted—today only 600 feet above ocean level 1000 miles from the sea—keeping the rock layers mostly intact.  Elsewhere in the Midwest those horizontal bedrock layers lay hidden from view, buried under the rubble and drift bulldozed along by the glaciers.  Here in the Driftless Area—bypassed by all but the oldest of the glaciers—the bedrock pokes out from the surface in bluffs and towers.
             Dale is a lot like this, calm and even-keeled, but, with a cup of coffee in hand, as deep as bedrock.
            .
The Mississippi River from Eagle Point Park
            “So what does a geologist see here?” 
            Dale frowns. “What I see is a lot of modifications made by humans,” he says, pointing to the lock and dam below us, one of 27 such structures on the Upper Mississippi built in the 1930s to maintain a 9-foot channel for barges through a series of stair-step pools. Commodity transportation may be more energy efficient by barge than by train or semi, but one thing for sure is that this is not the natural river.
            But then the geologist kicks into gear. “We’re looking at half a million years here,” he says, figuring the age of the Mississippi. The river valley we see today, though, was formed by meltwater surges from the northern glaciers only 15,000 years ago. Summer melt and ice-dam breaks sent water coursing down the Mississippi, deepening its channel through the limestone bluffs.
            “The river ran faster then, too,” says Dale. During the Ice Age, the sea level was 500 feet lower than today. As a result, the river ran more quickly along a steeper slope to the Gulf of Mexico. 
            When the glaciers had finished melting and the sea level reached its current level, the Mississippi slowed its pace, dropped its load of glacial outwash on the river bottom, and took to meandering through the deep flood plain it had carved.
            Our conversation meanders as well. We are in New Orleans, along this great river, where Dale taught for 15 years. And then we are back again,  alongside the Eagle Point Park fishpond, which, I explain to Dale, my father helped build during the Depression.

Balltown Overlook
            From the Balltown Mound, at one of Iowa’s most iconic overlooks, the land drops quickly away across farm and field on its way to the Mississippi River.
            We in the Driftless see our landscape as a realm of rocky bluffs and steep valleys amid the glacially flattened Midwest. But Dale sees a flatland plateau downcut by erosional forces.  Looking past the river valley and scanning the horizon, focusing on the river bluffs and beyond, I can imagine a vast, continuous plain. Geologists call it the Paleozoic Plateau. In the midst of the plateau, however, the Mississippi River, its tributaries, and drainage ravines have gouged deep scars.
            Rising above the plateau are the mounds that dot the landscape. Not far from Balltown Mound is the Sherrill Mound, and across the river the Platteville Mound, Blue Mound, and Sinsinawa Mound. The mounds, Dale explains, are called “resistant remnants,” the only remaining segments of a limestone layer that has since eroded away from the rest of the landscape. 
            I like the concept of “resistant remnants.” It describes pretty well the pair of us who bicycle or scooter to class against the prevailing culture.
 
Fossil Outcrop at Graf
            I explain to Dale that when our kids were young and the Heritage Trail newly opened, my wife and I would take them to Graf, Iowa, for railroad stories and pie at Smitty’s Tap, but also to hunt for fossils at a nearby rock outcrop. Our bike bags would be heavier on the return trip.
            The sun is sinking low as Dale and I scuttle up to the base of this same outcrop from the side of the road. The rock is thinly layered, fragile, crumbly to the touch. The fossils are squid-like nautoloid cephalapods that lived 440 million years ago.
The limestone here is intermingled with thin layers of dark shale that formed, perhaps, during brief interludes when an ancient river delta shifted, spewing mud into the sea.
             I imagine it layering stories into the seabed.
                                                                           *                      *                      *
           The land is a text written in a wordless language.  The geologist translates it. The writer gives it shape.  And that is how the world speaks across the ages.
 
October 2019

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The locks and dams on the Mississippi have altered the natural flow of the river. 
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​The overlook from the Balltown Mound offers an iconic view of eastern Iowa.
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​Rock outcrops at Graf, IA, are rich in fossils. 
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​Dr. Dale Easley, professor of Natural & Applied Sciences at the University of Dubuque, offered geological insights across Dubuque County.  
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Loess is more at Hitchcock Nature Center:  Unique ‘sugar dirt’ covers the land near the Council Bluffs location

8/4/2019

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​The ridges of western Iowa’s Loess Hills formed from wind-blown soil particles during glacial times. 
       “Sugar dirt” is what the pioneers called it, says Chad Graeve in reference to the Loess Hills soils of western Iowa.  Graeve, Natural Resources Specialist and Park Ranger since 1997 at the Hitchcock Nature Center about 15 miles north of Council Bluffs, is describing both the unique beauty and fragility of this rare land feature, a small corner of which is preserved and being restored at the Hitchcock Center in Pottawattamie County.
       The Loess [pronounced “luss”] Hills stretch in a thin band for 200 miles east of the Missouri River from Sioux City, Iowa, to northwest Missouri.  Its 200-foot tall spine-ridged hills formed during the last ice age as powerful winds swept fine particles of glacial outwash, or loess, into the air and dropped them east of the Missouri River in ridges like gigantic snowdrifts. The formation, covering 650,000 acres, is found in such quantity in only one other location on earth, in China.
        My wife Dianne and I, and friends Dana and Graciela, hiked some of the ten miles of trails at the 1300-acre Hitchcock Nature Center in the heat of a recent July afternoon.  Our hike included the Badger Ridge Trail, which arcs up and down what is called a “razor ridge,” a narrow grassland spine from which the land dips suddenly away in both directions. 
       The loess ridges rise and fall like camel humps before us, offering sweeping views of distant farmlands, restored prairies, and woodlands of western Iowa. Wildflowers such as the Wood Germander poked out from the prairie in the heat of the day.  The thinning of trees has allowed savanna wildflowers and prairie grasses like Silky Wild Rye to return naturally, without reseeding, after a long dormancy beneath the forest canopy.
        The sweeping vista and wildflowers exist courtesy of the unique loess soil.  A pinch of the fine, yellow-tan dirt exposed on the trail feel like a fine, brown flour between my fingers and thumb, and wafts quickly away in the breeze when released.
The loess soils are both stable and fragile. Left alone and prairie-covered, the hills are resistant to erosion.  But when disturbed by development or overrun by forest, erosion can be quick and devastating.
       Restoring the prairie is integral to preserving the loess landscape.  Graeve, a 1996 Biological Research graduate of Dubuque’s Loras College, explains that Native Americans) routinely burned the prairies, which discouraged forest creep, herded elk and bison to new grazing grounds, and gave the burnt prairie time to recover.  “Euro-Americans suppressed fires and kicked out the roaming elk and bison,” says Graeve, and as a result, forests have overtaken where prairie once flourished.  Since prairie soaks up rainfall so well, water now runs off the landscape.  Graeve adds, “When you deprive a system of water and sunlight, the system collapses.”
Through selective tree-cutting and aggressive annual fall prescribed burns, the prairie at the Hitchcock Nature Center is slowly returning to health.
       The Hitchcock grounds might well have gone the way of much of the developed Loess Hills, however.  From the 1960’s to 80’s the land served as a YMCA camp that introduced the city youth of nearby Omaha and Council Bluffs to nature, but then was sold to a private developer who intended to fill the steep valleys with refuse shipped in by train from New Jersey.
The developer began bulldozing some paths through the valley, whose scars are still visible today.      The bulldozed paths created erosional runoff noticeable to nearby landowners, and a conservation movement arose to stop the landfill project and protect the hills.  The landowner eventually defaulted on the property, allowing Pottawattamie County to make the initial purchase of land in 1991.  Graeve says the Center hopes to eventually expand the grounds and reintroduce bison where possible.
        For Graeve, though, preservation of the Hitchcock grounds is simply one part of the process of leading people back into “right relationship” with the land.  “The real challenge,” he says, “is that we live in a society that is inconsistent with how the natural world works, and we have a broken relationship with the land.”
      Indeed, Graeve dislikes the word “nature,” a term that creates a mental divide between our everyday experience and the non-human world. “People are related to the rocks, the birds, and the streams.  If we can’t overcome that disconnect, we’ll always view the land as subservient to us,” he explains.
       Graeve extolls a higher purpose as well.  Few of us, he says, “link our food and water to the land, and ultimately to the Creator.  We need to recognize our dependence on the land, and its dependence on us [for preservation].  Our relationship to the land needs to be one of respect, not dominion.” 
     Facilities and programming at the Hitchcock Nature Center are designed to “help people overcome their fear of the natural world and to come into right relationship with the land,” says Graeve.  Backcountry hike-in campsites for tents and hammocks spur off from the trails over moderate to challenging terrain. Programming includes summer camps for kids and Owl Prowls and Snowshoe Hikes for all ages.
        A 45-foot observation tower adjoins the interpretive center for viewing Iowa’s first Important Bird Area (IBA).  Hawks are particularly plentiful as they inventory the prairie for rodents and other small morsels.
      Graeve sees some, if slow, progress in Loess Hills preservation.  In the past few decades, western Iowa counties have enacted zoning laws to protect the hills from rampant development, he says, and there has been some increase in public ownership.  Additionally, conservation awareness of private owners has increased, “which shows that we’ve moved the needle a little bit.”  That said, “We still haven’t come to value this landform for its intrinsic value,” says Graeve.
The Hitchcock Nature Center is a small corner of the Loess Hills, itself a thin, though globally significant, landform stretching along one American river.  But preserving and restoring this one place, Graeve feels, is one step in bringing people back into right relationship with the land.
 
​-- July 2019
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​Loess (pronounced ‘luss’) soils are like a fine, brown flour, and are easily erodible when the landscape is disturbed.
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​Prairie flowers and grasses have returned naturally where the encroaching forest has been trimmed back. 
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​A 45-foot observation tower at the Hitchcock Nature Center near Council Bluffs offers wide vistas and excellent raptor viewing.
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​Backcountry hike-in campsites for single tents or small groups are available throughout the grounds, including some near the Hohneke Ponds.
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Jo Daviess County Spring Bird Count

6/12/2019

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Laurie Mattas, Chris Larson, and Dianne Koch search the treetops for eastern towhees at Horseshoe Mound Preserve.
     
​       We spot our first bird at 6:18 a.m., a killdeer hopping through the Piggly Wiggly parking lot in Galena.  “We’re not in our territory yet,” says Chris, “so we can’t count it.”
     Four of us had met up on an early May Saturday morning to participate in the Jo Daviess County Conservation Foundation’s (JDCF) annual spring bird count: Chris Larson, Laurie Mattas, my wife Dianne, and me.  Chris and Laurie were experienced birders and Board members of the JDCF. Dianne and I were along as novices. 
     We would be among thirty or so birders divided into ten teams, each with its own “territory” throughout the county in which to count birds and bird species. The results would then be tallied county-wide and submitted to a national data base recording the findings of spring bird observers all across the nation.
     JDCF Executive Director Steve Barg describes the task as “citizen science.”  With the compiled information, scientists can track population trends—declines or increases or movements of species over time. “Imagine if you had to pay 30 people in every county, every state, to do this.  It couldn’t be done,” says Barg.
     Our territory takes us first south out of Galena along Blackjack Road. We crawl along the road at a snail’s pace in Laurie’s Honda CRV, alerting drivers who come up behind us with a red “Bird Count Team” sign in the rear window. Laurie scores our first tally: a wren on a telephone wire.
    The tally sheet fills with checkmarks as we leave Blackjack and climb the entrance road to Horseshoe Mound Preserve. We see plenty of redwing blackbirds and robins along the road, of course, but also a kestrel on a telephone wire, two bluejays, and a meadowlark. 
     Exiting the car at the Preserve, Chris and Laurie listen first for the bird calls and then pick out the birds within a “Where’s Waldo” backdrop of trees and bushes.  “You learn to filter out the more common sounds, then listen for what’s different,” says Chris. Mnemonics help. Hearing a consistent calling of “Drink your Tea-ea-ea!,” Chris soon spies six Eastern Towhees, more than she’s ever seen in one place. 
     Laurie also spots a Towhee: “I’ve never seen one, so that’s new for me.  See, he’s sitting on that low branch, waiting for someone. ‘Come find me, I’m cute!’”
     Our path next takes us along Irish Hollow and several connecting roads. Sometimes we stop and walk a productive area, but frequently we drive slowly along the county roads, spying birds in treetops, fence lines, creeks, and at homeowners’ front-yard bird feeders.
     We spot a great blue heron tracing a creek through a valley. Laurie directs our attention to a cardinal’s “pew-pew-pew.” Ten cedar waxwings decorate a pine like flitting ornaments. “You can see the white bands in their wings,” says Laurie. Two chickadees. A red-tailed hawk in a tree branch.
      The day is ideal for birding. On a sunny morning we are a week past the last snowfall, before the trees have fully leafed out. And we are in a particularly rich environment, in the Driftless region and along the Mississippi River corridor. “There is a huge variety of bird species here because of the terrain,” Laurie explains, noting, too, that we are still in season for neo-tropical migrant birds.
     Jo Daviess County both reflects and runs contrary to trends across the country. In assessing the data, JDCF Director Barg says, “We look for birds we know are Illinois ‘species of concern,” i.e., those not currently listed as threatened or endangered but known to be in decline, such as red-headed woodpeckers, bobolinks, Henslow’s sparrows. “With climate change, we are seeing that birds whose northern range used to be southern Illinois are now much farther north.” But Barg adds that while some of these trends are likewise apparent in Jo Daviess County, in other cases birds that are becoming rare elsewhere are still thriving here. “Jo Daviess County is one of the remaining refuges,” he says.
      The region’s plentitude is apparent as we stop on a small bridge over Smallpox Creek. Chris and Laurie spot a belted kingfisher and count four wood ducks in the creek, a phoebe on a fence, two cowbirds. The lattermost, Chris explains, will lay her eggs in another bird’s nest, toss out the nesting bird’s eggs, and let the hostess raise the cowbird’s hatchlings.
     A next stop takes us to the Witkowsky Wildlife Area.  “OK, there’s something flitting around in there,” says Laurie before Chris finally spots a palm warbler, a tropical bird that winters in Central America.  Next up is a private pond, where Chris and Laurie debate whether the distant bird is a cormorant or a wood duck. Chris sets up her spotting scope on a tripod for a closer look before deciding it’s a wood duck.  “You have to work for some of these,” she explains.
     But there is a lot of laughter as well. Back on the road, Chris spots a bird out of the corner of her eye. “Did you catch what that was?” she asks Laurie.
     “Oh, just another lbj.”
     “An lbj?” I ask from the back seat.
     “A little brown job.”
     Dianne and I have only half a day to dedicate to the bird count. Laurie and Chris will spend the rest of the afternoon counting species before sharing their information with all the county observers at the JDCF potluck dinner. 
     But as we head back to Galena we encounter a couple of last finds: a bald eagle roosting in a roadside tree and three sandhill cranes combing through a hillside meadow. In all we’ve spotted 44 species on this early May morning.
     The bird count, says Barg, brings together people highly involved in conservation with those who are backyard bird-feeder enthusiasts. “People who love birds,” he adds, “care for the things that don’t have a voice in our world.”
    Except, of course, voices that trill, warble, and remind us to “Drink your tea-ea-ea.”
 
-- May 2019
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Teams counted 149 wood ducks scattered throughout Jo Daviess County. (Photo by Rich Mattas, contributed by Jo Daviess Conservation Foundation)
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Red-bellied woodpeckers were among the favorite finds on the Spring Bird Count. (Photo by Rich Mattas, contributed by Laurie Mattas)
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The Jo Daviess Conservation Foundation’s spring bird count winds through the back roads to tally bird species each year.
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Spring bird count teams stop at wildlife preserves in addition to combing the roadsides.
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THE ICE AGE TRAIL

4/16/2019

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The Ice Age Trail

         An overlook from the trail at Table Bluff peers 200 feet down across a gravelly outwash valley formed during the melting of the glaciers. For we are near the divide where parallel bluffs mark, on one side, the end moraine of rubble pushed along by the last glacier and, on the other, the defiant limestone outcrops of the Driftless Area that never submitted to the great ice.
     Table Bluff, located just northwest of Cross Plains, Wisconsin, is a small but noteworthy segment of the 1,100-mile Ice Age Trail (IAT) that winds from northwest to southwest Wisconsin, then pivots toward a northeast bent, roughly following the final edge of the glacier.
       IAT is a national scenic trail, one of eleven across the U.S. that includes such well-known giants as the Appalachian Trail.  Established in 1958, the trail is managed by the nonprofit Ice Age Trail Alliance and is maintained by volunteers along its corridor. Parts of the trail are owned variously by nature organizations, private landowners, state and county parks and forests, and the IAT Alliance. Almost 800 miles of an anticipated 1,200 miles are signed and open to the public, with the remaining miles on connecting road walks.
        On an early winter day, I spoke with Mike Wollmer, Executive Director of the IAT Alliance, at the organization’s headquarters in Cross Plains.  One difference Wollmer sees between the IAT and other national scenic trails is that Wisconsin’s never strays far from local communities. “We value the communities the trail passes through,” Wollmer says, adding that “meeting landowners and people in trail communities is part of the experience of hiking the trail.”
       Indeed, twelve “trail communities’’—towns and cities along the path, including Cross Plains—act as unofficial hosts.  The trail has been “woven into the fabric of these towns,” says Wollmer, a factor that contributes to the vast volunteer network that assists the handful of full time Alliance staff.
      Over 2,600 volunteers in local chapters contribute 82,000 hours per year maintaining the trails by mowing, clearing fallen trees, restoring habitat and more.  “Volunteers are our eyes and ears, telling us about weather damage and potential properties for sale,” adds Wollmer. They advocate for the trail in their communities, increasing its presence on maps and promotional plans.
         Although 180 hikers are known to have completed the entire route, including two who ran the trail in twenty days, most walkers are not interested in records. “You’ve got to ‘hike your own hike,” says Wollmer.  Most people walk short segments of the Trail rather than straight-through.  It can even be good for a quick mental release: “You can yell at a tree and just keep walking!”
             Or you can, like Wollmer, meet your spouse on the trail and marry her there, too.
       My hike at the Table Bluff segment resulted from Wollmer’s advice on how to fill the remainder of an afternoon. The trail here runs 2½ miles through the 73-acre Holmes Preserve, owned by the Alliance, and on through a 460-acre site owned by a local group called the Swamp Lovers.  
       Table Bluff offers a mix of open prairies, oak savannas, stream valleys, and steep forest ravines. Big bluestem grasses top out above eye level on the highland prairies.  A hardwood forest snuffs out the sunlight where it swallows the trail. The trail lulls a while through the woods before switch-backing in swift descent to the wide glacial outwash valley and ascending again into another thick forest with impressive overlooks.
          Ten thousand years ago the valley rushed wide and deep with runoff from the nearby melting glacier. When the meltwater receded, it left behind a thick layer of pebbly sand. Today’s remnant creek gallops along through a thin slice of the valley.
       This valley wetland and surrounding forest inspired four local friends to purchase and preserve the land over thirty years ago, says Lee Swanson, one of the four.  The property’s former farms were quite small and the land not that productive.  Gently mocking themselves for buying agriculturally “unproductive” land, they called themselves the “Swamp Lovers” to celebrate the preservation of the property’s rich wetlands. The group put the land in the  Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) and began to plant native prairie and encourage regrowth of dormant native plants. 
      When one of the four owners was tragically killed in a plane crash, the remaining three began to consider what to do with the land on a permanent basis. The Wisconsin DNR suggested they talk with a land trust that could preserve the property they had fallen in love with.  “The IAT stepped up with a solution and we put a conservation easement on the property and set up a foundation to support it,” says Swanson. The Swamp Lovers site will be deeded to the Alliance within the next few years.
       The Table Bluff segment of the IAT links to the town of Cross Plains via low-travelled Scheele Road, one of many such on-road segments.  Maybe one day the trail will be entirely off-road, but in the meantime, says Wollmer, hikers say the backroads segments are part of the overall experience where they often meet adjacent landowners.
   The trail enters Cross Plains along Main Street and passes alongside several local bars, restaurants, and coffee houses before pausing at the IAT Alliance headquarters.  It loops briefly north of town and then exits along Black Earth Creek, flowing through another glacial outwash valley.
     The town of Cross Plains takes its name from the intersection of early roads headed to Green Bay and Madison.  But here on the Ice Age Trail along Black Earth Creek, in full view of the parallel ridges of the glacial moraines and the Driftless bluffs, Cross Plains might as well have been a command, or a siren song, calling hikers to the Ice Age Trail.

​-- March 2019

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Kettle Moraine State Forest (Wisconsin)

2/20/2019

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​ The earth is ancient memoria. It holds within its layers every happening that ever was.
 – John O’Donohue
 
        The slopes of the lightly frosted path dropped steeply away into a stark winter woods. The narrow, curving trail was an esker in the Kettle Moraine State Forest South Unit in southeast Wisconsin. An esker, formed courtesy of our most recent glaciers ten thousand years ago, is a natural elevated path created by sediment dropped at the base of a melt-stream at the bottom of the ice. I remember its name by means of a visual alphabet: its twists and turns remind me of an “S-Curve.”
        Landscape is a text we can read. Stories accumulate here. I tick off glacial formations like squares on a bingo card as we hike through Kettle Moraine. A kame, shaped like the bottom half of an hour glass sand pile and formed much the same way from sediment dropped when meltwater plummeted down a vertical chute in the ice. A tear-drop shaped drumlin, fashioned from rubble dragged and scraped across the bedrock and whose arrowed edge points in the direction of the glacial crawl.
        Plus the two features for which the state forest is named: a moraine, the steep line of rubble pushed along at the front or side of an advancing glacier; and a kettle, a pot-shaped indentation in the forest floor formed by a huge chunk of calved-off melting ice. When the last of the ice chunk melted away, its indentation in the outwash floor became a kettle pond.
       Such is a reading of Kettle Moraine South Unit, a 22,000 acre state forest that stretches in a northeastly band for 30 miles beyond Whitewater, Wisconsin.
         My wife Dianne and I recently hiked on the Ice Age Trail in Kettle Moraine on a sunny but chilly winter day. More than thirty miles of Wisconsin’s 1,100-mile long Ice Age Trail wind through the state forest, roughly following the furthest advance of the last great glaciers. 
        The winter thus far had been mild, but a stinging wind swiping down from the north offered the imagination a hint of a glacial chill. But only a hint. In truth, the slight dusting of snow served mostly to offer some color contrast to the browned-out woods and brought the sometimes hidden glacial features into relief.
       In addition to glacial features, the forest chapters of oak, pine, and aspen punctuated with prairies, springs, and marshes offer habitat to coyotes, foxes, Cooper’s hawks, and sandhill cranes. Kettle Moraine is an Audubon Society Important Bird Area (IBA), home or breeding ground to 137 woodland, grassland, and marshland species.
       More of the Ice Age Trail climbs through the Lapham Peak Unit of the state forest, rising from a lowland boardwalk crossing over the marsh and scaling up through the woods to the peak. The trail passes alongside the 45-foot wooden watch tower capping the highest point in Waukesha County.
       But the land holds in its pages human stories as well and reminds us that our every footprint is inscribed in the landscape and is eventually swallowed by it.
       A hike through the Scuppernong Springs Trail near the north of the forest’s scattered holdings tells how humans have lived both with and against the landscape over time. Archaeological findings of arrowheads and flint flakes point to Native American encampments on high ground overlooking the marsh, the choice of location based on access to plentiful game and fresh water.
       White settlement altered the landscape. The 1½-mile trail brushes past the fading traces of an 1846 sawmill and the still-standing walls of a 1909 marl plant. Marl is a lime-based, grayish white soil formed at the bottom of glacial lakes and used as fertilizer and as building mortar. For six years up to 60 employees dug the clay out of the marsh, processed it, and put it on train cars on rail run specifically to the plant. By 1915 the plant was closed, the railroad abandoned, and the entirety left for the woods and marsh to reclaim.
       A 19th century cranberry bog and a trout hatchery flourished behind man-made dikes. These were removed in the 1990s to restore natural habitat along the Scuppernong River for native wild brook trout, beaver, otter, muskrat, and mink. The springs themselves can still be seen bubbling up from the marly clay bottom.
       At nearby Paradise Springs additional natural springs erupt where the water table is sliced diagonally by the rocky slopes. Thirty thousand gallons of fresh water per hour pour from the rocks at a constant 47 degrees, year round, into a scenic valley. The resources and scenery attracted both entrepreneurs and those seeking an idyllic escape from Milwaukee, about 40 miles away.  A ½-mile leisurely trail—much of it handicap-accessible, winds past the remains of a 1920s horse track and a water bottling plant that once produced the label “Lullaby Baby Drinking Water.” The plant’s foundations and cement stairway are all that remain.
       Beyond these lies the Fieldstone Spring House built in the 1930s to protect the spring waters. The Spring House originally sported a copper-domed roof. Roofless today, all that remains are the fieldstone walls and the spring as it emerges from the rocky hillside. The dammed-up pond still harbors trout. The grounds around the Paradise Springs Hotel, a popular honeymoon resort whose foundation ruins are located near the pond, once boasted a menagerie of peacocks, monkeys, and pheasants. All are gone now, except for the spring, the pond, and assortment of ruins and foundations.
        Historians speak of palimpsests, ancient and medieval texts whose base—whether parchment or animal hide—was so valuable that it was oft-reused. Old lettering was scraped from the pages to make way for new text, but the old still showed through faintly.
       Landscape is a palimpsest. Stories as ancient as the glaciers and first-peoples, as comparatively modern as abandoned factories and fisheries, and even as recent as today’s worn footpath sink back into—but still faintly grace—the land.
 
-- January 2019
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