Gosling

It's interesting to imagine that our very own La Crosse River Marsh was initially paid attention to by city leaders in the late 19th century not only as a potential residential neighborhood, but as a possible sight for the Interstate fairground!  Over time, we've schemed so many possible 'uses' for the marsh that it's hard to keep track of: it missed becoming a permanent mid-town golf course because, well, there's a lot of water down there. It served for awhile as a trap shoot range and gun club congregation.  We've linked new roads through the marsh so they could all hook up with other main thoroughfares, and the universities have filled up  many acres (8.3 in 1981) in all parts of the lowlands for the sake of athletic complexes.  City soccer fields.  Industrial parks.  Maintenance and construction dumping grounds. Power lines and station.

Sometimes though, we've found, it's neat to just ride your bike through it like it's marsh, all green and wet with a bunch of animals, fish and birds doing their thing as best as they can within the encroachment.  We rode last friday night from Myrick to downtown in order to check out Big Al's eatery, and found ourselves on a not-so-surprisingly wild ride.  The marsh is a veritable hot spot for wildlife.  For any kid bored with 'just looking at trees,' take them to the marsh, and they will see something run, dash, swoop, gulp, hover, squawk, howl or snap, guaranteed. As we started our bike ride, we watched an old wobbly raccoon come up out of the embankment of the marsh lake no doubt to make his evening rounds sniffing out the free stuff laid out by the day's travelers near the garbage can.  Down into the trail, a mallard and two young scooted through the fibrous duckweed; a heron perched on its two steady sticks under a mossy tree nearby.

We took our left turn onto the new paved marsh trail leading west downtown through tall channels of  marsh grass. It was at this point that we thought we had hit the end of this particular road – the trail had flooded in several spots upcoming.  As we rode up to the lip of the first flood zone, we looked over to the widening marsh and could see several dozen nearly hidden black heads bobbing up and down from the thick of the marsh grass – a band of Canadian geese nested and tending to their silent goslings.

We sized up the puddle ahead and decided to go for it slowly. As long as we were willing to live with the possible spray on the backside and submerged tennis shoes, it should be fun.  I led the way slowly as not to spray, and once I got to the high ground again waved Julia and Carly to come on over the deep long puddle.  On the other side, resting along the warm pavement, was a mother duck and her handful of ducklings.

The mother swiveled her neck to ward us off and gave off a hissing sound.  Carly thought one or two ducklings might make for good live pets, but we assured her that they would grow quickly, learn to fly sooner or later, and that our ceilings were only so high in the house.  At about the deepest part of the next puddle, a similarly sized duck train swam across the puddle heading toward the main lake.  Carly had to weave left and right as she was going over water, never quite losing control, thankfully, and plunging in.  Under the Lang Drive overpass, and through the jungle-like forest of the La Crosse River, we battled swarming gnats, wet heat, and many 'phantom' snakes, but we persevered into

what was likely the truest and most complicated danger of the trip....downtown La Crosse!  We dodged road ragers and friday night hooligans, but made it finally into the darkly shaded pizza mecca of Big Al's where we

recaptured our adventures waiting for long service...then remembered, oh yeah, we still have the ride back!