Rocky Arbor State Park

Early May weather at full force here in the Dells on a saturday afternoon – long splashes of open sky, then, as quickly, cloud cover, leaving unpredictable patterns of shadows along the pine ground-covered  valley here at Rocky Arbor State Park.  The Dells are blessed with a similarly driftless landscape as La Crosse, but in more dramatic flourishes.  Rocky Arbor, just off of the first exit into the Dells on Hwy. 12, is just about the most efficient way to get a quick glimpse of this drama as you can find, minutes away from the commercial jungle of the tangled Dells Parkway and downtown.

The layered rock structures that enclose the small marsh valley (and miniature stream), was created by some 500 million years of geological tinkering.  With a bit of assistance from a geological imagination, one can picture a time in this region when sand grains deposited by rivers into shallow seas covering this area.  As the seas receded the sand compacted into sandstone.  Forward some eons, and the Wisconsin River, a larger survivor of geologic time, cut out the gorges we now see in the dynamic and exclusive landscape.  Considering such vast stretches of time, we are left simply to create our own narrative for how those odd gems of lone standing stones, seemingly sculpted by a larger than life cake knife, were created...but down along the bottom portion of the return hike, through the almost prehistoric looking lush swamp, stands such a stone, budding trees out of its top and sides as if on display for the sake of both nature lesson and visual entertainment.

Up above our very own neighborhood, here in Blue Collar La Crosse, a similar stone, not buried down in swamp, but nearly floating up at the top of the sandstone ridge line reminds us of the regional heritage we share as we follow the corridors of the history of ice, water and rock, that constant panorama that defines our place even moreso than any interstate highway could.