Nature Journal

5 June

Once we found out that Ishnala Supper Club was only three miles away from where we were staying, we had to make the trip.  Back roads in the Dells – just off the main Parkway – open up to a past generation of simpler lake resorts and many old defunct cafes and restaurants that seem barely alive, but they are (earlier in the day I had discovered on a jog an old log cabin tavern on Lake Delton.  I couldn't figure out how such a place, so hard to find, could have survived over the years, until I ran down to the water at its frontage and looked out onto the lake only to see Tommy Bartlett's lakefront auditorium seating directly across from the bar).  On our drive to Ishnala we passed a pack of old red cedar cabins that must have been part of the old Jellystone Park because one of the buildings said Cindy's.  We both agreed we remembered Cindy Bear from the Yogi cartoons of old.  Old Gasser Road moved deeper into the Dells lush woodlands.  Ishnala from the road looks something like a standard attraction advertisement, but as you weave down through the fringe of the Mirror Lake landscape (same road that was filmed in Johnny Depp's movie Public Enemies), you can begin to see

that you are moving toward some deeply wooded gem.  Ishnala looks a bit like a Hiawatha village scene out of a Disney animated movie.  The parking lot leads down a gardened path to a dark wooded building set directly over Mirror Lake.  Nooks and crannies along the walking paths around the restaurant open to views of the sparkling lake.  An old canoe hangs before the entrance – an old Ho Chunk canoe found years ago at the bottom of the lake; and an authentic teepee stands at one corner of the surrounding deck to initiate the Native American theme.

Arrowhead bar juts out onto the lake itself and you can watch kayakers paddle underneath.  Out on the lake there is very little traffic other than paddles, a result of a low wake rule which keeps most boats off.  A couple of anglers scouted the banks across the lake with slow casts.  Today the sky was still moody and only partially sunny, but when its was it kindled the stretch of lake right off the balcony where we sat.  Pieces of sun would reflect onto the live-growing pines climbing through the restaurant floor.  As I ate my plate of roast Wisconsin duck, I thought I could taste the Mirror Lake waters.