Nature Journal

27 September



There are few better things to do on a September weekend in La Crosse than to get your "duff up the bluff" as many times as possible...before the perfection of the mild weather turns gray or cool.  Up at the HPT's the Epic Bike Race took up most of the parking real estate, so I continued to drive up along The Rim of the City Road to the furthest parking area where there were only a couple of cars.  An old access road serves as a good clearing to get onto the old Mathy quarry rim.  When you stop and look out over the landscape, if you didn't know better, you might easily think you were somewhere else completely than the mild bluff lands of the midwest.  Steep rolling green hills merge up here with cliff face and the panorama, stubbled by wild flowers, is vast and nearly mountainous in its contrasts in geography.

This pic might just as easily be taken up in the butte plateaus of Montana or the sandstone rednecks of Utah or Colorado.  From here, toward the direction of town, abandoned mining architecture and access trails; towards the east side of the rim, looking out over the green spines of the coulees.  I

circled back and took one of the strands of the HPT trails back toward the weather station off of FA.  Over a wood planked bridge and on up through switchbacks, curving through beds of understory roots.  The north facing gullies of the bluffs are lush and prehistoric.  All rock, green and root, until I reached the trail flags signifying the bike race.  Riders whizzed by, eyes down, at the maximum speed allowable without losing control, in essence becoming the trail.