Nature Journal

"In the marsh, long windy waves surge across the grassy sloughs, beat against the far willows.  A tree tries to argue, bare limbs waving, but there is no detaining the wind."
– Leopold, from "November," A Sand County Almanac















22 November


We follow the wind another day. This time, after some bike travel back to the low side of the Oak Trail in the deep valley of north Hixon, we ride south and west toward the RR tracks at the old nature center.  As we slog through the near frozen sodden trail and grass of the golf course, we hear a train approach, heading north, so we stand and wait.  The train slows and stops, the caboose but dead weight one hundred feet south of the old crossover.  We ride over rugged rip rap, carry our bikes over two sets of tracks, looking at the tail end of the train right at eye level, only to find a relatively new chain link fence with no access to the old parking lot.  I heave one bike up over the top.  Parts of the handlebars and gear cables stick in the sockets of the fence and it stays suspended on the other side, so I tempt my luck and try the same with the second bike. It too sticks in the fence and doesn't drop to the ground.  So we climb up and over, land on the ground, then casually pick up the bikes and let them gently to the ground and take to the weaving trail which leads down to the tunnel underneath the overpass.  There's little snow left on the ground, but its blustery, slate gray now, the afternoon sun doing its trick disappearing again over the ridgeline.  An old favorite trail, hugging the shoreline of the great La Crosse River marsh, connects Hixon to the Myrick, and is easy to bike, an occasional bridge

constructed over small gullies.  Out on the water the year's first thin sheen of ice.  A trio of white swans splash in the middle where it is still open water.  Out of the cover of the forest wind slips over the surface of the land unobstructed by anything more than the occasional patch of reeds or deeper in, the goliath cottonwoods.  As the bluffs rise up on either side of the Mississippi, here in the marsh is where the creeks come to filter and grow lush forms all summer.  Here at first freeze you can just about the hear the long exhale of the backwaters as the season rests.