Nature Journal

"When the glacier came down out of the north, crunching hills and gouging valleys, some adventuring rampart of the ice climbed the Baraboo Hills and fell back into the outlet gorge of the Wisconsin River. The swollen waters backed up and formed a lake half as long as the state, bordered on the east by cliffs of ice, and fed by the torrents that fell from melting mountains.  The shorelines of this old lake are still visible; its bottom is the bottom of the great marsh."
Leopold, from "Marshland Elegy"



24 Jan


Speeding along the beltline highway in Madison, you pass the Leopold Pines at Seminole Drive without really noticing. The old pines were planted there back in the 30's by Leopold himself and a few other UW Arboretum pioneers.  On the other side of the pines is the Curtis Prairie, the largest restored prairie in the world, where Leopold used to test his controversial notions of the prescribed burning of the landscape for the sake of natural rejuvenation. Walking trails criss cross the now frozen long prairie grasses, then duck and weave into the woods back behind the nature center and old WPA barracks and organic raised garden.  The Gallistel Woods houses a turkey feeder ten feet tall and from there endless rows of turkey feet stamped across the snow like hieroglyphs.  They trudge across the Longenecker woods, we assume seeking more seeds or handouts from passers-by and circle around every species of tree imaginable.  Each tree is metal tagged, listing species and year planted.  Alders are grouped by alders, lindens by lindens.  River birches of all varieties spiral up out of their trunks and seem to sleep alone in these artful rows. We crossed the road at the far end of Longenecker to a trail that we hadn't seen before at Lake Wingra where we came across open water not yet frozen.

We later found out that these series of two or three open inlets are natural springs.  At one, small ripples came bubbling up from under mossy rocks; at another, the water came out of the shale

underground layer underneath the roots of an old oak.  The water wasn't warm to the touch but warm enough to keep the ice off.  Vibrant green duck weed floated around the springs. We took a deer trail out into the marsh beyond the spring where giant deer beds had formed in a cove of cattails that glowed golden under the falling sun.  When we laid down in the cattails the wind seemed to stop.  The sun warmed the grass, the ice but another layer of insulation for the creatures of the night.