On the Yahara A-Z

V.

Vegetation up close from the Lake Wingra Boardwalk Extension Project.  Some of the greatest natural gems in and around Madison are right inside the city itself. Access to natural resources had

been a priority of Madisonians since the conception of the Pleasure Drive organization began setting aside green space before that notion had become anything close to fashionable.  Olbrich Gardens formed as a means for sharing a natural habitat with those might not otherwise get out into nature as a result of long work days spent inside.  The Arboretum, once a farm, was not carried forward as a space for more factories, but was set aside as a sight of natural beauty and shared for the purposes of education.  With these city foundations in mind, the traveler never knows where the next investment

in green might come.  Parks line the lakes seemingly every several blocks. Trails and bike paths assert themselves where other cities might add asphalt instead.  So it should come as no real surprise (although it still did) that behind the campus at Edgewood Schools Campus a spectacular little boardwalk trail leads from the front stoop of the Mazzuchelli Biological Station down into the depths of the Wingra Marsh, allowing the thoughtful walker to see no more than inches away the very thickset understory of a living marsh and shoreline habitat.  We found it by accident as asimple walk after school along what is called the natural pleasure drive trail located directly behind the backyards

of Edgewood.  An environmentally sustainable building, the Mazzachulli Center, stands at a shallow ridge overlooking Lake Wingra, and there, out before it, a system of boardwalk trails students use for recreation and classroom driven biological research into the secrets of wetland functioning, including the advance of invasive species and the natural service of marshland filtering.