Arboretum Diary

"Nothing more important now than reveling in shifting panoramas, exploring scenes remembered vaguely from the past, surcharging minds and spirits with color and warmth against the coming white and cold. There were many places to go, each one different, places that somehow had poetry of their own and, while part of changing of the scene, stood out and said: 'Enjoy me while you can.'" – Sigurd Olson from "Falling Leaf"







11/3

The vibrant changing of the dynamic landscape of the Arboretum isn't as easy to celebrate on long and thick foggy days.  With even the mildest prospect of sun, the palate opens up as if an offering to all those who give a quick walk through prairie a chance.  It's little more than a two mile drive from the west of Madison and before you make three right turns there is the enclave of forest and diversity,

just this morning so thick by a cloud of fog over the damp wetland that you might think wintering birds could easily rest on the top as if on a floating blanket. A simple walk might start directly from the vast parking lot and on into any number of hip wide trails that move through marsh grass as tall as a man, often lined by timber trails that elevate the path above the murky underbrush.  Here is the place

that the walker who "remembers vaguely from the past" might begin to enter into the companionship of Aldo Leopold, pioneer of the early Arboretum concept, planner of rehabilitated landscapes, the experimenter of prescribed fire, and certainly the key voice for the idea of nature as living history.  He would have to point out the confluence of many waterways along this outskirt of Lake Wingra, the tensions between city water run off and the filtering mechanisms of any marshland.

Holding ponds, thick with duckweed, might house a mink or two, maybe an otter, but that the beaver would more likely be spotted some distance behind us, deeper into the timber marsh of Wingra.  Flying over the rougher contours of the city -- especially hustle and bustle of the highway -- any migrating fowl might likely locate this patch of abundance for a temporary break.  Taken as a whole, he might say, what we see today is as close to what we might have seen in 1840 (pre-settlement) as anything else around.  Left to its own devices, the colorations of the day, the chlorophyl in the leaves

having now deadened and turned to its wintering dessication, coordinate with respiratory system of the falling cool air and rising moisture of dew and soon evaporation.  Time lapse cameras have shown this breathing pulse in slow motion over the great jungles of South America, evidence to the claim

that trees breath and release like the human mechanism.  The fountain like blast from the red maple in November is a plant strategy for survival; the deeper the taproot, the more prospects for finding moisture when the ground water disappears.  Some lone geese seem to provide the scene its short term historical marker by the short winded sounds they produce as they wave goodbye to a good host.