Arboretum Diary

"I sat there on the end of the point, my senses all but fused with enveloping silence, I gradually became conscious of a soft undercurrent of sound like the coming of a wind from far away or something long remembered." – Sigurd Olson, from "The Whistle"









5/9

Because there are so many, it's far too easy to pass by some of the big and little gems of the Arboretum. Through the east entrance, off of Haywood Street, which then quickly scoots along to Vilas, the road is long, winding and slow, often thick in jogging traffic, and there is virtually no parking to left and right because this is Gardener and Red Winged marsh – the water nearly reaches the road at points.  But I would suggest that when the day does come when the first small parking lot affords a place to park, take it, walk across the road and seek out the little two-rail board walk.  Throughout the Arboretum, you might find board sections placed down in the walk for the assistance of the adventurous hiker who does not want to stop in Gallistel Woods on the way to Lost City, or who most certainly doesn't want to have to stop mid-way at Greene's famous prairie at the Grady Tract.  But only two places that I have visited offer the boardwalk continuously for the entirety of the destination, here at Gardener and over at Wingra Savannah.  There is something very magical about a

long board cutting and curving through raw woods; maybe it is the illusion of human safety against a natural environment, or maybe it the simple knowledge that your shoes won't get dirty, but I know that I would follow this yellow brick road of sorts across the country if it were offered me the chance.  Through the approaching marsh thicket and peat soil, the boardwalk heads straight out to a look out over what we could call, here in a larger city anyway, a large marsh, one that was donated back at the inception of the Arboretum by a local bakery owner who wanted to make sure this swatch of backwater stayed as it was supposed to be.  The first lookout allows the willing – and maybe brand new – viewer a good indication of a cattail marsh and slough.  The redwings, as they tend to do in habitat, flit about and cry out to each other, standing at their posts momentarily, then off to the next brief sentry duty.  This was the place that Leopold wanted to once turn to wildlife and waterfowl refuge, replanting around its edges to screen from any other non-native infringements.  Take the boardwalk to the small sister wooden lookout, where there are no other viewers, and take a seat in the old wooden cut-out of chair and marvel at the total envelopment of invasive cattails, which create

such a morass of beige burly headed foliage that only the courageous researcher might try to pass with chest waders.  The thicket, and its untouchability, though, is what likely makes this one of the most productive habitat types known.  The marsh serves a filter of overflow; its deep thick peat teeming with organisms; small mammals find the invincibility of the cattails, most certainly, as workable privacy.  Unlike other portions of the Arboretum, you are not bound to find much evidence of human activity out there in the marsh and because of that it preserves, without trying quite as hard as the prairie restorations or oak savannah maintenance, what Wisconsin was pre-settlement.  In that chair, time turns to a few other things than miles on tires or deadlines set by reminders on a phone – it moves by the scrub of the cattail stalks against one another, the chortle of the fidgety red-wing, the two geese calling out, maybe for no reason at all, as wings slap slowly over the uplift of warm air rising from the engine of the marsh.