Arboretum Diary

"We were within the limits of the pine-hemlock forest. On the courthouse lawn in Portage we saw a section of a huge white pine, with a bronze plate, explaining that this was a piece of one of the very last of the Big Pines of Wisconsin. In Wausau there was another section, with another bronze tablet."
           – May Theilgaard Watts, from "Camp Sites, Fires, and Cud-chewers or How the Upland Forest Changes from Illinois to Wisconsin"




5/17

Learning to read the landscape must be a cumulative science; or is it an art?  A short walk inside the Wingra Woods near the Skunk Cabbage bottoms and past the Big Spring, the novice has to make due with limited training and perhaps take more license with art than science.  Is it woodland phlox that is found to either side of the trail? Is it the eastern or western meadowlark that has casually decided to perch onto a basswood near the rim of the marsh where a fellow trail walker has recently mentioned seeing an ovenbird? What species of owl is that hauntingly whoooing from further into the wood plot just this side of the street from Gallistel?  The eye of the artist stirs in the direction of each flash of color and song chirring from behind the oak stumps.  The silhouette of a woodpecker scampers from mid-tree to plunge behind the trimming of reed grass out of sight.  Skunk Cabbage

Bridge boardwalk is not supposed to be hiked, bridge out, but back there, as the trail meanders behind the grand elephant ears of skunk cabbage plants, we have read that the Ho-Chunk used to live along the creek Rexoro Ska Nisanakra (white clay spring), and we can surmise, biology or not, that this would have been a lush convergence of food supplies including fish from the lake, slinking wetland animals, turtles, wild rice, maybe corn or squash upland.  Nearby at Mai Wago Pi we might be able to see with our historical imagination a native family settled in under an opening in the trees, their birchbark house squat and stiff, hopefully tight enough to keep the ever-present hordes of mosquitos away with the assistance of a smudge fire, the children helping skin deer hides to tan and the father, trained for all seasons, carving jewels out of choice silver or copper.  As we pass by today, we see how the fresh springs bubble up out of the sand along the trail bank and might ask what is its function? Then it was known as 'good gift spring.'