Journal Restoration

"It was not yet March, and the fen at the edge of Silver Lake was still frozen, but the warm air and the brilliant rays of the sun and the absence of motion gave the impression of a lazy Sunday afternoon in midsummer." – Paul Gruchow, from Journal of a Prairie Year









Day's work party at the Arboretum to gather at the Juniper Knoll, an old Oak savannah, now east of the service road F4, but put into cultivation following settlement, and then replanted in 1932 with common, horizontal, and eastern red juniper, tended to as small cedar glade, located near the edge of Teal pond. Tools needed: Loppers, saws, hand pruners, shovels, gloves, safety glasses, tarp for hauling out the vines of bittersweet.


Old tool shack   same one as Leopold sat
buckets now lopper handles and folding saws
or shovel or two to pierce the field ice,
warm the water for later, tea or cocoa
and a little box of chocolate chip cookies,
fill the old work truck flatbed slam the gate.
                                            Quick glance – Longenecker
                                            out there just past the work
                                            garages a lake of shimmering
                                            ice snow all melt then frozen
and we wonder if this is such a good idea
truck has nothing to grip on service road
work party walks over a thousand little holes
and mini-hillocks of hard ice at temp 32 –
but then we see as we pass this side of the knoll
that this is the very thing itself, trail rises, Big Bluestem
leaning, brown, catching the filtered sun,
this is the walk of those, all of us, who need it,

get our hands on those tools and start combing
that wild old pocket of cedar glade and get down
on the knees frozen matt of old leaves to inspect
whether its honeysuckle, sumac, dogwood, bittersweet
easy enough to see – creeps up along anything,
like strands of twine and certainly loves its victims.
                               
If you find a print with four toes on both the front
and back feet, then an animal from either the dog
or cat family has been there. In Wisconsin this would
include a coyote, fox, wolf or even a domestic dog.
If you find a print with four toes on the front foot
and five toes on back, you have found a rodent track
                                         I read outloud

Hasn't been just us–
where the laid down dead logs
meet at a shallow hole
frozen over and holds
at the base of its tub
the petrified jewels of oak leaves,
logs scaled by layers
of fungi looks like fine metal
art been there working
itself out since the Ho-Chunk
here wondering Savannah,
then the cattle had come,
dug it out planed something
likely didn't belong in stumps.
                     
                                 Ghosts of both, we each
                                 say, here I am
                                 stack brush 6-8 feet in length
                                 along the side of F4
                                 Samsara, peace, struggle
                             
                                 We'll let the sun
                                  in here again
                                 
                                 someone hums




for Gary Snyder