lost lake is a kettle-like depression in a ravine, surrounded by alder thicket and oak woods. my walk was mainly on the slope headed down into the thicket wetland area. once i got into the hollow i didn’t have the proper footwear to keep going into the muck, so i trekked back up the slope to some larger quartzite boulders along a rivulet to take in the woods a bit.

tho’ i’ve never lived in columbia or sauk counties, my grandparents used to live in sauk, so my childhood impressions of the natural world are very much caught up in the sights and smells of this area. right when i got out of the car and into the woods, the scents made a very welcome homecoming. an excellent early-morning start.

(b.n.: i was trying out a new hand-held camera on this trip, so some shots are blurrier than i wanted or color a bit off…the experiment goes on.)

a.

boulders and fern

smells of childhood

green silhouetted

b.

me and the columbine

on this streamed

quartzite perch

c.

here is the hollow

where

skunkcabbage reigns