a sna we’ve visited several times, and that i’ve written about on several occasions.
but we went back again easter monday on a lark and weren’t disappointed. a gorge in the sandstone along skillet creek, we visited with the creek for a bit—one child fell in again, no worries—snail shell near the bank, huge lichen and walls of fern on the cliff face, and the barred owl we saw last year perched in the same tree. an idyllic surprisingly warm late-afternoon.
a gorge cut into baraboo quartzite, cambrian sandstone, and conglomerate by the baraboo river. the scene here in the upper narrows is very interesting, with van hise rock (an outcropping that helped charles van hise of uw-madison geology fame articulate principles of structural deformation and metamorphism) popping up over the road along with old quarry scars and a public spring for drinking water.
a gorgeous, clear, unseasonably warm spring morning, me and the kiddos piled into the van and drove here from the dells where we were staying. we checked out the spring and van hise rock, then climbed a bluff to the southwest of the baraboo river.
couldn’t believe how game the kids were, going straight up the bluff, but the first really clear morning with sun and heat on the back and cardinals singing out over the valley—couldn’t resist. also, the first liverwort buds and trout lilies coming up. also took a moment down by the river to pay my respects. would like to get back here sometime.
around five acres of forested bluff and shoreline on lake michigan just north of the city of milwaukee. a steep fall down a ravine off lake drive goes to a trail that skirts the line where lake michigan eats away at the coastal bluff. good beach time with my youngest today.
hi folks. ballast is a new literary journal edited by two poets doing good work. they’ve kindly accepted two of my poems for issue #2—one a lune made in the california redwoods (hence the redwood sorrel pictures), the other a long section of my long natural-family-personal history poem (probably the work i’m proudest of in the last few years).
they also gave me the pleasure of recording audio for the poems. you can see and read them here, and do give a look around the rest of the issue while you’re there!
goose lake drumlins sna is a couple parcels of land with six drumlins (oval-shaped hills formed by glaciers as till is shaped and scraped past by ice and water flow), two lakes, and wetland complex of marsh and bog in dane cty. the open water, wetland, and forest complexes (on the drumlins) make for rich mammal, fish, bird, and plant communities.
we were running low on time when we got here, and weren’t equipped to trek across large swaths of marsh, so we just enjoyed some time down by the cattails and viewed the drumlins from the dungeon (low area b/t drumlins) as we watched various birds of prey (including an eagle) fly about and dive. not a bad end to the day, tho i’d like to get back for a drumlin or two and to visit the bog south of goose lake.
first id of nannyberry (the bud below) thanks to the inaturalist community.
deansville fen is a calcareous fen in a larger marsh wetland complex in dane cty, wisconsin. sedge meadow and hummocky wet prairie surround. crossing a tributary stream was quick and painless on a massive old tree that had fallen across but the maunesha river itself was trickier—involving gathering three vines growing out of the riverbank with the foot in order to create a suspended step above the water while lunging out to other small trees growing in the water while balanced on a protruding log caught in an accidental dam in the river—one foot went way in on the way back out!
but a fine morning in the fen, quiet, some birds singing, not much new growth yet. turkey and rabbit tracks in the snow.
Jacob Riyeff 