sna poems #69: kettle moraine oak opening

April 5, 2021 / jriyeff / Leave a comment

kettle moraine oak opening is very much what it sounds like, though there’s plenty of oak woods too. another sna in the interlobate moraine area between two fingers of the last glaciation (the lake michigan lobe and green bay lobe), the rolling and tumbling topography between steep ridges and kettle holes is always a delight to meander thru. maintaining the oak opening and small prairies on the knobs takes some doing, and we visited (it looks like) a week or two after a prescribed burn. the smell was fertile.

saw our first round-lobed liverwort too—the hairs on the scape don’t come across in the photos, but they were thick with white hairs, and heavy-laden with pollen.

char and ash dust the ground

below a cardinal’s rapid song

the gravelly knob’s singed scent

belly-splayed

on bald bluff

sun basking

a great relief of land

mossed arms of oak

reach out over liverwort

sna poems, supplementum #18: 7 bridges trail in grant park

March 28, 2021 / jriyeff / Leave a comment

the seven bridges trail in grant park in south milwaukee winds thru woods and ravines leading down to a stone-strewn beach on lake michigan. the first spring ephemerals are showing their blooms now, though they weren’t open yet. a very wet and grey day, perfect for spring woods and water. new life!

bonus: i learned on this trip that “lannon stone” is a kind of dolomite limestone quarried from the 1830s in lannon, wisconsin in waukesha county (featured under the tiny succulents and moss in the photo above). i grew up around the block from “the lannon stone motel” in janesville, and my dad lived there for a bit when he first moved to wisconsin from new york. i had never even wondered what the motel’s name meant—familiarity breeds a lack of curiosity, i suppose. that little spot on racine st. in janesville feels richer in my mind today.

snowdrops rejoice in leaf-litter,

grey air damp and draping

the scape’s pendulous gift

lannon stone penthouse bulbs

showering bare soil

with scilla bells nodding

mallards happy as clams—mama just plunked down for a nap on her logperch. lake michigan in background.

sna poems, supplementum anthropocenum #7: three bridges park

March 16, 2021 / jriyeff / Leave a comment

three bridges park in milwaukee, wisconsin is a great little prairie on reclaimed land in what was once a wild rice marsh and then a rail-yard. it stretches 24 acres along the menomonee river, and is a welcome oasis in the city.

waves dry rattling

and unrelenting wind

the prairie starts to wake

frozen frog bodies

with webbed toes hang

down below the mallards

duck bill scours

and scuttles the seaweed

feathers floating

sna poems, supplementum #17: seminary woods

March 12, 2021 / jriyeff / 2 Comments

seminary woods, on the property of st. francis de sales seminary in st. francis, wisconsin (sometimes called “the salesianum”), is a relatively undisturbed 68-acre beech-maple mesic forest, with a cemetery and grotto beneath the canopy. it’s a last remnant of the kind of woods that used to line lake michigan, and some massive trees live here, especially beeches. there are a number of bottoms regularly filled with water, and deer stream runs thru-out before emptying into lake michigan. the spring ephemeral display is apparently very impressive, so i’ll be back again pretty soon. the deeper areas have a very distinct, close smell, especially in high summer.

i’m particularly interested in these woods as bernard durward—first professor of english at the seminary and one of wisconsin’s earliest poets, whose poems i’m currently editing with a colleague—must have walked here. the potawatomi deeded the land to franciscan sisters back in 1833, who sold it to the (arch)diocese of milwaukee for a seminary in 1855.

beech crown in crowded wood

oversees grotto and grave

winter passing into spring

the sisters lie beneath turf

a world away from home

awaiting the precious end

water wallows

in still bottoms

below bulb-shoots

crow murder weaves

thru branch-net

laughter in the woods

sna poems #68: lulu lake

March 10, 2021 / jriyeff / Leave a comment

lulu lake is almost 1,200 acres of preserve in the southern kettle moraine, with a kettle lake fed by the mukwonago river and nestled in the lowlands of glacial desposits, fenlands, sedge meadow, shrub carr, and a bog, and with oak openings and prairie in the uplands. rare fish, mussels, and plants are protected here, though that was difficult to see in this early stage of the spring thaw. but we did see evidence of the non-native plant removal that is helping keep the oak openings thriving. the diversity of this area deserves another visit when warmer weather has arrived for sure.

thanks to the wisconsin chapter of the nature conservancy and the wisconsin dnr for tending this land too!

wetlands are stirring

under the sun

the thicket stays still

white on the lake

a gash in moraine

my son and i watch

sna poems #67: pickerel lake fen

March 9, 2021 / jriyeff / Leave a comment

pickerel lake fen is, well, a lake and a fen. the calcareous fen is large, seeping out of a glacial ridge, and is one of the most biologically diverse fens in s.e. wisconsin. the lake is still frozen but the edge is thawing to reveal all sorts of small life if the eye will rest long enough to see. the uplands are turning back to prairie after being farmed, and good tall oaks in their openings dot the fen-edge. several plants are protected here.

thanks to the wisconsin chapter of the nature conservancy for tending this land.

sun and earth-tilt

discover the fen’s

living heart

eagle white on blue sky

as geese browse prairie

heady blend of gravel and oak

the lake shore muck

an invertebrate paradise

and we share them for a moment

miniature crevasse,

ablation in miniature—

harmless wintertime

sna poems #66: beulah bog

March 8, 2021 / jriyeff / Leave a comment

beulah bog is a series of four kettles at the southern end of kettle moraine, which itself was formed by the frictional forces of the green bay lobe and lake michigan lobe of the laurentide ice sheet grinding and sliding past one another over thousands of years in the last ice age.

there are floating mud flats, quaking sedge and sphagnum mats, a tamarack wood, and open water. several species of insectivorous plants live here too, though we didn’t see any this early. shoots were on the make, however, and i think we saw the early stirrings of calla lily and poison ivy. lots of oak debris along the slope descending to the bog-moat that circles the tamaracks. the first hike not on snow in a couple months, which was refreshing.

past the walworth county

line, bogs and kettles

lay in watery wait

bog-edge thaws

a muddy moat

bosoming the larch stand

sna poems #65: snapper prairie

March 3, 2021 / jriyeff / Leave a comment

snapper prairie is another remnant prairie that formerly stretched for 2,500 acres in the floodplain of the crawfish river (a tributary of the rock). it floods at times due to the clayey nature of the soil, and there are plants more common to fens present like riddell’s goldenrod, valerian, and an orchid. but of course none of them are out yet.

there’s something very strange about visiting prairies in the middle of winter, when they’re snowfields with desiccated plants poking up out of the white here and there. you know there’s so much life lying hidden and silent beneath that snow just waiting, and the wind blows steadily. it’s difficult to imagine how brilliant the grasses and flowers will look and smell in just a few months. but it’s also good to know this place at a quieter time that is just as much a part of its life cycle(s) as the full bloom of high summer.

this remnant prairie persists

in the crawfish flood-plain

a meadowlark preserves her perch

the tow-headed fringe

encircles desiccated forbs

all waiting for melt

as i sit and rest

two meadowlarks

sing for themselves

sna poems #64: red cedar lake

March 2, 2021 / jriyeff / 2 Comments

red cedar lake is a shallow seepage lake in jefferson county. it sits in what the dnr vividly calls “a marshy pocket of the terminal moraine” and is surrounded by eskers and drumlins. the site is waiting for the return of its herons and bitterns.

highlights: 1) a stand of tamaracks (american larches) leading down to the lake had shed their needles but were strangely green-tinted from a distance. on closer inspection, they were wonderfully arrayed with colonies of several species of lichen. 2) walking along the frozen lake, we spied several sites where presumably a small mammal (muskrat? raccoon?) dug thru the ice and snow into the marsh soil, leaving plant matter, mud, and the marsh water exposed. (there was also scat on the ice from one: i’ve spared you a photograph.) an interesting late-winter scene.

thru the bottom-lands

the wet earth becomes sky,

a single mass of damp

the marsh has been dug

and smells of seaweed

birds want spring

here in the tamaracks

the lichen thrive

in crusting splendor

a lone black

crow turns

in an ocean of white

sna poems # 63: smith-reiner drumlin prairie

March 1, 2021 / jriyeff / Leave a comment

smith-reiner drumlin prairie is another forty-acre plot, part of which didn’t suffer the plow due to the gravelly and sloped nature of the two drumlins (long glacial hills) present here. the prairie is a remnant of a former 7,000-acre prairie and has a beautiful topography. it was a fun ski up and down these hills that resisted “development.” the lowlands here have been re-planted to prairie, and the flower displays will surely warrant a trip back in the spring and late summer. it was a thawing day, the kind in which the air is as wet as the ground and it becomes difficult to discern the difference between sky and earth, especially in the farm fields that dominate the area in jefferson county.

i don’t want to sound too negative in my description of this area, because i am deeply grateful that it is preserved. but a common theme in visiting a number of state natural areas is that settlers (including my ancestors) didn’t develop certain plots primarily because they were the only areas that couldn’t be made economically productive. it’s hard reading that over and over. but yes, thankfully there are features like the drumlins that kept up the resistance!

full moon like cream

behind the fog-skein

still over the prairie grass