did our early-spring visit to seminary woods at st. francis seminary in st. francis, wisconsin again last weekend. one of our two old-growth stands here in milwaukee county.
trout lilies and early buttercups coming up in all the usual spots; skunk cabbage leafing out in the stream bed and low areas, mayapple along the trail; a barred owl snoozing up in the leafless canopy. a good day.
a.
great horns craned to scratch
vernal sun
shines on buttercups
it’s difficult to see b/c i don’t have a good camera, but there is in fact a great horned owl toward the center (bit to the right) of this photo about a third of the way down.
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.
Jacob Riyeff 