we took a twilight walk at crowes pasture conservation area, which features pitch pine-oak woods bounded by quivet neck creek and cape cod bay. the moon and the sea air were fantastic, and all that lichen tangled along the tree limbs again…
a.
ochre, silver, lime
tangling ’round
into evening air
b.
lichen gardens
suspended between
earth and crescent moon
quivet marsh is a saltwater marsh located along sesuit creek as the creek flows to sesuit harbor and thence to cape cod bay. we’re here visiting family, and it’s a fantastic opportunity to get to know this land i’ve visited off and on my whole life in a more intimate way too.
pitch pines and oaks, phragmites and marsh muck, salt air and snags. found a nice stand of ghost pipes and a first id’s of pinkweed and summersweet.
my first time in a salt marsh and well worth the stop. a shout out to my sister in law for doing the early recon on sesuit creek and the marsh!
a.
salt air
black muck
lattice work
b.
ghost pipes underneath
the cedars
clouds above the marsh
a century of state natural area poems! i’ll admit: it felt good to hit this number. and i find it somewhat hard to believe—that’s a lot of visits in a year and a half, even for my determined self.
thanks to everyone who has hiked with me so far—family and friends—to all the creatures i’ve met on these jaunts, and to the all the private and public owners of these lands for tending them and making them available to the public.
oh, also, it recently came to my attention that a wisconsin high school newspaper article about the sna poems did come out a few months ago. it was fun to talk with a very local paper (in stoughton) about the vision and process of what i’m doing here, and i think emma did a fine job writing the piece up. you can check it out here.
the ward/schwartz decatur woods is another site along the sugar river, this a remnant southern dry-mesic wood with large red and white oaks. the understory has many spring ephemerals and is rich in other plants. the woods was one of the sites where baseline data for the burgeoning field of ecology was established in wisconsin by john curtis in the 40s and 50s.
a hard climb up the ridge after four other sites visited that morning, but satisfying to come out onto the edge of the wood at the crest and pause for a moment before a more leisurely walk back down.
first id-in-the-field of bittersweet nightshade—it volunteers in my backyard, but it’s different somehow seeing it out there. credit for a couple of these photos go to my dad who climbed the ridge with me.
a.
logs crumble with footfall
upslope and downslope
movement over land
b.
a hooved pair graze
on the sun-soaked ridge
crow overhead
if you made it this far: thanks for reading/looking. this project was not intended to go on this long, but i’ve learned enough about the natural history of wisconsin and enough folks have liked and responded to this project that it feels worth continuing. my gratitude goes out to you for stopping by.
the albany sand prairie and oak savanna has an unplowed sand prairie, accompanying oak barrens and oak opening, a dry-mesic prairie, and an oak wood along the sugar river.
a very pleasant walk. first id’s of grass pink, hedge parsley, and american germander. also a species of primrose i haven’t seen before.
a.
a monarch’s proboscis
curls into bergamot:
blossom and insect
b.
life finite
and inexhaustible
in the oak savanna
c.
the air is heavy with water
flowers and frogs thick
on the sand prairie ground
i’m digging these prairies set on hills out west of me in wisconsin.
muralt bluff prairie lies along a curving ridge in the contact area between wisconsin’s glaciated and drifltess areas. there are fantastic displays of wildflowers from spring till fall, with several rare species represented.
it was a slick climb up (courtesy of the rain earlier in the morning), but the dense stands of wild bergamot and tall bell flower along the muddy wooded trail made up for the effort. the prairie itself and the view of woods and rolling farmland from the ridgetop were fabulous.
first id’s of grey-headed cone flower and prairie rosinweed!
a.
coneflower and thimbleweed,
crane rattle—
bergamot kingdom
b.
this rounded crown
between two lands
bees on the wing
if you made it this far: you are here.
browntown oak forest is a southern dry and dry-mesic forest situated on a st. peter sandstone ridge in the driftless area. the variable topography and soil types nurture a diversity of plant communities. one part of the slope has sandstone outcrops.
the trails (such as we could find) were going feral, which restricted our movement into the forest somewhat, but a jaunt down the ridge to the sandstone was freeing.
first id’s of tall bellflower, st. john’s wort, and knapweed; also first coral fungus spotted since i started these.
a.
me and this hickory
outcropping here
on sandstone slabs
b.
coral fungus
glows on log:
a shimmering bouquet
c.
rough and rounded spawn
of oak, walnut, hickory
jewel the forest floor
on to green county! my dad and brother were along for the trip this time, and we did a day-long tour of the county with five sna’s.
green county is in the driftless area, the part of wisconsin (and neighboring minnesota and iowa) that was not smoothed and altered by the wisconsin glaciation, as the rest of the state was. different terrain but still southern wisconsin.
our first stop was york prairie, which contains remnant tallgrass prairie, a multitude of native plants, and rare and threatened plants. the sandy soil and rocky terrain were a new experience in prairie for me, and a light shower gave the walk a different energy part-way thru. first id of hoary vervain and golden alexanders!
a.
mullein blooming
rough and heavy
to the touch
b.
prairie valley sings
with yellow throat song—
shocks of stalk and sepal
c.
below leaf and stem
under rain and sky
bedrock glimpses prairie
logan creek sna lies on the northern side of clark lake and is dominated by a northern wet-mesic forest. a small prairie buffers the parking lot from the woods.
we had a fun time running thru the beeches and hemlocks, cedars and birches. critters mammalian, amphibian, and reptilian darting off the path ahead of us left and right. one of the board walks was out, and we were losing daylight, so we weren’t able to see the lake, but hopefully we’ll be back some day.
first id of ramps by the flowers.
thanks to the ridges sanctuary for tending this land!
a.
amphibians rustle and pause
reptiles in the evening sun
a grasshopper hanging low
b.
we admire the fungal beech-ring
and slumping birch graveyard,
mourn the absent hemlock
it was a hot one. i visited whitefish bay dunes—what the wdnr calls “the largest and most significant Great Lakes dunescape in Wisconsin”—when it was in the mid-90s. tough going but very focused, and not many other folks on the trails. the dunes range from open beach right on the lake to heavy forest a couple dunes back.
i took the northern trail to “old baldy” (the highest dune in wisconsin at 93 ft above lake level), which came out of northern mesic forest into open glades of juniper and fern, not to mention all sorts of small, ground-hugging plants i hadn’t the slightest clue on. very unique habitat inhabited by very unique flora. after climbing up baldy i took the southern trail back, which lulls thru a forest of balsam fir, white cedar, and birch on the backside of the fore dune—very fragrant and pleasant despite the heat, especially along the hollows.
(by the way, i love that the wdnr uses the word “dunescape.”)
a.
thimble berry thick
on the midday sunning earth
dune asks nothing
b.
porcupines are there somewhere
behind aspen stumps
and miniature fountains of moss
c.
juniper and fern
are friends
in the dune-glen
d.
solitude here on tallest dune
as aspens crest-quake
no one else so foolish in the heat
e.
words are bountiful
but no smell of balsam fir
touch of outcropping
there are five remnant prairies left of the formerly massive empire prairie, which covered around 50,000 acres in wisconsin’s columbia and dane counties. the westport drumlin site is remarkable for the dramatic relief of the drumlin (a whale-shaped hill shaped by a glacier) caused by the surrounding corn-filled fields. also of particular note is the presence of an oak opening on one side, a fairly rare ecosystem these days. the rock outcroppings along parts of the drumlin indicate the glacier may not have sculpted this drumlin as extensively as normal.
it was a very wet and very satisfying walk. we turned back once due to lightning, but then the rain let up and we changed course once again. after a walk along the bottom of the drumlin and into the oak opening (rain sounding great on the leaves), i trekked up to the ridge and had a look about the lowlands surrounding. a graceful time. also, first conscious encounters with leadplant, thimbleweed, and flowering spurge. the soundscape is flush with raindrops.
thanks to the wdnr and groundswell conservancy for protecting this site.
a.
rain is falling
oaks flanking
stone stock still
b.
red ridges
calm
by thimbleweed
c.
i walk the drumlin path
a scar along her crest,
offer prayer for the world
Jacob Riyeff 