A Walk on a Country Road

The gun season for deer starts this Saturday, and I’m about to take my hikes away from the action for the next couple of weeks.  I wanted to take a long walk from my front door today.  Basically, there are two choices:  left or right.  If I go left, I walk into town or beyond town to the Ice Age Trail.  If I go right, I walk along the roadside with farm views.


Today was a case of being in the right place at the wrong time.  After the corn harvest and before the snow gets deep, the dairy farms transfer liquefied manure from storage pits, ponds or tanks to the open fields via fleets of these vehicles that my kids called “poop trucks.”

In the old days, the steers on my uncle’s Iowa farm were dispersed across acres of pasture.  The poop stayed where it fell, and you had to be a little careful walking around the fields to avoid stepping in a cowpie.  Modern dairy farms liquefy the manure and then spray it as fertilizer on area fields.  During my five mile walk, this truck passed by several times loaded and unloaded.

During my last conversation about poop trucks with my retired farmer friend John, he was less than complimentary.  “They want you to pay to have the crap dropped off on your land,” he said.  “The harvest has to be complete, and the soil prepared.  After all that, sometimes the trucks cause all kinds of damage getting in and out.  The fertilizer benefit just wasn’t worth it”, according to John.

When my kids were young, we used to entertain ourselves with a made-up song when stuck in the car behind a fragrant manure spreader:

“Sitting behind the poop truck, poop truck, poop truck.  Sitting behind the poop truck. Poop truck!”

It wasn’t the best song, but it did distract us from our plight.

This is a fast and dirty operation.  You can see from the rear of the truck that it is a bit of a mess, and some of that mess ends up on the road.

Most of it ends up in the fields–sometimes pretty thick. The seagulls (a/k/a flying rats) seem to like it.

I spent all of my high school summers on my uncle’s beef and pork operation, so I am no stranger to rural scents.  However, the combination of a brisk wind and the intensity of the liquid manure challenged my gag reflex.

Even a stinky walk in the country beats a day of staying inside and going stir crazy. Today’s hike:  6.1 miles on blacktop.

Last Settler’s Syndrome

Years ago, my wife and I built a new house on a big bluff overlooking a Wisconsin River flowage (Lake Wisconsin).  We had unobstructed views of the water, the deer, and the wild turkeys.  Over time, the residential lots on top of the hill and on the hillside filled in with big houses and little houses.  A structure resembling a double wide lay in the path of our view of the lake.

I remember complaining to Professor Tom Heberlein, a casual acquaintance, about losing my view.  He looked up at me, peering over his professorial glasses, and said, “Ahh, you have last settler’s syndrome.”  Heberlein taught rural sociology at the University of Wisconsin and lived part-time in Lodi and part-time in Sweden.  So I didn’t feel stupid when I asked him what he was talking about.

“Last settler syndrome is where each new settler wants the area to remain the way it was when you first get there,” Heberlein explained with a wry smile.  After that sunk in, I remember feeling a little bit ashamed. 

Heberlein lived in an old existing farmhouse that didn’t require new development adding to road congestion, hillside erosion or  new infrastructure.  In putting up a new house, I contributed to the degradation of the natural beauty that attracted me to the area. A decade after that conversation and continued development, we didn’t want to live there anymore.

Eventually, we moved away to an older home set back in the woods with far-away neighbors.  We have views of marsh and woods.  If I want to pee outside, there are safe places to do so.   Strangely, ever since I thru-hiked the Appa-lachian Trail, that is one of the symbols of personal freedom that remains with me.

Yesterday, I hiked in the Pheasant Branch Conservancy in Middleton, Wisconsin.  The first part of the hike brought my blood pressure and stress down to acceptable levels.  I saw flocks of sandhill cranes, migrating geese and ducks.  The boundary trail wound up a hillside prairie that was capped with strong, thick oaks.

From the top of the hill, I could see Lake Mendota and the faint outline of the state capitol. Sitting on the bench that appears in the center photo above, a peace washed over me. Then I turned around and continued.  The trail took me within a stone’s throw of houses in a subdivision.  Some of the houses were new and had changed the landscape recently.

My intention is not to be critical of people choosing these homes.  Obviously, they love nature to choose such a spot.  The owner of the home with the swimming pool even maintains a private path to use the conservancy trail.  The conser-vancy is a wonderful place for the subdivision dwellers to get away from the stress of urban life.  However, it occurred to me as I hiked that I want to visit more remote places during the next phase of my life.  And it’s important for me to do so while adhering as much as possible to the “leave no trace” ethic.

Pay to Play Outdoors

“You don’t need a weather man to know which way the wind blows.” (Bob Dylan)

Parks cost money to operate.  I remember paying admission fees to state parks when I was a young man.  I also remember the parks being well maintained with lots of staff and offering varied educational programs.What has changed?

In 1995,  taxpayers supported Wisconsin’s state park system with the help of user fees. Over the next 20 years, the taxpayers’ portion gradually shrank to the point that user fees supported the state park system with the help of taxpayers.  In 2015, the governor proposed that  the state parks become entirely self-funding and removed all general revenue from the parks’ budget–a 28% cut for the system.  To make up for that deficit, entrance and campground fees were increased.  Staff, maintenance, education and maintenance were cut.  The math hasn’t worked out very well in terms of creating the same experience.

How we spend tax dollars is a reflection of our priorities.  In this state, the emphasis has shifted to bigger and more roads, newer athletic stadiums, and lower taxes on the wealthy.  Natural resources and education?  Not so much. Yesterday, our state senate passed a mining bill that pitted environmentalists against corporate business. One legislator said:  “We’re giving away the best parts of ourselves. We’re a great state. We have clean water and we need someone to stand up and protect it.”

The state parks in Wisconsin are just barely getting by with support from lots of volunteers and “Friends” programs.  It isn’t hard to see the difference. For example,  last year, it took over a month to get our state stickers mailed to us because there wasn’t staff available to pick up the fees from the iron rangers in which we placed our check. When we called to see why our stickers hadn’t been mailed, we were told of the staffing issue and to write a note that the annual sticker had been applied for and place it in the window of our vehicle.

I frequently read rv blogs and forums in which people from around the country complain about the high cost of our entrance fees and campgrounds without commensurate quality, some saying they avoid Wisconsin for that reason.
In an era of expanding waistlines of young and old, along with people who can’t tell the difference between fake news and facts, there is good reason to encourage people to connect minds and bodies with nature. 

Shifting from a state-based funding system to a user-based system seems like a bad idea when we continue to use general funding to build new athletic stadiums to watch others exercise, bigger and better roads that enable us to get home faster to watch cable tv, while lowering taxes to primarily benefit the rich who can afford lakeside homes protected by gates and cameras. Don’t even get me started on the recent corporate welfare to bribe Foxconn (a Chinese electronics company) with billions of tax dollars in exchange for a promise of jobs.

I know that Wisconsin isn’t the only state with these problems, but we used to take pride in this state that we were well above average in most categories.  While we are no longer one of the highest taxed states, the frayed edges are showing. You have to act like a great state, not just say you are a great state.  You have to get outside to know which way the wind blows.

Today’s hike was at Governor Nelson State Park on the north shore of Lake Mendota.  The park is surrounded by million dollar homes and overlooks the state capital in the distance.  I spent some time staring at the lake and walking a short Woodland Trail that views both the front yards of mansions and sacred llIndian burial mounds (Panther, Conical).   Near the trailhead, there is a boat landing area with restrooms still open and a large public beach with views of the lake and the state capital in the distance.

I didn’t see another person in the park during my hike.  The park office was closed.

Friday Hike: Blue Mound State Park

We’ve had a string of days with miserable rain and cold, but Friday’s forecast was for sun and decent temperatures in the lower 40’s.  I pulled on a light fleece jacket and drove west to Blue Mound State Park, which I haven’t visited in a couple of decades.

With good roads, the trip takes about 45 minutes, but Google Maps led me astray with a suggestion to take CTH F south from Hwy 14 west of Mazomanie. F was closed, but Google maps kept trying to take me back to it as I sought a different route to get to the park.  Eventually, I was re-directed with good directions by a county highway worker.  Sometimes, smart people are more useful than smart phones.

The hiking through the woods was on the depressing side.  The leaves have mostly fallen, and views were scarce.  With recent rains, the aroma was one of decomposition.  I saw no other hikers, although I did pass a couple of young Asian men walking past me with compound bows in hand.  The deer bow hunt season is underway, and bow hunting is allowed in the park by special permit.  The hiking was easy with wide trails and gentle ups and downs.

The trail was littered with chert boulders, like this one:

According to the park information, 400 million years ago, warm and shallow seas covered the park, depositing a layer of sediment that transformed over time from limestone to magnesium to dolomite.  As silica-rich water flowed through the dolomite, chert was formed. More recently (relatively speaking), the chert fractured from the top of the Blue Mound and fell downhill.

By hiking to the top of the hill, I made it to the highest point in southern Wisconsin (elevation 1716 feet).  That isn’t very high for people who live in mountainous areas, but  the park put in a 40 foot tower at the top for those of us who may be a tiny bit fearful of heights.  Mountain tops don’t bother me, but man-made towers do for some reason.

While  many of the trails wind through th woods, some of the trails open up to prairie.

Blue Mound is a park that designates many of its trails for mountain bike use.  I’m in favor of people getting outside, so I’m not opposed to this idea, even though these trails tend to be rutted and muddy.  There were enough trails designated as hiker only to satisfy me. This biker admitted to being a bit lost.

Hiking:  5.2 miles. Trails included Willow Springs, Flint Rock, Ridgeview, Pleasure Valley, and the family campground.

Farm Walking

Many of the public parks and forests in Wisconsin started off as farms with fields and woods.  This week, I hiked two of those farms in northwest Dane County, Wisconsin. 

Morton Forest was a 120 acre wooded farm/retreat owned by University of Wisconsin Professor Walter Morton and his wife, Rosalie.  In 1982, the professor died and left the property to his son Stephen.  In 1999, Steve donated the property to the Dane County park system to preserve the land for hiking and bird-watching for the public.  In 2016, Morton Forest officially opened to the public.

I took Hwy 14 to Mazomanie and then turned left on Reeve Road. From there, it’s 3.3 miles to the property, which is well-marked with a sign on the right and a parking area on the left.  A small nature center is located at the beginning of the property but was closed on the day of my hike.

There are two short hikes on the property.  The first hike climbs up a wide farm road.  The trail is easy to follow with several signs along the way to show “where you are” on the property.  The upper trail was a peaceful, saunter through deep woods, marked by cold, gray November skies with more leaves on the ground than in the trees.  At the top, there are several short loops.  One leads to a lookout below with bench for thinking and such.

I was thinking about my kids and the young adults that they are becoming.  A Henry Miller quote was bouncing around my brain:

“You observe your children or your children’s children, making the same absurd mistakes, heart-rending mistakes, often, which you made at their age. And there is nothing you can say or do to prevent it. It’s by observing the young, indeed, that you eventually understand the sort of idiot you yourself were once upon a time — and perhaps still are.”

The lower trail is closer to the road and narrowly loops some wetlands.

I don’t think there is much more than 2 miles of walking trails on the entire property, but I left in a much better mood than when I arrived.

Walking Iron County Park is a couple of miles northwest of Mazomanie and offers many miles of hiking/horseback trails.   Europeans did not settle in this area until after the Black Hawk Indian War in 1832.  This particular property started as a farm in 1846 and was named after Chief Mazomani (Iron Walker) who lived in the area for a time.

Still feeling fresh after my short morning hike at Morton’s Forest, I wandered the green horse trail and the interior hiking trails for over two hours without seeing everything.  The wide paths made this park look like an excellent place to snowshoe on a return visit.

When I returned home, my thoughts kept returning to Chief Mazamani, a/ka Iron Walker, so I began doing some internet research.  Eventually, I found a photo of the historical marker where he is buried.

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Living in the Moment

I experienced a twinge of sadness when putting the Brew Hut away for the winter yesterday.  Today greeted me with cold, wet and darkness.  While I have some big plans for the Brew Hut next summer and fall, I will need to work at  not becoming complacent, fat and lazy as we enter the gray zone of late October and November.  Julia leaves on her trip to Shanghai, China today. I may have been feeling a little sorry for myself, tending to the home fires and Justin.

Hiking is a great way to shake off the doldrums.  The first step was getting off my butt.  By 11 a.m, I was driving the short distance to Gibraltar Rock Natural Area, one of my go-to-makes-me-happy hikes. Although it rained last night, the trail was in decent shape with a bed of leaves to absorb the needed precipitation.

By the time I looped down to the east parking lot and then back up the old “road” to the top, the sun was shining and the day was looking better.