Crossing the Driftless

by Lynne Diebel

  And now it seems possible that chipmunks were chilling in the Driftless during the Late Pleistocene as well, just waiting for the ice to go away so they could expand their range. When biologists Kevin Rowe and Ken Paige at the University of Illinois studied the mitochondrial DNA of the eastern chipmunk, they found evidence that most of the eastern chipmunks in Illinois and Wisconsin are descendants of a population that spent the last ice age in the refugium of the Driftless. Long before the humans arrived, there were chipmunks. Which suggests the possibility that the climate was not as harsh as has been assumed.

  According to John Long, an Indian interpreter and trader who in 1791 compiled a vocabulary of Indian words, the Ojibwa name for squirrel was chetamon. When Europeans arrived, the chipmunk population must have been substantial. The name they evolved for this striped little ground squirrel was chitmunk and eventually chipmunk. And thus we find North Chipmunk Coulee and South Chipmunk Coulee, small streams that drain into the Mississippi bottomland just south of La Crosse, named for what seem to have been the earliest mammalian inhabitants of the post-glacial Driftless.

  When Norwegian and Bohemian settlers arrived in the Kickapoo Valley in the nineteenth century, they found—along with chipmunks, snails, and flowers—a vast network of small streams, fed by icy groundwater and filled with cold-loving brook trout. These streams flow down steep narrow valleys that the early French explorers named coulees, into the Kickapoo and other Driftless rivers. DNR fisheries biologist Jordan Weeks said that over the years, agricultural practices unsuited to the fragile ecosystem of the Driftless gradually changed the flow of the coulee streams. Rainfall ceased to infiltrate the soil and recharge the groundwater, and began to run down the surface of the slopes instead. Weeks explained that it was this warmer surface water that flowed in the streams instead of the cold groundwater. The trout disappeared.

  “It took a three-pronged approach to bring them back: stream channel restoration by the DNR fisheries program improved habitat, improved watershed land management increased groundwater flow by increasing infiltration of rain, and stocking gradually brought back the trout,” said DNR aquatic ecologist Matt Diebel. And now trout fill the streams: between 2,500 and 6,000 trout per stream mile.

  Weeks said this successful change had a lot to do with the work of longtime Fisheries stream supervisor Dave Vetrano. In the early 1980s, after observing that wild trout live much longer than the hatchery-raised trout that the DNR then used for stocking Driftless streams, Vetrano quietly experimented with raising some trout that were born to be wild, trout with the genetic makeup that made them scatter when they saw people instead of just sitting there waiting to be caught. After he released these wild ones in streams where populations were skimpy, trout numbers increased dramatically. Vetrano then told the department what he had been up to and apologized for working in secret. And the “Wild Trout” program is now the model for trout stream management.

  “We don’t have to stock trout anymore,” said Weeks. “They do it all on their own.” And anglers travel from far away to cast their lines here. Weeks cited a 2008 economic study by Madison-based NorthStar Economics that included anglers who visited the Blufflands of southeast Minnesota and northwest Iowa as well as the Driftless Area of southwest Wisconsin. The study showed that trout fishing brings about $1.1 billion a year in economic benefits to the Driftless Area.

  Timber Coulee, one of the most productive trout streams in the Driftless, is tributary to Coon Creek, which flows into the Mississippi at Stoddard. Many remember that in the 1930s Coon Valley was the poster child for the disastrous effects of the old farming practices. In “Coon Valley Days,” her essay on the history of the Coon Creek watershed, Renae Anderson writes, “It took only seventy years, from the time of the first infusion of white settlers to the 1930s, for traditional farming methods to reduce the land around Coon Creek from pristine to the brink of agricultural uselessness.” Photographs from that time show gullies eroded to almost forty feet deep. Hugh Hammond Bennett of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Wisconsin’s legendary Aldo Leopold played pivotal roles in the soil conservation project that brought the land back from the brink, introducing the contour strip farming that slows runoff and defines modern Driftless agriculture. It was all about respecting the contours of the land, not subjugating them.

  In his essay “The View From Man Mound,” Curt Meine notes that the Coon Valley restoration project defied the grid that nineteenth century land surveys had imposed on the Driftless, replacing that relentless geometry with “watershed-shaped realities.” Thinking like a watershed instead of like an urban planner required first the catastrophe, then a huge shift in human habits and perception of the land. By the time I was old enough to notice the landscape of the Driftless, contour plowing was the norm.

  Even so, the work of restoring streams altered by agriculture continues, Weeks said at the rate of about one stream mile each summer, a relatively slow pace given the thousands of stream miles in the Driftless. Along streams like Timber Coulee, North Fork of the Bad Axe, Seas Branch, Mormon Coulee, crews “peel back the banks” where the loess soil that washed down from the overgrazed ridge tops has built up artificially high, vertical sides along the streams. “The crews re-grade the banks to a two-to-one slope and get them grassed up to stop the erosion. In the streambed, they install root wads (a tree stump with the roots still attached), rock weirs, and wooden structures called LUNKERS, Dave Vetrano’s invention,” said Weeks. “They shelter fish and stabilize the banks.” LUNKERS is the acronym for the whimsically named Little Underwater Neighborhood Keepers Encompassing Rheotaxic Salmonids. Weeks said Vetrano also likes to tell of when he found the carcass of a 1950s Ford in a streambed, where a farmer had dumped it to keep the banks from eroding. Living inside the rusting car was a twenty-inch brown trout.

  Along an as-yet-undisclosed reach of the Kickapoo River, a major restoration project is underway. Abbie Church of the Mississippi Valley Conservancy (MVC) said that the farmland that will be restored is “a poster child for poor agricultural practices” and that one gully on the property is already four to five feet deep, a sad echo of the 1930s environmental catastrophe in the Driftless. As the land is the site of several existing homes, the property will be a working farm rather than put into conservation reserve. Using a new understanding of the relationship between upland bird habitat and careful grazing practices, the team will create a system that works for both, a system of rotational grazing, crop rotation, contour and buffer strips that protect the river from agricultural runoff. Together with their partners the Kickapoo Grazing Initiative and the Wallace Center Pasture Project, MVC will restore sixteen hundred acres of land.

  We’ve just left the eddy at the mouth of the Kickapoo. In seven hours, we’ve traveled about sixteen miles up the Wisconsin—averaging a respectable 2.25 miles per hour—and it’s time to look for a place to spend the night. We choose a nice sandbar—reasonably high above the water, wide, handsome, and as yet uninhabited by tents. Intermittent faint traffic noises from Highway 60, beyond the trees to the north, remind us that it’s only a mile up the Kickapoo to the little village of Wauzeka (population 711), but on the river we feel far from everything.

  On a branch of a nearby tree, two bald eagles perch side by side watching us pitch our tent. Later, we sit cross-legged on the sand, side by side as well, eating our supper of tuna and rice and watching the river roll past. A flat-bottomed metal johnboat edges out of the greenery at the mouth of the Kickapoo, and the elderly fellow at the tiller motors his craft upstream, slowly. He waves but doesn’t speak, and we wave back. The evening frog choir ramps up the music a notch. And the river flows.

  I’ve long been in the habit of watching the water levels on the Wisconsin when we camp. The river can rise as much as three feet during the night, either after heavy rain or when water is released from the dam at Prairie du Sac. Once long ago, while camped on a large but rather low-lying sandbar near Arena, we went to sleep with the rive
r at least a hundred feet away and woke to find it lapping at the tent door; fortunately we had dragged the canoe even higher than the tent. It’s a common story, and some campers on this river take the extra precaution of tying their canoe to the tent. But because it’s not going to rain tonight, and because the persistent drought has left upstream water levels lower than average, the river is quite unlikely to rise tonight. Only out of curiosity, then, I mark the evening waterline by pushing a row of sticks into the mudflat to track any change during the night. Bob chuckles at my fussy ways.

  It’s easy to settle into the familiar routine of camping on a Wisconsin sandbar. Sand in our food, the green glow of our flashlight-lit tent at evening, our dirty clothes draped over a clothesline strung above us in the tent, sand on the tent floor and in our sleeping bags, soft bed of sand under the tent floor cushioning our weary bodies, the low steady hum of nighttime insects and the murmur of the river. It always surprises me how little we really need to be happy and comfortable in life. At the end of a day on the river, I don’t even look for a book to read in bed. Sleep comes quickly, before it’s dark.

  Soft voices in the warm velvet dusk. I resurface from half-sleep, sit up, and look through the tent’s screen door. A group of teenagers, by their voices, slowly motor down the river in two small boats, outboards barely putt-putting along. One boat grounds gently on a submerged sandbar. Soft crunch. Several of the kids jump out to push. More quiet talk.

  “You can camp anywhere you want to.”

  “Jeremy, are you in the boat?”

  Both boats drift past.

  “Hey, that’s a big ass sandbar. Let’s camp there.”

  Soft laughter.

  Up the Lower Wisconsin

  July the third. We wake to dense fog, rendering the river and everything around it invisible. Bird song magically fills the soft, cool, moist air, seeming to flow out of the mist. The sandbar willow thickets behind our tent are alive with the dawn rustling of wings, energetic chirping and song, unfamiliar melodies blending with old favorites: wren, meadowlark, sparrow, catbird, robin. This is bird country. North of the river along the Kickapoo, the floodplain forest of the Wauzeka Bottoms State Natural Area covers almost eight hundred acres. Almost two thousand acres of marshy river bottoms, sloughs, and prairie of the Woodman Wildlife Area, just upstream and south of the river, are habitat for some rare warblers—Kentucky, prothonotary, and cerulean—as well as an amazing array of other birds, both migratory and nesting. And all seem to be singing melodiously around our tent this morning. I crawl out of the tent to attend the concert.

  As the fog begins to thin, it is clear that there was no change in the river level overnight, and despite the damp air, the sand is dry. The miasma still conceals the tents of the youngsters camping on the “big-ass sandbar” next door, however, and not a sound emanates from over there. In less than the time it takes us to break camp, the rising July sun burns away the fog to reveal our neighbors’ tents, still zipped and quiet, despite the efforts of the noisy birds seemingly bent on waking the world. As we launch, three kids emerge sleepily from their tents, and I wave goodbye to our fellow river travelers.

  Back on the water, lingering patches of mist float like mysterious veils over the riverine world. A lineup of six turtles, motionless, watch us pass from their perches on a partially submerged log; they also hope for the sun to burn off the fog. Near the confluence with the Big Green River, the Woodman boat landing hides just upstream on that tributary, and we pass a white house, partly concealed by the foliage but still visible, a reminder that almost half of Lower Wisconsin land is still privately owned.

  When the Riverway came into being, the DNR owned 22,600 of the 77,300 acres designated by the legislation. Now the state owns close to 48,000 acres, if you include the permanent public hunting easements—more than double the initial land holdings. On the private land that remains, zoning rules require manmade structures—new ones—to be inconspicuous, painted in earth tones, invisible from the river during the leaf-on conditions. The imposition of zoning rules like this rankled, and still rankles, some landowners and it’s easy to guess why this old house is still painted white.

  I talked with Riverway planner David Aslakson about landowner participation in planning the Riverway. Aslakson feels that the planning team transcended politics, giving everyone a voice. He said that he insisted, as coordinator, that they must not let anyone believe they weren’t part of the planning process, that there was ample citizen input, that the process was “not done in the dark of night but in bright sunlight.” In pursuit of this goal, he attended every one of over four hundred public meetings held over a period of six years, meetings that gradually built a common vision for the Riverway.

  But the tension was there nevertheless. Aslakson tells the story of one town meeting, held in the autumn, close to Halloween. “I arrived after dark, and we met in a combination bar, grill, and funeral home. When I walked into the building, right inside was a casket with a stuffed effigy of me inside, complete with my big black beard and glasses, and a sign that read DNR Chairman. I said to them, ‘You know, it looks just like me.’ They laughed, though uncomfortably, and one said, ‘We thought you’d like it.’ Driving home after the meeting, which was mostly civil, I still watched for headlights behind me, all the way to Spring Green. But understand that that was the one and only time in those six years that I ever felt even an implied threat.”

  Landowners opposed to the project felt their constitutional rights were being violated. Some organized under the name Private Landowners of Wisconsin (PLOW). Though Dale Schultz, a newly elected state representative at the time, initially supported PLOW, he gradually shifted to support the Riverway.

  Aslakson and others on the planning team traveled the Lower Wisconsin by car, by canoe, by airboat, and by plane. They asked the landowners, other interested citizens and their governmental representatives, as well as interested organizations, what they wanted from the project, what they recommended. They included the nude beach at Mazomanie because a citizen spoke up, wanting the sunbathers to be represented as well, in part to protect them from harassment. Newsweek magazine wrote then that the Riverway was the most publicly discussed project ever. And a 2009 survey of valley citizens by a group of geography students at the University of Wisconsin–Madison revealed that even twenty years later, though most landowners embrace the project, some are still unhappy.

  The Boscobel landing where we stop for lunch is tucked into an inlet downstream of the highway bridge and out of the current, which seems to have grown quite swift. The gradient of the Lower Wisconsin is steepest along this reach, though not by much, so the river feels a little pushier. Yet I think we only notice this because we’re paddling upstream. And whether the current speed is increasing or our paddling strength is waning, we’re ready for a break and some food. A few quick strong paddle strokes and we’re into the inlet, free of the current’s grasp.

  A man and his preteen son stop at our picnic table to talk. “I’ve always wanted one of those canoes,” he says eagerly, pointing to our long narrow Kevlar hull. “Where are you going?”

  As I begin to tell him, he excitedly mentions Eric Sevareid and his book Canoeing with the Cree, the famous account of teenager Sevareid’s upstream canoe trip with his friend Walter from St. Paul to Hudson Bay, the book that launched so many more canoe journeys. This fellow, clearly inspired by reading Sevareid, tells us that he once lived along the Minnesota River in New Ulm, Minnesota, and knows what it’s like to paddle a river like the Minnesota, downstream anyway, and has always wondered what paddling upstream would be like. “Someday,” he says with earnest determination. Now he takes his son to the Boundary Waters and on day trips down the Wisconsin, exciting adventures for a boy growing up in suburban Chicago.

  After lunch, the current feels ever stronger. “I can examine every leaf on every bush and tree … in detail,” says Bob with some amusement in his voice. We paddle close to the riverbank, slowly creeping upstream, trying
to achieve a Zen-like relationship with the current, to relinquish our usual impatience and goal setting. The current is what it is. There is no other way to paddle upstream.

  Traveling close to the bank: when we’re there, we feel most connected to the river community. Two turtles sunning on a rock watch us with blank reptilian stares, a river otter slide on a muddy bank marks the presence of those elusive creatures, clouds of dragonflies float past, the blurry beat of their wings sounding an audible buzz, and birds sing in the riparian tangles.

  And today we meet many, many, many canoeists. It’s the Friday of the July Fourth weekend, and the river is getting into party mode. A couple with two lively children on board asks how far it is to Boscobel; they urgently need to make a bathroom stop. I suggest a sandbar. Several other paddlers laugh when they see us and yell that we’re going the wrong way. Some are more curious about our trip but there’s rarely time to explain as we pass midstream. Bob just calls, “We’re headed for Arena!” Which we are.

  In yet another canoe, two young children sit in the middle, one occasionally hanging over the gunwale to dabble his fingers in the water. Neither child is wearing a life jacket. My inner parent reacts and I want to ask them why they are taking chances with their children’s lives. I don’t, but wish I had. The placid surface of the Wisconsin belies a powerful, tricky, unpredictable current that can easily overpower an inexperienced swimmer.

  Some travelers pass in small fishing boats. The Lower Wisconsin supports a good warm-water fishery, and anglers seeking sport fish catch smallmouth bass, walleye, sauger, channel catfish, flathead catfish, and northern pike, though the DNR warns that elevated levels of PCBs and mercury have been found in some game fish samples taken from parts of the Lower Wisconsin River. And there are also panfish, including bluegills, crappie, white bass, and rock bass.