Crossing the Driftless

by Lynne Diebel

  “Once a pair of pilots in A-10s [a military plane], who took off from Truax when we did and knew what we were doing, decided to give us a surprise,” added Birch. “We were only five hundred feet up and they both flew right under us. Oh my goodness.”

  Birch and Watkins counted on land as well, recruiting everyone in the DNR offices to camp out on the weekends at boat landings, where they counted and asked people about why they were going to the river. Birch remembers going to the well-known nudist beach upstream at Mazomanie. Fully clothed, equipped with binoculars and clipboard, he stood at the edge of the beach, counting. An unclothed sunbather walked up to him, smiled, and said, “You know, you don’t really need those binoculars, you can just go right out there.”

  “I was so naïve,” laughed Birch.

  At the outreach meetings the planning team presented their ideas to the community members and explained their vision. Birch said that members of Private Landowners of Wisconsin (PLOW) attended most meetings. “I remember hearing over and over again from them that if you do this, you’ll just attract those ‘city maggots,’” he said. “But PLOW members eventually realized that the majority of people in the valley liked the project and gave up their campaign.”

  On the water, the long afternoon floats by in a haze of July heat. The west wind blows its hot breath on my back, helpfully pushing our little boat upstream like a leaf on the water. The river has carried us to the north side of the wide valley and upstream crouches the bluff called Sleeping Lion. To the south, the green of bottomland forest and sloughs borders the land called Arena Prairie. We’re looking for a spot downstream of the Arena landing, a spot that now draws near. If we were to continue paddling upriver for another six miles or so, we would find a canoe landing at the mouth of Honey Creek. And rising up from the mouth of Honey Creek on the north side of the river are Ferry Bluff and its next-door neighbor Cactus Bluff, big stony high-rises with glorious views of the Wisconsin River valley.

  I remember one early fall day when Bob and I hiked the steep trails to the tops of these bluffs, when the sky was cloudless and the air clear, in that way that a brisk autumn day can be, brightly presaging the cold to come. From the Cactus Bluff lookout, three hundred feet above the river, we saw the long rounded outline of Blue Mound rising above the southwest horizon, over fifteen miles away. From Ferry Bluff, one hundred feet higher, we saw the hills of the Baraboo Range to the north. And below us flowed the beautiful Wisconsin, spreading to the east and to the southwest, its sandbars, islands, floodplain forests, and sloughs laid out as though on a map. Being up there was the closest I’ve been to my desire to be a bird, soaring over the Wisconsin.

  A few days after, on another cold clear afternoon, I remember standing atop the lookout tower at Blue Mound and looking toward the Wisconsin River valley, to the outline of Ferry Bluff and beyond it the Baraboo Range. Aspiring birds, once again. To the west we could see Belmont Mound, Platte Mound, and Sinsinawa Mound—scattered hills capped with Silurian dolomite, remnants of the great flat Paleozoic Plateau, the ancient seabed that once covered the Driftless. Military Ridge, the height of land that marches west toward the mouth of the Wisconsin at Wyalusing, divides the southern Driftless into the Wisconsin River watershed and the Rock River watershed.

  “Back then, if you wanted to get from here to the Mississippi by water, you went down the Wisconsin. If by land, you went along Military Ridge,” said Bob. “Either way, you avoided all the corduroy, all the up and down of the Driftless hills.” From up there, it was clear that the Driftless is a corduroy land.

  In a Driftless valley south of Military Ridge, the East Branch of the Pecatonica River begins its journey southward toward its eventual confluence with the Rock River. (On Nicollet’s map the river is named the Pikatonoky.) Before settlers arrived to farm the land, the valley through which it flows was covered in grassland and oak savanna, as was most of the Driftless. After years of grazing, logging, and plowing, much of the rich soil that had once crowned the ridges had washed down into the valley floor and lay deep over the floodplain, in high stream banks with raw crumbling faces, easily eroded by every rise in the river. In place of the deep-rooted grasses that had once laced the floodplain soils together, fast-growing trees like box elders lined the stream’s edge, their roots exposed by the constant erosion. The formerly damp valley had been tiled to drain off groundwater and was planted in corn. There was some evidence that farmers had straightened the formerly meandering channel. It was a typical twentieth-century Driftless stream.

  The good part of this story began nearby, over fifty years ago. After receiving a donation of three acres of prairie land, the Nature Conservancy began a prairie grassland project, now called the Military Ridge Prairie Heritage Area, a project that now encompasses over fifty thousand acres. Over 4,460 of those acres are permanently protected land, including sixty remnants of original prairie, windows into the Driftless that once was.

  In 2006, hydro-ecologist Robert Hansis, working with TNC and the Prairie Enthusiasts, decided to build on this work, this time in the stream department. Hansis designed a stream restoration project along a 2,700-foot stretch of the East Branch of the Pecatonica. Rather than leaving the high banks in place and simply covering them with riprap, the usual method of protecting highly erodible banks, Hansis wanted to try something new, to restore the stream geomorphologically. This means that he sculpted the banks and the ground surface of the valley into their presettlement contours, a change that reconnected the small stream to its wide floodplain. This meant removing twelve thousand cubic yards of topsoil from the floodplain, an expensive task. Fortunately, the team found a local excavator who hauled those twelve thousand cubic yards of good black dirt back to their provenance and put them to good use in the area.

  On a cold gray day in November, we walked the damp valley with Hansis. “I wanted to create conditions where the stream can do its own work,” said Hansis, “a healthy, dynamic floodplain.” It turned out that restoring the stream’s access to its floodplain—nature’s original design— was indeed quite effective in reducing flood damage. He told us that during the big floods of 2007 and 2008, very little soil was washed downstream. By capturing floodwaters that formerly raced downstream, the floodplain recharges the groundwater aquifers, filters pollutants and sediment from the water, and slowly releases the excess. Regular testing of nutrients, sediment, organisms, temperature, and other variables in both the stream and the floodplain show great improvement. Hansis pointed up the valley slope to limestone outcrops where the cold groundwater feeding the East Branch of the Pecatonica originates and to a series of small, clear ponds, created during the restoration and fed by the abundant groundwater. Hansis said that the number and variety of frogs and toads living and breeding on the wet floodplain has increased greatly. “On a summer night, the amazing amount of frog sound gives you a sense of how many there are now,” he said. Along the flat flood-plain, prairie cordgrass and bluejoint grass, and plant species that love keeping their feet wet, like brown fox sedge, fountain sedge, hairy-fruited sedge, have replaced the invasive species. In 2008, Hansis led the restoration of another segment of stream with similar success. The results of his experiments, documented in several graduate student theses, created a model for the restoration of Driftless streams.

  In one sense it seems straightforward. If we just reshape the land and replant the grasses that once held the land together, the streams will be healthy again. But even when a stream segment is restored, it is only one piece of a vast, intricate, interconnected system. As Hansis tells me, whatever happens upstream can undo the restoration. And thousands of miles of streams have been divorced from their floodplains. It will take time and resolve. To paraphrase Anne Lamott, it’ll have to be done stream by stream.

  About four o’clock in the afternoon, we reach the tail end of Cedar Island, long and wide, nestled into the right bank of the Wisconsin downstream of the Arena landing. Between the island and the shoreline flows a narrow channel.
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  Years before, on a blazing hot summer weekend, we camped with friends on a sandbar somewhere near here. In the late afternoon, we mostly lolled about camp, somnolent with the heat. Except for our friend Dave, an avid trout fisherman who decided to explore on foot. It turned out that our campsite was close by the outlet of a small cold creek, its mouth blocked by tangles of fallen trees. While the rest of us sat around, Dave waded into the mouth of that creek with joy in his heart and a fishing rod in his hand, and spent at least an hour stalking the trout that he hoped were there. When he returned to camp, it was to lead all the rest of us, adults and children, over to the mouth of that creek. We complied, and as we waded along the shallow edge of the Wisconsin toward the creek, the water was warm and turbid. But when I stepped into the clear creek water just a few feet above where it flowed into the big river, it felt shockingly cold, ice cream-on-teeth cold. In the heat of that afternoon, it was wonderful. There was a deep pool upstream of the mouth, scoured by the rush of the creek water on the sandy creek bed just before it hit the flow of the Wisconsin. I accidentally slipped into the icy water up to my waist and gasped for breath.

  Though he caught no trout that day, Dave did land a northern, a bass, and some panfish, all fish that live in the Wisconsin and move into the confluence to feed. Later that day, Dave told us that he often catches trout at the mouth of a stream, where they like to hang out. “A lot of different fish, including trout, will congregate at a confluence because there is lots of food coming down the faster stream,” he said. “Trout will wait there for a long time, moving into the current to feed and out of the current to rest.” That the trout also love a confluence was a wonderful revelation to me.

  Today, it isn’t easy to find the mouth of that cold creek again. The chameleon shape of the Wisconsin sandbar may be the reason, as the sandbar is always, always changing. So instead of searching for the confluence, we look for a proper place to camp, choosing a spot on a high sandbar facing the back channel with scattered thickets of willow on vast expanses of open sand, so hot in the afternoon sun that it is hard to walk barefoot. That we cannot see the main channel from here makes our camp feel secluded, somehow wilder than our wide-open tenting grounds of the last few days. On the wet mud flats that abut the sandbar on the shore side, trails of sandhill crane tracks, each footprint shaped like the letter T, form intricate patterns of line and curves and loops frequently punctuated by dried droppings.

  And as it turns out, we are indeed camped at the confluence, or perhaps more accurately, at one of several points where Blue Mounds Creek drains into the Wisconsin. By studying the shoreline, Bob concludes that one branch of Blue Mounds Creek flows into the Wisconsin under a tangle of undergrowth that is just across the back channel from our camp. To confirm this, we paddle across the narrow channel and step out of the canoe into the water. It is clear and icy. We have discovered Blue Mounds Creek.

  Back in camp, we bathe in the Wisconsin, lying full length on our backs on the sandy bottom of the shallows. My hair floats on the surface, Medusa-like, as I slowly cool off and relax. Later we dine on oranges, bananas, gouda cheese and Wasabrod and toast our arrival at the confluence with cups of ice water from the bottom of the cooler and the last of the Oreos. Bob suggests that when we get to Madison in two days that we spend the night at the Edgewater Hotel on Lake Mendota.

  “We can paddle right up to the dock,” he says, laughing.

  I agree, delighted with his somewhat outrageous idea of staying at a posh hotel on a canoe trip.

  Two sandhill cranes cross the mouth of the creek, pausing to look our way. A few quick running steps and they are launched. They depart over the trees, bodies glowing softly golden in the evening light, long wings silhouetted against the sky, and that distinctive wingbeat tempo— slow on the downstroke, quick up, another slow roll and quick snap— and then they’re gone. The sun drops behind the bluffs and the world slowly cools. I listen to the distant cranes call to each other intermittently through the evening, not thinking of anything in particular. Then, out of the blue, I recall our long-ago-abandoned portage wheels and feel a mild sense of dread.

  Defeated by the Bottoms

  July the sixth. There is a tipping point in some journeys, a point beyond which we expend more energy on getting home as soon as possible than on paying attention to the places through which we travel. It is the point at which, in fact, the only thing that really matters to us is returning home. Bob and I are at that point right now, though we don’t know it yet. That point will explode in our faces later this morning.

  Right now it is dawn and we are optimistic and full of energy. I have set aside my worries about the portage wheels. We are on the next leg of the journey and it’s both exciting and intimidating. We have never paddled Blue Mounds Creek or its tributary Black Earth Creek, and we don’t have a detailed map. Because of the interminable drought, water levels are so low that at least one channel of Blue Mounds may be impassable. And we have no idea what other obstacles lie ahead in the low swampy bottomland between the Wisconsin and the bridge at Blynn Road where we saw that the Black Earth was passable three weeks ago.

  One might ask why we didn’t think about these things before we started the journey, and that would be a reasonable question. Perhaps because the total distance we will paddle on Black Earth Creek is only about twenty-two miles, and perhaps because we didn’t have time to properly explore the route by paddling it downstream, we only did a cursory scouting by car, using a map of the Black Earth Creek watershed. We didn’t think much about the stretch on Blue Mounds Creek that connects to the Wisconsin. After all, it is less than two miles, as the crow flies, from its confluence with the Black Earth to the Wisconsin River. How long and how hard could that stretch of the journey be? However, when that trout stream meets Blue Mounds Creek, their combined waters meander in a leisurely and quite circuitous fashion through the flat wooded bottomland that borders the Wisconsin, often paralleling the river, twisting and turning, dividing and diverging several times before joining the Wisconsin at three different points. Because we have not paddled the creek, we don’t know which route is best passable by canoe. So last night we guessed. And now we are here and don’t know what we’re doing.

  Standing at the confluence at dawn, in the icy water of the creek, we begin to realize that traveling up this stream won’t be easy. As far upstream as I can see, fallen trees crisscross its narrow channel, which means we have to portage even before we start paddling. Dragging our loaded canoe through waist-high reed canary grass laced with brambles and fallen branches, and weaving around tight clumps of trees, we inch our way up the creek.

  “I don’t like this,” says Bob, with a slight growl in his voice.

  “I think it’ll clear out once we get further upstream,” I reply cheerfully, but I don’t really mean it. We can do this.

  After what seems like an interminable battle with the riparian thickets, we come to a place where we can slide the canoe into the stream. Success! Shortly thereafter, however, we meet what can best be described as a thick yellow blanket draped over the creek, a quilt of algae at least four inches deep that spreads from bank to bank, firm and dense enough for a small bird to walk on. Dead branches that have dropped from the overhanging trees protrude from the mat like alligators waiting to chomp onto our paddles.

  Nevertheless, we forge ahead. Using the bow of our canoe and the thrust of our paddles to part the viscous yellow mass, we move about twenty feet upstream. Around a bend, the branches of a deadfall again block the creek. This time we climb out of the canoe and wade in the cold, waist-deep water, pushing aside the algal mats, dragging the boat through the tangle that crosses the stream, and continue upstream. At times the creek is so shallow that its sandy bottom is exposed and we drag the boat along.

  Two hours later and less than two miles up the creek from the Wisconsin, we are exhausted, and the unbelievably winding channel of Blue Mounds Creek is still a nearly impassable swamp. We have no idea how many miles of mea
ndering struggle we face before we reach Black Earth Creek. Other than brief exchanges about how to get around the obstacles, we haven’t talked about a plan yet.

  This is the tipping point.

  “We have to turn around now,” says Bob. “We don’t have any idea how much longer it’ll be like this.”

  “I don’t want to quit,” I reply. “Once we get to Black Earth Creek, we know it will be clear.”

  “But we don’t know how far that is, and I just don’t want to do this anymore,” he says, adamantly. “If we turn around now, we can get back to the river, paddle up to the Arena landing, and call Matt to give us a ride to Middleton.”

  “You mean skip the whole Black Earth Creek part of the trip? No way. I want to keep going.” I am getting obstinate.

  “Well, I don’t and I won’t.”

  By now our voices are loud and angry. We stop yelling for a moment and simply glare at each other. I don’t want to be defeated by this passive-aggressive little stream. Then I remember, again, that the portage wheels lie twisted and useless in a trash can in Alma. Even if we finally emerge from this jungle alive and paddle all the way up to Cross Plains, we will still need a ride, because the portage from there to the closest reach of Pheasant Branch Creek is over ten miles. We can’t do that without the wheels, and we don’t want to ask Matt for more than one rescue. Judging from how low this creek is, I suspect that Pheasant Branch won’t be passable either. The bugs are biting viciously. I beat an uncharacteristically hasty retreat.