Crossing the Driftless

by Lynne Diebel

  The Tenney Locks allow the DNR to control the water level of Lake Mendota. For years there’s been a protracted and contentious political battle between those who want the lake’s ecosystem to come first and those who want property owners to have predictable and favorable levels for their piers and marinas. Before the first dam was built in 1849, the lake was at least four and a half feet lower than it is now, some sources say up to seven feet lower. The river meandered then, across a low marshy isthmus to Lake Monona, several hundred feet to the east of where it now does. As the city grew, the wetlands were filled and a straight channel was dredged for the wandering Yahara.

  Downstream, the lineup of fishermen standing on the banks quietly cast their lines into the Yahara, not bothering to look up as we pass. They are used to canoeists. Of the six bridges we float under on this short reach of river, the one at East Washington Avenue is the one that I would call attractive, even magnificent, a Prairie style structure with a sign that tells us where we are. Though the river is totally urbanized here, banked by walls of stone and concrete topped by iron railings, the scene is architecturally impressive.

  In the urban landscape, the river and the lake have a lot to put up with. Every rain flushes dirty storm water, road salt, and more into the waters. “The main water quality issue for this watershed is urban runoff of nutrients, solids, organic contaminants, heavy metals, oils and grease,” is the assessment of the Dane County State of the Waters Report (2008), an unpleasant reality. People reshape the shorelines, altering and destroying the homes of the river’s denizens in order to line Lake Mendota and the three other lakes in the chain with their houses. Seen in contrast with the more lightly developed Cannon River valley, the many miles of undeveloped bottomland along the Mississippi River pools, and buffered banks of Black Earth Creek, the Madison lakes are clearly more a cultural than a natural landscape. It’s not just that we’re out of the Driftless. People place a higher value on the lakeshore than they do on the riverbank, and that’s where they want to build their homes. In parts of Wisconsin where there are no natural lakes, people often prefer to live on a river impoundment that resembles a lake rather than on a free-flowing river. It is safe to say that Madison, the city on the isthmus, the city of four lakes, was platted here because the lakes are here.

  Floating into Lake Monona, shown on Nicollet’s map as 3rd Lake, we begin the counter-clockwise circuit. Though the water is quiet enough today that we could easily cut straight across, we choose the scenic route: gliding past the Monona Terrace and Law Park, where the state capitol building, built on a drumlin hill, is a regal backdrop; past a weed harvester, a massive machine that clatters and munches through thick belts of aquatic vegetation, its operator working the shallow west end of the lake where the causeway crosses. We float past Olin Park, and the mouth of the channel that drains little Lake Wingra, and past Turville Bay, around the curve to Squaw Bay. Here the river regroups, flowing slowly and ponderously through a dense thicket of barely submersed greenery as it leaves the lake. Another weed cutter cranks slowly along this shore, dumping its soggy harvest—invasive water plants called Eurasian watermilfoil and curly-leaf pondweed—onto the flat platform in back.

  Beds of aquatic vegetation are not new to these lakes. In 1887, Reuben Gold Thwaites wrote in Historic Waterways about “close-grown patches of reeds and lily-pads, encumbered by thick masses of green scum,” native plants that grew here where the Yahara leaves Lake Monona. It is the nature of lakes like these to have what we call “weeds” growing in the shallow water. Fish like weeds; that is, if they are the right weeds and in the right concentrations. Even if the county is able to beat back the persistent algae growth, the water will become clearer and more weeds will grow.

  Algae blooms are also a persistent and yet more disturbing plague on Lake Monona, fed by nutrients that flow in with urban storm water and from agricultural land in the headwaters and tributaries. People throughout the watershed are working hard to reduce those nutrients, and researchers are now exploring ways to reduce the algae in other ways as well. Algae grow by absorbing the nutrients, and tiny floating animals called zooplankton eat the nutritious algae. The largest and hungriest of these zooplankton is Daphnia pulicaria. Stephen Carpenter and Richard Lathrop of the University of Wisconsin–Madison have shown that Daphnia pulicaria is an “effective grazer” on algae and “causes large improvements in water quality.” Which means that larger herds of grazing Daphnia are needed. This may be accomplished by spurring changes in the lake’s food chain, according to Matt Diebel of the DNR. Small fish, like bluegill, eat Daphnia, so it may be helpful to reduce the lake’s population of small fish. Increasing the populations of their predators—large fish like muskie, northern, and walleye—through stocking and changes in fishing regulations could help reduce the numbers of Daphnia-devouring fish, and the more that the big predators eat the little fish, the more Daphnia that will survive to graze on the algae. Sadly, however, the invasive spiny water flea, which feeds voraciously on Daphnia, has been found in Mendota and as it has no predators will reproduce unchecked.

  The Yahara slides past houses, piers, and marinas, and beneath three more bridges, including the busy Beltline Highway, before flowing into Upper Mud Lake, which is surrounded by a large wetland. At the west end of the cattails, though we can’t see them from here, are the facilities and settling ponds of the Nine Springs sewage treatment plant, operated by Madison Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD). In 1887, Thwaites wrote of canoeing on “the crystal water” of the Yahara chain. But that was written at about the same time that Madison first began dumping raw sewage into Lake Monona, when residents had not yet felt the full effects of this unfortunate practice. Madison’s sewage flowed downstream untreated and unabated until the stench from the Yahara lakes and river became unbearable. In the late 1920s, public outrage led to the formation of MMSD, a treatment plant near the east-side Oscar Mayer plant and later, the Nine Springs plant. But the nutrients in the effluent still flowed into the Yahara system, and the resulting algae and plant growth became an increasing source of distress to communities on the lakes. In the 1950s, the district began pumping its wastewater through five miles of pipeline and a newly dug channel into Badfish Creek, a small tributary of the Yahara. Because the Badfish confluence is downstream of the lakes, landowners who lived around the lakes approved. Those along Badfish Creek did not. In recent decades, however, MMSD has made two substantial changes—ultraviolet light replaced chlorine disinfection, which created toxic byproducts, and modern biological filters and extraction processes now remove phosphorus from the wastewater. The waters of the Badfish now run relatively clear and forty-two species of fish, including brown trout, swim in the stream.

  At the south end of the little lake we paddle under an aged railroad bridge supported by creosoted wooden pilings and through a narrow outlet into 2nd Lake, Lake Waubesa. Like Monona, the lake is filled with Eurasian watermilfoil and algae, and paddling through the thickly matted beds is discouragingly slow. Portaging the small dam at the outlet, we cross Highway 51, a road that runs between Madison and our home.

  Past the canoe landing at Indian Mound Conservation Park in the village of McFarland, the shoreline quickly evolves into a lovely marshland, dragonflies hovering and darting above the cattails, and the river opens into tranquil little Mud Lake. A kingfisher screeches notice of our invasion, and a yellow-headed blackbird wings through the cattails. There is no sign of the village. Behind the tree-lined, marshy shore is a wildlife refuge, Marsh Woods Park, where an expanse of open grassland is bounded by an upland woodlot of old growth trees. From out here on the lake, the dense vegetation of refuge conceals the village behind a veil of green and allows river travelers a sense of remoteness. Bordering the shoreline, a cattail margin expands around us as we leave the lake.

  We float toward the iron bridge at Dyreson Road, a structure that looks as though it is from another time, and that’s because it is. A pinned Pratt through-truss bridge, built in 1897 by
Milwaukee Bridge and Iron Works, it is now being repaired for only the second time in its long life, this time by the historically and environmentally minded citizens of the town of Dunn. Some years ago, I rode across this bridge on a bicycle circuit of Lake Kegonsa and remember thinking then that it seemed an appealing anachronism. This place has been a river ford for thousands of years. According to the Dane County Environmental Council’s 2007 Water Trail Guide, it is “one of very few places on the Yahara River system that is narrow enough and with firm footing suitable for convenient crossing by horses and humans.” Archeologists from the University of Wisconsin have found evidence along the river that Paleo-Indians were in this area more than eleven thousand years ago, when humans were first moving into the area at the end of the most recent ice age. And through the shallow green water, we can just make out the faint outline of a V-shaped fish weir—a rock dam designed to trap fish for netting and spearing. The Dane County Environmental Council alleges the weir has probably been in the river bottom since prehistoric times and the Ho-Chunk tribe used it as recently as the late nineteenth century.

  According to the Water Trail Guide, federal surveyors mapped southern Wisconsin Territory between 1833 and 1835, and the Madison area was mapped from south to north in 1834. When Joseph Nicollet compiled and drew his map of the water routes further west, published in 1843, he would have used these brand-new surveys to complete the Wisconsin Territory section, an area that he had not personally explored. Though he labeled the nearby Sugar River on his map, Nicollet left our river unnamed. In 1844, naturalist and writer Increase Lapham called it the Catfish River. It wasn’t until 1855 that the state legislature approved the names Mendota, Monona, Waubesa, Kegonsa, and Yahara, which were suggested by Frank Hudson, a surveyor and student of tribal lore, and Lyman Draper, secretary of the State Historical Society, to reflect the heritage of the watershed’s original inhabitants.

  Though we thought the weeds were thick in the upstream lakes, it is clear that Lake Kegonsa, formerly 1st Lake, is in a class of its own. At the river’s mouth, a vast multihued algal mat, material blown in and concentrated here by the south wind, sprawls over this corner of the lake. Thick tangles of yellow filamentous algae, like those we battled on Blue Mounds Creek, blanket the water. Large dark brown clumps gather in their own unattractive flotillas. Patches of blue-green algae bloom like oil slicks. It’s an ugly sight. Blue-green algae can be toxic, to dogs in particular and to humans as well, causing gastrointestinal and respiratory issues or even liver failure.

  “This is unbelievably disgusting,” mutters Bob.

  “I’m trying not to splash it in my face,” I reply.

  At once saddened by the state of our lake and angry that humans choose to foul their own nests this way, we paddle cautiously through the stuff, with thick strands of the yellow algal mats dripping from our paddle blades, following the most direct route to Williams Point, the point of land that lies between us and the spot where the river departs Kegonsa.

  To our left, though we cannot see it, is the mouth of Door Creek. It doesn’t look like much, but this little stream causes big problems for the lake. A group of University of Wisconsin graduate students in Water Resource Management just finished studying the creek and its nutrient management challenges. The Door Creek watershed is thirty square miles of heavily farmed land, about a fourth of the land that drains directly into Lake Kegonsa, the remainder coming from the upper lakes. And almost a fourth of this land is drain-tiled, which accelerates the movement of nutrients into the lake. In 2009, farmers made regular applications of Metrogro—phosphorus-rich biosolids, distilled from Madison Metropolitan Sewerage District sewage sludge—to thirteen hundred acres of the little stream’s watershed, resulting in increased phosphorus being stored in the soil and released into the creek. Erosion that results from the rolling character of the land combined with the prevalent practice of fall tilling adds excess sediment to the creek.

  In addition to these agricultural stresses, the village of McFarland continues to develop more land in the watershed, and the nutrients from storm water runoff pour into the creek. On the other side of this nutrient equation, the large wetland that surrounds the final reach of the creek has the potential, if restored, to absorb some of the phosphorus before it can feed the algae. In fact, 9 percent of the watershed is wetlands. Much of Door Creek is channelized and bermed to reduce erosion, an alteration of the natural creek channel that helps during heavy rains, when phosphorus flow is highest.

  The students recommend protecting and restoring wetlands in the watershed; retaining the berms, at least temporarily; promoting no-till farming and non-row crops on sloping land; further limiting the Metrogro applications; and adding buffer strips along the creek. And the team concluded that, if these recommendations were implemented, they would improve the water quality of Door Creek. Because most of the phosphorus in Lake Kegonsa comes from the upstream lakes, however, not from Door Creek, the students added that making these same changes in the watersheds of the upstream lakes would make it “possible to drastically improve the condition of the entire lake ecosystem.” Perhaps the damage can be undone.

  When the last glacier moved in, it covered the land that is now Madison and the Yahara river valley with ice more than a thousand feet deep. As the ice melted off the land where the lakes of Madison now lie, Glacial Lake Yahara took its place, draining first to the southwest and west, through the Sugar River and Black Earth Creek. Glacial Lake Yahara shrank until it filled only a basin bounded by the moraine that now divides the Yahara River and Black Earth watersheds to the west and by the retreating glacier to the northeast. The lake then found a new outlet to the south, through the glacial debris covering what is now the river valley. As the water moved downstream and the lake level dropped, a chain of smaller river-linked lakes appeared.

  This giant frozen earthsmoother and its meltwater carved and polished the contours of our river system, shaped the gentle slope of the land, swept in glacial erratic boulders, sculpted sand and gravel into streamlined teardrop drumlins, and left us abundant marshlands. The peaty nature of the soil in the Yahara valley comes from the marshes, those organic sponges and cleansers of water. From the nineteenth century until the present, we tried so hard to drain those marshes, and it is only now that we have learned to appreciate and protect those that remain and long for those that are lost to return.

  Yesterday we left the Driftless, where high wooded uplands and steep valleys define the shape of the world, where roads curve along river valleys, where the river route is often the most direct. It’s a land of ancient bedrock layers, of the hidden world of karst, where icy groundwater flows and seeps through an intricate network of limestone fissures, following secret paths through the rocky underpinnings of the land, emerging at random moments, pouring down the coulee in a rush of icy narrow stream, surprising the hiker with gusts of icy breath. The oldest rivers carved deep pathways, time travelers slicing through the bedrock layer cake, trails of geologic and human history, forming a refuge where relicts from before the glacial age still live. Though ice never buried the Driftless, the massive glacier that covered the land all around it filled the riverbeds of its drainage channels through the Driftless with a deluge of glacial sand and gravel, and glacial winds coated the bare hills and valleys with deep layers of loess, the rich soil of the Driftless. While movement of sediment is clearly a key aspect of the natural history of the Driftless, farming the rugged land vastly accelerated the cycle of erosion along steep tributary streams and deposition along valley bottoms that continues today.

  Today we came home to this gentle undulating Yahara landscape of lake, marsh, slow river, drumlin. Here, a glacial age that seems relatively recent in geologic time carved the physical shape of the land, with ice that transformed rocky hills and steep valleys into soft low-lying contours. It was this flattened world, frosted with sediment spread by the departing glacier, that greeted its human inhabitants and invited the settlement that shapes and is shaped
by the natural landscape. Cultural pressures from extensive agriculture and development and the slower flow of the river over the glacial landscape together yield a different central challenge for the rivers here than for rivers in the Driftless: an excess of nutrients rather than of sediment.

  Paddling the Yahara today, we feel that excess and it darkens our view of the future. Yet it would be simplistic and inaccurate to say this trip is about identifying environmental issues, a task that is simply the byproduct of being in today’s natural world and paying attention. Instead, it’s about feeling and knowing the rivers and the land through which they flow, the landscape that is our well-known world, just a little more deeply, the details and the whole. Knowing it as it is, not what it was or what it could be. It’s looking at the familiar from a different angle, the up-close angle formed by sitting in the bow of a canoe, immersed in the river’s reality.

  I think of the lines from T. S. Eliot’s Little Gidding: “We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time.” Eliot’s words speak to me of the way we connect to the earth. Each journey out and each return home reveals the new in familiar places, the details of which we did not see before, imparting lessons we had yet to learn. After spending those days floating between rugged old hills, this flat-land river valley of ours feels so gentle, so subdued, so newly formed, and the contrast with the ancient Driftless valleys so sharp.

  By canoe, our journey across the Driftless from home to home has taken twelve days. A flight from Faribault to Stoughton in a small plane, soaring over the corduroy land like a migratory bird, would take about two and a half hours. When we drive the familiar interstate route, it takes four and a half hours. Were we to walk home instead, following the back roads and traveling at the rate of eighteen miles a day, our hike would take fifteen days. In the days when there were no roads and we would have trekked the high plateau land through Minnesota to the Mississippi, dipping through steep tributary valleys along the way, and then following Military Ridge across the rugged Driftless, it is hard to know how many days we would have had to walk; we probably would have canoed instead. Ten years ago, Bob and our children rode their bicycles from Trempealeau to Stoughton, on long straight biking trails that once were railroad lines and then up and down the steep, winding back roads, crossing the Driftless in three days. On each distinctly different path across the intricate landscape of the Driftless, the traveler finds a different world, its details and beauty unique to the route.