by Robert Root
Soon after I began retracing my steps, I heard croaking voices overhead and stopped to scour the sky. Two sandhill cranes appeared above the trees, heading east across the river, calling back and forth as they went. They alternated the beating of their wings, as if deliberately taking turns. I watched them until they grew faint above the distant woods, somehow reassured by their flight—cranes were crossing the river long before fishermen floated on it or campfires burned above it. Back on the paved path I completed the loop, noting where the sloughs had been, now well grassed over and filling with trees and shrubs.
I thought that, as a memorial site to celebrate Derleth’s walks, the park was a pleasant place. It’s good to stand on high bluffs on the west bank and gaze across the blue expanse of the river at the lower banks and beaches and sandbars on the eastern side. I’d been the only one here and, in my solitude, despite the lack of feeling in my hands by now and the windburn on my face, I appreciated how peaceful the park could be. Still, as one who has read his nature writing, I found it hard to imagine Derleth in it. I couldn’t help thinking how unlike the places he usually wandered this park had become.
The intervening decades had wrought a good many other changes in the ways the environment along the Wisconsin River has been managed. Several designated state natural areas have been created close to Sac Prairie, including Lodde’s Mill Bluff west of Sauk City, Mazomanie Bottoms on the east bank of the river opposite Ferry Bluff, and Ferry Bluff itself. An extensive Lower Wisconsin State Riverway preserves locations across seven counties, a stretch of the river Derleth traveled for his book The Wisconsin: River of a Thousand Isles. Near Sauk City, the riverway encompasses the Spring Slough and Brook Trestle area, though it’s not as readily accessible as other areas designed for recreation.
The Lodde’s Mill Bluff Natural Area sits near the site of the millpond Derleth remembered so fondly from fishing outings with his grandfather. I drove out to the cemetery for a quick look again at Derleth’s grave, paused again before Place of Hawks, from where Derleth would have set out on his rambles, and headed for Lodde’s Mill Bluff. I spotted it almost at once after I turned onto River Road, straight ahead less than two miles west from Place of Hawks, rising around three hundred feet above Honey Creek. I was startled to think I’d barely noticed it before—now it seemed so prominent. The road led directly to the spot below the bluff where the millpond once sprawled.
When I crossed Highway 60 on River Road, on the opposite side of the creek from the bluff, I found myself at a dead end, in a cul-de-sac circled by a few houses. As I turned around, I saw an elderly woman by the side of the road, near some mailboxes, watching me. Hoping to seem harmless and inoffensive, I pulled over, rolled down my window, explained I was looking for places Derleth wrote about, and asked her about the millpond. She stepped over closer to my car and told me she was not a Sac Prairie native, but her husband had family ties to the Loddes and their house was on family land. As she gestured toward the house, I recognized the name on a sign near her driveway as one I’d read on Derleth’s endpaper map of seven decades earlier. She said the mill and the millpond were gone by the time she came to Sac Prairie, but she remembered attending a lively Christmas party at Derleth’s Place of Hawks when she and her husband were courting, more than forty years before. In fact, she told me, there were still a good many people in Sac Prairie who could recall interacting with Augie.
Following her directions, I drove south across Honey Creek, turned onto a dirt road at the base of the bluff, parked, and walked back along the road. The bluff was an impressive mass on my right, its cliffs formed of Cambrian sandstone, its cap Prairie du Chien dolomite, all of it hard to see through the trees on the leaf-covered slope below it, birch, oak, hickory, and basswood. Entrance to the bluff itself was farther south, access restricted by its owner, the University of Wisconsin, because of diverse and uncommon flora and a stretch of vanishing dry prairie on the summit. Derleth likely climbed the bluff at some point in his youth, but in Return to Walden West it’s the millpond he reflects on and eventually laments. Looking off to my left I saw long stretches of flat grassland. Much of that flatland had been underwater when the millpond was here. Now a wide, level patch of green grass stretched out toward distant trees. Soon I reached a point where Honey Creek meanders from the north and turns near the road to head east under Highway 60 and due south to the Wisconsin River near Ferry Bluff. The brown water flowed briskly through plentiful young trees on either bank, some shrubs just beginning to leaf out, promising to obscure the view of the creek by summer.
I’d come to Sac Prairie this time armed with printouts and photocopies of plat book and DNR maps, and I had thought often of finding a way, if not to reach the Spring Slough and the Brook Trestle themselves, then to at least locate someplace equivalent, someplace that might feel like the next best thing to having walked them. And so, when I left Lodde’s Mill Bluff, I headed for the Mazomanie Bottoms Natural Area on the east side of the river, off a county road linking Sauk City with Mazomanie to the south. It struck me as the same kind of landscape that the river bottomlands across the trestles must be.
I parked in an empty lot a little way down a gated dirt road and set off on foot, trying to distinguish the trees of a Wisconsin River floodplain forest—mostly silver maple, elm, basswood, and ash. In another season I might have heard some uncommon warblers, but today the only bird sounds came from woodpeckers and turkeys. The road seemed to go a long way, paralleling the river through the middle of the woods. When I spotted a clear side trail, I took it a short distance to an intersection with a footpath running along the riverbank.
Ferry Bluff and Cactus Bluff filled the skyline across the river; a low island with a scattering of trees and a solitary goose floated in the water near the eastern shore. I remembered seeing the island before, looking down from Cactus Bluff. For a little while I followed the footpath in either direction, first south and then north, but soon returned to the place where I first emerged from the forest. With my binoculars I slowly scanned the island, hoping to see at least another goose, and then turned my attention to each of the bluffs, surveying in turn the exposed layers of light-brown sandstone that form their cliff faces, trying to gain a better sense of their summits. Everything I saw was as motionless as if it were a landscape painting. I had no idea how much time I was taking; but I knew that, however slowly I gazed at each part of the scene, I would still take in very little of it.
A little upstream, a flicker of motion at skyline caught my attention. An eagle had spread his wings and was launching himself off a tree. I saw him circle effortlessly above Ferry Bluff. A hawk appeared and began circling about the eagle, then dove down closer to him. Hawk and eagle maintained a parallel circuit, and I could vaguely hear the hawk’s cries. A second eagle began to hover far above them, keeping its distance but obviously aware of them. I watched the hawk and the eagle circle one another high above the bluff for a long time, every moment wondering what might happen, until finally the eagle veered away and disappeared over the woods to the north. The second eagle, still at height, paced the first in that direction, and the hawk remained a moment longer before gliding out of sight beyond the bluff.
I recalled seeing a hawk hovering above me the first time I climbed Cactus Bluff and the coincidence got my attention. I had no way of knowing if it were the same hawk and didn’t speculate. What I’d seen was what you hope to see when you’re out wandering the riverscape, something that seems more urgent than what may await you back where you live, something that helps you lock the moment securely in memory.
The view of Cactus Bluff and Ferry Bluff across the river stayed with me in the following weeks, and so I find myself again on Cactus Bluff, gazing east and remembering the place I stood the month before looking at these bluffs from the Mazomanie Bottoms. From this height, the twists and bends of the river are more pronounced and the sand bars more distinct. I hear distant geese, something rustling below me in the woods, but mostly the wind, sometimes
rather brusque but mostly mild. I’m pleased not to have layered on as much as I first intended. Glancing up at the empty sky, I try to imagine what it would feel like to be here on a cloudless night, taking in the universe, as Derleth so often did. I stand quietly alone for many minutes, my gaze sweeping slowly along the river in either direction, aware of how much there is to take in, afraid that too little of it will register.
Though I’m alone here, I judge from the wear of the ground this must be a popular locale, easy to reach despite a persistent, relentless ascent; it’s broad and open and relatively flat. The edge is unprotected but not unnerving. I remember seeing a footpath near the boardwalk that winds more steeply uphill. My last time here, when grasses were thick and the direction of the path uncertain, I didn’t follow it very far. This time I’m sure it must lead to Ferry Bluff, the higher bluff, and I force myself away from the view to follow it. The grasses now are low and the path clear, snaking upward toward a wooded prominence. The sand changes from tan above the ledge to gray, all ground from the rocks prominent ahead of me. The path grows steep and, as I rest on a small level spot, I notice two deer a long way below me on the slope, beyond a stand of leafless bushes, stepping slowly and making the rustling sound I heard earlier. I climb the path up a narrow ridge and emerge onto the summit of the bluff, a rounded, wooded, grassy open space. In the distance I see blue sky through the trees—the summit is not very wide.
The footpath winds inland, away from the river, and then arcs along the heights over to and out onto Ferry Bluff. The farther I go, the thicker the woods become, with more underbrush and more frequent deadfall across the path. I swing west, then north, then back east, rising gently all the while, until I see the point at which the trees stop and the sky opens up beyond them. At the limit of the trees the path narrows further, becomes more of a dirt path winding out into the open on a sharp grade down toward the edge of the bluff. Some undergrowth hasn’t yet filled in this season, but the bluff is more exposed and open, far narrower and more abrupt than Cactus Bluff. It gives me a truly magisterial view of the river, the shoreline forests, the agricultural lands beyond them, the expanses from northwest to south. From here I can see where Honey Creek empties into the Wisconsin River. I have a better sense of sandbars and islands, can almost see the process of their forming, the water directly below sometimes brown from silt and sometimes red from sand just below the surface.
I have only a few minutes to take it all in before another hiker, younger, more fit, in his forties, brandishing a straight, homemade walking stick, appears behind me and slowly descends to the top of the grade. I suspect we’re both disappointed to find another person here, but we greet one another with smiles and chat amicably for a few minutes. He tells me he’s a Sauk City native who never followed the trail all the way up here before, though he frequently fishes and hikes along the river and has often been on Cactus Bluff. When I tell him I’m from near Milwaukee, he helpfully points out distant Blue Mound, the highest point in southwestern Wisconsin; through my binoculars I locate its tower. He also mentions the nude beach to the south, on the east shore, formerly accessible by car at the end of Conservation Road but, since Mazomanie Bottoms became a state natural area, reachable now only on foot. We stand gazing into the distance for a moment or two, and just before I’m about to offer to change places with him—I think I have the better vantage point—he turns to leave. As he steps away he warns me about ticks, especially abundant this season, perhaps because of the mild winter and the early spring. I wave good-bye, sit down to take notes, immediately find a tick on my pants leg, and flick it off.
Dawdling some to give him a head start, I watch as a downy woodpecker works a tree for a few minutes, then start my own slow return. The descent is relatively easy, backtracking all the way, though a few places are steep and I try to be cautious. As I walk, I wonder how much of it Derleth saw, though I’m certain the expansiveness and the remoteness of it were elements of Ferry Bluff he felt especially. In Return to Walden West he wrote that “Ferry Bluff and its sister hills were little changed through the decades,” but for a widening of the road in a government project and the loss of some trees, including those that fell across Honey Creek, “adding new water voices to the day and night.” The changes didn’t bother him much because he tended to walk there at night, when little was visible. For him, “the Ferry Bluff range, the road, the hillside path . . . remained unchanged, offering by day the grandeur of the river valley and the Sac Prairie country on both sides of the broad Wisconsin, and by night the intimate, enclosed space in which to treasure my solitudes.” Having had some solitude in my wanderings on the bluff and across the river in Mazomanie Bottoms, I feel as if I know something of what he felt.
Back down on Cactus Bluff I take a moment to scan the sky in case there’s a hawk hovering overhead; I’m only a little disappointed when none appears. By now I’ve walked August Derleth’s home ground enough to know that there’s little to be gained by searching for symbols. Any confirmation you need can be had simply by paying attention and knowing where you are, in just the way Derleth walked his home ground.
PART TWO
Interlude
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2012. I should have known, long before now, that the Retzer Nature Center, on the west side of Waukesha, is located on a glacial drumlin, a long, narrow hill shaped like an inverted spoon. We’ve been here before, cross-country skiing on its winter trails and walking through its autumn woods, and a week ago I staffed an Ice Age Trail information table at the Apple Harvest Festival (made apple-less by this year’s drought). But it’s only today, on a family outing on our son-in-law’s birthday, that I recognize the drumlin beneath our feet.
We amble through the woods, chatting amiably, hoping to keep the grandchildren’s attention on their surroundings. It’s a sunny day, but the November air has little warmth in it. Emerging from the trees onto a slope that rises through the dry grasses of an autumn prairie, we pass numbered sites on a yellow trail loop without the interpretative pamphlet that would explain what we’re seeing. Beyond the high brown grasses, a long stretch of mown green falls away to the south.
We leave the restored prairie and walk down the grassy slope toward a side trail that would take us to a fen, but it’s hunting season and the trail is closed to hikers, so we climb back up the hill to a fenced area just at the crest. This is the vista overlook, the high point on the drumlin. Walking down and up the slope, we’ve gained a sense of the drumlin’s scale. From the overlook we can see a long way off to the east, the south, and the west. While Lilly runs through the tall grass with her parents and grandmother behind her, her brother, Louie, and I step up to the overlook fence. I point out the water tower in the distance near where our house is located, and we both note a large house nearly due west, on the crest of a neighboring hill, positioned to obtain a magisterial view.
We complete the circuit, view exhibits in the visitor center, then separate and head for home. Our drive back into Waukesha takes Sue and me past Glacier Cone Park. Glacier Cone is a moulin kame, a cone-shaped mound of glacial sediment, its base hidden on three sides by trees and shrubs and a well-populated neighborhood. It’s open on the north, near the street, but from that side it simply looks like a grassy hill. If you start up the mown path on the west side, however, you discover a steep climb through high grass to a summit with a random quartet of oak trees and a mown space with a fire circle littered with cans, bottles, and scraps of paper.
I climbed it last June, on a spur-of-the-moment outing, but Sue hasn’t seen it, so we backtrack, park on a side street, and cross to the entrance. Today the grasses are pale and bent low, but the path and the open area at the top are still green, and though it’s a cool day and the climb is steady work, it’s pleasant on top of the kame. I look to the west and locate the open space on the drumlin that Retzer occupies, more than a mile away, and beyond it the silhouette of the gigantic house Louie and I noticed. I face south. Our condo is about three miles south-southea
st as the crow—or, preferably, the sandhill crane—flies, and invisible to me from this location. The River Place subdivision rises on slopes to the east of our complex, and other housing extends on the heights beyond it, and they all provide an indicator of where we live. Our complex is set on a terrace just above the floodplain of the Fox River as it flows out of Waukesha; we’re situated at the lowest point in the community, and from here on the kame, I can’t even see the Fox wetlands that spread out behind us.
I can’t help but ponder this juxtaposition of high and low. Newly aware of this kame here and that drumlin at Retzer, I begin to recognize, in spite of all the residential and commercial development that covers the landscape, how much the glacial past is still present. Glacier Cone Park is officially 25.09 acres of oak openings and prairie grasses, undeveloped (except for that mown path and circle) and intended to remain a natural area. Paths through the grasses leading off from the summit suggest that people in the neighborhood climb the kame often; it’s demanding enough that one could stay in good shape walking it a few times a week. If I’ve read topographic maps correctly, the kame rises to 1,120 feet, and the floodplain of the Fox behind my condo is at an elevation of 780 feet or lower. That’s a 340-foot change in elevation. In the neighborhood around Glacier Cone Park the elevations tend to be around 850 feet, 270 feet lower. From the top of the kame I have a better sense of the lay of the land. If we lived in this neighborhood, I’d likely be up here at the summit often.