Simplifying Life at The Springs

Posted on August 6, 2014 by paulmozina

Thank you, dear reader, for following my exploits here at The Springs. Long-time readers know that I’m an activist at heart; frustrated in my attempts to change the world. Why is that? I’ll let the over-quoted icons, George Orwell and Winston Churchill, explain:

“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”

“History is written by the victors.”

“The great game” is being played constantly by the titans of finance and their minions in government. It’s one thing to become conscious of it and quite another to do something about it. I know, I’ve tried. And now, I’m taking refuge at The Springs. I’ll give it 7 years; I started in May, 2011. Yup, then I’m going to move on and change the world, but for now, I’m living the simple life at The Springs.

Indeed, things have gotten much simpler at The Springs: I don’t fret about the possible side effects to me and the environment from foliar spraying toxic poisons anymore, I gave up on the phragmites and narrow-leaved cattails that dominate the river valley (last year, I cut the tops off with a hedge cutter, which was a waste of time), and I let the life cycles of the many invasive plants dictate what I work on e.g., my highest priority now is pulling spotted knapweed before it goes to seed.

Last weekend I continued to clean up the area just downstream from the Scuppernong Spring, where we pulled up the flumes and support beams, and Ben Johnson and I kept it really simple pulling spotted knapweed on the sand prairie.

On Sunday, I got out the brush cutter and whacked many huge American Pokeweed plants that were flourishing on the south end of the trail. Although they are native, DNR trail boss, Don Dane, advised me to keep them out of The Springs. I cut a lot of Canadian Fleabane and tidied up the trail a bit on the south end. I pulled knapweed in the afternoon, which, I think, along with the frequent rains and the hand of the creator of course, is helping the sand prairie burst with blooms.

Yesterday, I called out the big guns i.e. the mighty arms of Rich Csavoy, to help me rebuild the sloping deck at the Indian Springs.

Rich picked the northwest corner of the deck to anchor and level the new foundation.

He moved like a cat.

We soon had a new foundation, set on pillars buried in the front and 6″x6″, 4′ beams recovered from the river, nestled in the hillside. Then we relaid the deck on top and replaced a few missing deck boards.

It makes a really nice place to sit and enjoy the Indian Springs. I wasn’t through with Rich yet, and I asked him to take a look at the cantilevers in the deck pedestals we recently build; there were some gaps between the supports and their loads.

After a few minutes of study, Rich selected a few choice shims from the nearby pile of flume scraps, and neatly toenailed the beams together. Thanks Rich, you taught me a lot! And, before I forget, thanks again to Big Jim Davee for kick-starting our boardwalk and deck rebuilding efforts.

We had a 4′ section of boardwalk left over from the deck rebuilding effort at the Scuppernong Spring and Ben suggested we place it on the riverbank near the decks we recently moved to the place I call, for now, the no-name springs.

It’s a nice pedestal for river viewing.

Celebrations are in order! After two failed seasons in a row, our resident Sandhill Cranes have successfully raised 2 chicks to robust young adults.

Ahhh, the simple life.

See you at The Springs!

The Indian Spring Garden

Posted on July 3, 2014 by paulmozina

Ben Johnson and I shared one of those special days yesterday at The Springs, that make it all worthwhile. We ignored the intermittent rain and incessant mosquito attacks to plant a garden at the Indian Springs. Watercress and quack grass are out: native sedges, grasses, ferns and flowers are in. When these plants take hold this will be an even more magical place than it already is.

We started the day with empty wheel barrows, just down the trail from the main parking lot on Hwy ZZ, in the buckthorn alley. The emergence, or should I say, explosion, of a wide variety of native plants along this trail makes referring to it as an “alley” a misnomer. I’ll have to come up with a new name. So we arrived at the Indian Springs with our diverse loads of plants…

… and surveyed the void left by the recent removal of watercress and quack grass.

The profile of stream bed has changed significantly since I removed the mud dam in the narrows of the picture above, and we furthered that process along by cleaning the debris from the literally dozens of springs that emerge here. I don’t have scientific data to back this claim up, but it appeared that the volume of water flowing from each spring increased significantly as the obstructions were removed.

Although I try to live in the present moment, I can’t help but look forward to next spring, when the transplants have settled in and we should have the deck repaired. We spent the later part of the afternoon cutting and poisoning sumac and pulling spotted knapweed amongst the lupine patches on the west side of the sand prairie. Thanks for your help Ben!

Pati and I are going on a short vacation (back around July 15th), so I got some licks in at The Springs this past Tuesday, cleaning up the areas around the hillside springs. I mowed the spur trails that lead to the hillside and hidden springs, as well as the trail that leads to the emerald springs and the unnamed springs just to the north.

In what will become a semi-annual event, I pulled loads of watercress from the headwaters at the Scuppernong Spring down to the first bridge downstream. When my fingers encountered the planking they installed way back in the days when this stretch of the river was a trout factory, I couldn’t help but pull this garbage out. I found huge 6×8″ beams spanning the river bed from bank to bank onto which the planks had been nailed. These unnatural impediments to the stream flow must be removed.

Before…

… and after.

After removing the planks shown below, the height of the river noticeably declined. The channel is now much deeper and more distinct. When I showed the area to Ben on Wednesday there were two ducks, normally very skittish when humans are near, who refused to leave. I think they liked the change.

Along with the aforementioned beams embedded in the river bottom, there are still more planks and pipes left over from the old days that we plan to remove in the coming weeks. This will go a long way toward facilitating the river’s return to a natural steam bed in this area.

Again, the late afternoon was spent digging and pulling spotted knapweed along the main trail on the sand prairie.

I thought it was going to be a classic Scuppernong Sunset as I bathed in the river, but this bank of clouds came up fast from the northwest. I can’t remember a spring and summer where we have gotten so much rain so consistently.

See you at The Springs!

Watercress Bio-Logs

Posted on June 22, 2014 by paulmozina

It’s been a week of dodging rain and catching rays at The Springs; mostly the former. It’s really wet out there and it’s going to be like a steam bath when the summer heat finally arrives.

On Wednesday, June 18, I waited in my truck for the rain to stop and got in some uninhibited practice on my recorder. I still sound really bad, but I’m learning my way around the instrument and it’s fun to make sounds. When the rain finally stopped I mowed the DNR 2-track access road on the south end of the Scuppernong Springs Nature Preserve with my brush cutter; not the most efficient tool, but dragging a mower out there is a lot of work too.

I followed up on my efforts last week at the Indian Springs by transplanting a few of the sedges that are growing downstream into the area where I pulled quack grass and watercress, just to see what it would take. If you have not visited the Indian Springs in a while, you will be surprised by the new look. There was a shelf of peat/mud/clay around 20 yards downstream from the deck at the main springs that created a little waterfall about a foot high, and I removed this material. So now the outflow stream has found it’s natural bed in stone and sand and the water table has fallen to this new level in the upper area where the main springs emerge. Now we can proceed with the transplants, and hopefully, sometime this summer, replace the deck.

I pulled and dug a ton of spotted knapweed, hoary alyssum and hawksbeard from the sand prairie in the afternoon. Lindsay Knudsvig and John Hrobar both informed me that there are weevils that attack spotted knapweed and I do need to follow up on introducing them on the sand prairie.

On Thursday, June 19, we had a date with the DNR Fisheries team to observe them performing an elevation study at the hotel springs bridge, but the weather was dicey and they decided to reschedule. I’m hoping they will also study the elevation at the two little foot bridges that are upstream of the emerald spring, as they seem to have the same profile, i.e. a place were an embankment formerly dammed the river and where marl and sand have collected in the riverbed upstream (symptoms of the river not making a natural headcut.) These are locations where humans intervened with the natural lay of the land that we need to put right.

Pati is back from her adventure in South Africa and we had another mission that day to do our monthly river monitoring on the Scuppernong River, where it crosses Hwy Z, just west of forest headquarters. Pati spent 9 years as a research assistant at the Medical College of Wisconsin and she really enjoyed doing a little science in the river!

On the way home, the sun was shining and we stopped at The Springs to take a walk and there we ran into a team from the USGS recalibrating the measuring devices at the gaging station. I forgot to get their names but they were very friendly and thoroughly explained what they were doing.

The consistency of the measurements are vulnerable to any changes in the river’s profile; moving rocks around, or even a bloom of underwater foliage a few feet downstream, can throw off the calibration.

Friday, June 20, I was back at The Springs with watercress on my mind. It was three years ago that Lindsay and I attempted to clear out the watercress that was damming the river and it has come back vigorously since then forming new dams. We started naively thinking we could actually get rid of the watercress, so we pulled out as much as we could, from bank to bank, and heaved it up and out of the river forming huge piles. This released the river’s flow to the pull of gravity and significantly lowered the water table in the whole upper valley (from the Scuppernong Springs down to the old barn site.)

This time around, I decided to try something new. After learning more about how the DNR Fisheries team used bio-logs to shape the river’s course, I thought of using the watercress to form natural bio-logs. When I put my hands down in the riverbed and began to pull up the thick carpet of watercress roots, I realized I could just roll it over and pin it behind the stakes that were still in place from the effort the DNR made years ago to install bio-logs and stick bundles.

This approach addresses the fact that brook trout need bugs and cover. Leaving the watercress on the perimeter of the river, creates a natural shelf the fish can hide under, and, in a few weeks, new growth from the watercress will again cover the river providing shade and a source of bugs. The difference is that now the watercress root system will not be clogging the main channel of the river. Of course, it will grow back into the channel and again have to be rolled out, but each time a layer of marl and mud will come with it deepening the main channel. Well, enough talk, here is what it looks like now. As far as the long-term results, we’ll have to see.

Looking downstream from the first footbridge below the Scuppernong Spring.

Just as we saw back in 2012, the water level fell by 2-3 inches after the watercress dams were removed

I think keeping an open channel will also compliment the DNR’s efforts to adjust the elevation of the river and produce a headcut. My good friend John Hrobar, who spent his career working with water and studying it’s movement and behavior in complex ecosystems, totally disagrees with this approach and we have had many intense discussions about it. I invite John to explain his position and rational either in a comment to this post or in a separate post.

In fact, later that afternoon, I ran into John and Sue Hrobar on the sand prairie as I was pulling spotted knapweed. They pointed out a few new plants they had not seen before:

Clasping Milkweed.

Last year, John pointed out that I was cutting all the purple prairie clover in my zeal to cut flowering spotted knapweed. I was happy to show that I learned my lesson, and now we are poised for an explosion of purple.

Flowering Spurge.

The sun came out in its solstice fullness and it turned into a hot summer day for a couple hours.

On Saturday, June 21, I joined Jared Urban and the State Natural Areas volunteers at the Bluff Creek SNA to girdle aspen. We worked on the area marked in red below on an aspen clone that they started working on last month. We focused on the little aspen that were spreading out into the prairie.

Zach Kastern showing Jack and Brandon where to go…

… and how to do it.

Jack, Zach, Brandon, Jerry, Jared and Ginny.

I left shortly after noon to girdle aspen back at The Springs but Zach, Jared and Ginny stayed to finish the job and pull some sweet clover and parsnip while they were at it. It was an excellent learning experience for me and I realized that I needed to follow up on the aspen girdling I did last year to make sure the clonal colonies were completely killed.

See you at The Springs!

SEWRPC Surveys The Springs

Posted on June 15, 2014 by paulmozina

I love to landscape the landscape at the Scuppernong Springs. This distinguished tract of land deserves our love and attention for the sake of its beauty. So please, come out and help me dig a little spotted knapweed from the sand prairie!

The lay of the land at The Springs was evoked beautifully by John Muir, in his classic: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, and I had to pinch myself last night as I walked alone behind the Scuppernong Spring and thought: ‘this is my garden’.

I’m intrigued by how others experience my garden.

Here is a great image from Landscape Photographer Byron S. Becker: “The photograph was taken in the spring of 2008 along Suppernong River near sundown. The camera was a 4×5 with a 90mm lens, using TriX 320 film and the exposure was 2 minutes; the developer was Pyronal.”

Below is an example of Kristen Westlake’s Fine Art Photography. You can see more of her images of The Springs, and all of her other outstanding work, here.

I had a wonderful week of beautiful weather for landscape gardening at The Springs! Last Monday, June 9th, I tried something new, per the advice of Jared Urban, and burned the first-year garlic mustard off the cut-off trail with my blow torch. Below is where the cut-off trail joins the main trail at signpost #13.

And after…

I got the worst patches and now the trail is officially “burned in” as Don Dane would say. I spent the afternoon digging spotted knapweed from the sand prairie and was glad to have Ben Johnson’s help with this seemingly Sisyphean task. We focused on cleaning up the lupine patches.

On Friday, June 13, I was joined by Dan Carter, Senior Biologist with The Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission (SEWRPC). Dan was continuing SEWRPC’s ongoing effort to document the vegetation at The Springs and invited me to come along.

SEWRPC has divided The Springs into 4 areas for their vegetation surveys:

1) The dry prairie at the springs (aka, the Indian Campground)
2) The dry woods
3) The springs, immediately adjacent wetlands, and upper reaches of the creek
4) The fen and sedge meadow in the vast open area immediately to the west (includes trench where marl was mined).

The first three areas listed above are located in the blue circle on the right below and the fourth is in the larger blue circle to the left. Click the links above to view SEWRPC’s preliminary vegetation surveys.

As we walked through Buckthorn Alley on our way to the hotel spring, Dan and I stopped frequently to make notes and take pictures. Dan recently completed his PhD in Biology at Kansas State University and he has a wealth of knowledge, understanding and wisdom. Here are just a few of plants he identified.

Be careful at The Springs! Poison Hemlock.

Bulrush

Forked Aster, a state threatened plant!

Valerian

Horsetail

We visited the Ottawa Lake Fen State Natural Area and Dan showed me two new springs that I had never seen before. They emerge from the east side of the wetlands and you can find them by walking across the fen from campsite #334 towards the north until you come across their outflow channels.

Of course, there were lots of interesting plants here too.

Bracken Fern

Lake Sedge

And the carnivorous Pitcher Plant

Thanks Dan, for showing me around the place I love!

I spent the afternoon pulling and digging spotted knapweed on the sand prairie. There is a bumper crop of this noxious invader!

A soothing sunset at Ottawa Lake.

A “Honey” moon at the Lapham Peak Tower.

I had the pleasure of spending yesterday, June 14, at my favorite spot again.

The Indian Spring is being quickly overrun by quack grass and water cress so I spent the morning pulling these invasive plants. Before…

… and after.

Then I moved up the hill to the sand prairie and continued pulling and digging spotted knapweed. It’s going to take years to get rid of this stuff unless I get a whole lot of help.

Speaking of which, my good friend Carl Baumann, who has been harvesting black locust on the south end of the trail, split all of the logs in my woodpile setting the stage for some cozy fires at My Shangri-La. Thanks Carl!

And Andy Buchta noticed the freshly cut buckthorn by the main entrance on Hwy ZZ and he has commenced to piling. Thanks Andy!

It was a great week!

See you at The Springs!

Summertime at The Springs

Posted on July 15, 2013 by paulmozina

Summer has arrived buzzing with life and heat. Whew, it was hot yesterday as I pulled spotted knapweed at the sand prairie (see white shaded area in the map below). At least there was some breeze and beautiful, billowing, clouds to entertain me and it seemed like a better option than piling brush amongst the mosquitoes and poison ivy in the woods. This is a perfect time to get after knapweed, it’s the nail with its pink head sticking up the highest. The art is to get a diversity of native plants to return and fill the voids left after we pull weeds; this is where knowledgeable volunteers could really make a contribution. I’m envisioning the sand prairie in all its natural glory!

I started the day with a little walk around and saw that the Transline I sprayed on the young black locust trees at the south end of the loop trail was very effective.

The Scuppernong Spring

Michigan Lilies at the Indian Spring

The Scuppernong Prairie

There are three projects that would really improve the nature trail: build a bridge over the ditch where the cut-off trail joins the main loop trail at the marl pit factory, rebuild the observation deck at the Indian Spring, and fix the trail junction where the spur to the Indian Spring joins the mail loop trail. Check out this video to see what I mean.

I started the day spraying Milestone on a variety of weeds and buckthorn seedlings on the south end of the loop trail. Then I headed to the sand prairie to pull spotted knapweed.

There is an unofficial, well established, trail that leads down the sand prairie from sign post #6 towards the channel that carries the outflow of the “Indian” Springs. At the bottom of the hill the trail was overgrown with wild raspberry, nettle and other plants, making it nearly impassable, so I brush cut this to complete a little loop trail over to the Indian Spring.

I returned to the Scuppernong Spring to cool off, get out of the sun and meditate and found a team of engineers hard at work creating a dam to hold back the flow. They succeeded in raising the water level 3-4″ and I couldn’t resist taking a dip! One of those righteous dudes left an excellent “Alaska Denali Park” cap behind and can claim it by contacting me.

Amanda, Melanie and their crew of volunteers have been hard at work completing he installation of new sign posts #10, 11 and 12.

The view down river from the old barn site

Looking upstream from the stream gaging station

And a few parting shots from the marl pit bridge

See you at The Springs!

More Trout Stream Therapy

Posted on July 1, 2013 by paulmozina

“Rain drops keep fallin’ on my head…” I’ve been feeling a bit like “the guy whose feet are too big for his bed”. Per B.J. Thomas’ example, “… I just did me some talkin’ to the sun” yesterday, pulling weeds all day on the sand prairie, site of the Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk and Sauk Native American campgrounds, and that snapped me out of it. I got that “peaceful, easy feeling” that comes when you know you’re in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing.

I’m investigating whether or not I might have gotten infected with borrelia burgdorferi (lymes) and taking doxycycline, as a precaution, while I figure out what to do next. I feel pretty good now and I’ve been working at the Hartland Marsh the last two weeks, mowing, brush cutting and meeting with the village administrator, Dave Cox, to help initiate a prescribed burn program. It’s been a few years now since I was focused on the marsh and, with all the rain we’ve been having, the buckthorn and other invasive plants are quickly turning it back into a jungle. Fire inspires hope that my efforts at the marsh will not go to waste. If you haven’t visited the Hartland Marsh yet, put it on your list; it’s uniquely beautiful.

Yesterday, I spent a rejuvenating day at The Springs and I’m going to jump ahead to the highlight of day when I walked down to the old barn site and saw that the DNR Trout Stream Therapists, like elves from middle-earth, had worked some magic to continue healing the river. Well, maybe it was just a lot of planning, deep river knowledge and hard work that produced the excellent results you can see below. This area corresponds to site #3 on the map in the post linked above and it looks like they are queued up to complete site #2 in the near future. Thanks to Ben, “Gos” and their crew for their continued efforts to nurse the river back to health!

I started the day at the Scuppernong Spring getting some water.

The sand prairie is lush with spiderwort and other native flowers, as well as lots of weeds.

Common Milkweed

Spiderwort

Butter-and-eggs

The Scuppernong Prairie

John Hrobar alerted me that hoary alyssum was spreading like crazy and I decided to spend most of the day pulling this weed, since it was in peak flower, rather than continue piling brush in the woods, as I had planned. So, after spraying Transline on the short, black locust trees that have sprouted on the hillside just west of the scuppernong spring in the morning, I spent the rest of the day pulling hoary alyssum and spotted knapweed. All the rain we’ve been having made the weeds easy to pull and they came up roots-and-all, which was quite edifying. White Campion is another weed that is establishing itself on the sand prairie and I’m trying to figure out what to do with it; maybe nothing this year.

Hoary Alyssum

I returned to the Scuppernong Springs in the late afternoon to reminisce about the wonderful visit I just had there with my Mom, Dad and brother Joe.

Then I wandered down the left bank of the river visiting the hillside and hidden springs.

I’m not sure what this flower is… looks a bit like Indian Hemp.

Sunset at the marl pit.

See you at The Springs!

The Sauk Spring

Posted on May 25, 2013 by paulmozina

After a couple days, I start to miss The Springs. They draw me away from the present moment into a dreamy future, which became reality for me last Thursday as I worked, wandered and wondered in a Garden of Eden. This place is flowing with living waters and I drew some for the day at the Scuppernong Spring.

I crossed the Indian Campground on my way to an area at the bottom of the slope to girdle some Aspen trees.

It wasn’t until I started working with real Indians, I mean people born in India, that I started to become frustrated with the common use of the term here; a case of mistaken identity. Language is so powerful! Who were the “First People”, the “Native Americans”? If only we could have learned from them how to live in harmony with the land and honored them with their own names.

Watercress and quack grass are two non-native plants that can really take over an area. Lindsay pulled a ton of these invaders from the Indian Spring, or maybe we should call it the Sauk Spring after the tribe, along with the Fox, that ceded over 50,000,000 acres of their tribal lands to the United States in the Treaty of St. Louis back in 1803. Cede — to surrender possession of. We didn’t expect these deeply rooted plants to disappear and I thought it would be a good time to clean the spring again.

After girdling aspen for a while, I donned some rubber knee boots and pulled the new batch of water cress and quack grass that were rapidly spreading. Here are a series of videos and photos taken later in the day that give a tour of the Sauk Spring.

I love the sound of the water.

This view is a bit downstream from the source where an earthen dam was blocking the channel.

There is a second spring source that merges with the main channel on its way to the Scuppernong River.

The Sauk Spring is a relatively quiet place to hang out with a great view of the prairie.

Next, I headed to the old barn site, which is quite a bit noisier, to pile some buckthorn. Garrett and Jenny, two new volunteers, joined me and we did some stacking. I’m hoping to work with them again soon!

Finally, it was time for some fun and by this time the clouds had been blown away by a refreshing north wind.

This vernal pool as at the south end of the loop trail.

The Sauk Campground is a sand prairie that really comes alive with color in the spring. The Hoary Puccoon is in full bloom.

And so are the Wild Lupine!

On my way to the marl pits at the north end of the Sauk Campground…

At the pits looking east towards the Sauk Spring area.

May Apple on the cut-off, aka “lost”, trail.

It was a lovely, cool, bug-free, full-moon evening and I watched the sun go down from the Marl Pit bridge.

See you at The Springs!

Buckthorn Alley

Posted on April 25, 2013 by paulmozina

“Thats all I can stands, I can’t stands no more!”

When I visited the land that time forgot on the north end of the Scuppernong Springs Nature Trail, I reached into my backpack for a can of spinach and realized I had left it at home.

I rarely walk the section of trail marked in blue below because it is so dark, damp and uninteresting compared to the rest of the trail.

At the end of the day yesterday, I walked this section of the trail to make sure there were no trees downed across it and review just how badly degraded it was. Here is a tour of the first hundred yards or so.

After passing through this buckthorn thicket, I thought “Thats all I can stands, I can’t stands no more!” I’m changing my priorities to focus on this section of trail. I’ve been reminded of my old hero, Popeye, by my recent diagnosis via MRI that I have torn the head of the long biceps tendon on my left arm. I got whacked there by the branch of a red oak tree that I was clearing off the trail back in October of 2012. One solution offered by the orthopedic surgeon was to sever the head of the biceps tendon completely; apparently the Creator was confused when deciding to join this muscle with the scapula and we don’t really need it. The only downside he explained was that my biceps muscle would bunch up reminiscent of Popeye The Sailor.

My rotator cuff is torn as well, but after three months of physical therapy and Feldenkrais Lessons with Pati, the pain and discomfort has subsided and I can live with it.

Yesterday morning, Rich joined me as we continued our efforts to spray the spotted knapweed on the sand prairie that covers the Indian Campground. The site listed above explains “Apply selective herbicide clopyralid during bud growth in early June for best results (48 oz per 100 gal water).” hmmm, we don’t have any clopyralid and it is only April; so our use of glyphosate at this time of the year is not the preferred technique; nevertheless, since glyphosate attacks any green plant, I’m hopeful we will see good results (we focus the spray as much as possible to reduce collateral damage).

Next, we continued the effort to control aspen around the Indian Springs girdling the rest of the clonal colony in that area.

Roberta “Berta” Roy-Montgomery joined Rich and I and we finished girdling the aspen in this bowl.

Rich and Berta had other commitments for the rest of the afternoon and I headed over to the area north of the old barn site to continue cutting buckthorn between the loop trail and Hwy 67.

This is probably as far as we’ll get in this area for now as our focus is shifting to the Buckthorn Alley.

Here are a couple of views of the area just cut. You have to walk amongst the oak, cherry and hickory trees in here to really appreciate their size and beauty.

I couldn’t stay for the sunset but did grab these parting shots.

See you at The Springs!

Trout Stream Therapy

Posted on February 25, 2013 by paulmozina

An elite team of DNR River Doctors paid a visit to the Scuppernong River to see how their patient was doing. Over the last 20 years, since DNR veterans Sue Beyler, Randy Schumacher and Ron Kurowski initiated the “healing” of the river in conjunction with the Scuppernong River Habitat Area restoration project, the health of the Scuppernong River has steadily improved. Nevertheless, the River Doctors advised that more “trout stream therapy” is in order. Let’s meet the doctors.

From left to right starting in the back row we have Josh Krall, Andrew Notbohm, Steve “Gus” Gospodarek, Ben “Benny” Heussner and in the front row, trail boss Don “Double D” Dane. Check out the DNR contact site for more information. You can review their most recent work on the Scuppernong river at the end of this Interview With Ben Heussner. By the way, on the first leg of our recent Journey Down the Scuppernong River, I expressed disappointment that water from the river had spilled over into the channel, which they had endeavored to segregate from the river last summer. Ben and Steve explained this was to be expected for 3 reasons: this is a flood plain and it is perfectly natural for the river to overflow its banks, there are water sources to the North of the channel that still feed it, and finally, they would have had to excavate the old river bed to an unacceptable depth, basically turning into another canal, to enable it carry more water. “Time heals all wounds” as Gos said, and the area in question will take many more years to completely heal.

I was joined by Pati Holman and we couldn’t have been more excited as we left the parking lot to survey the river to see what treatments the doctors might have in mind.

We identified 6 “projects”, or areas, where some therapy could be considered. The blue numbers on the map below will be referenced as we travel upstream from the marl pit bridge to the headwaters at the Scuppernong Spring.

Our first stop, project #1, was downstream a few yards from the marl pit bridge where the river splits in two forming an elbow that rejoins the main stream 30-40 yards downstream. I asked them to consider if we should close this side channel, which I made an ineffectual attempt to do last summer before Tracy Hames came to visit.

Then we proceeded upstream to the next bridge over the river where the water flow gauge was recently installed, where Steve explained what state the river was in when they began the “trout stream therapy” in that stretch.

We followed the right bank upstream maybe 100 yards to the site of project #2.

You can hear Steve and Ben discussing whether or not it was a good idea to remove the boards that we see in different areas of the river bed. They ultimately recommended that boards in the middle of the channel, where the water is moving the most freely, be removed, but boards on the periphery could be left in place so as not to disturb the muck. Then we continued upstream another 100 yards or so to project site #3.

You can probably tell from my excited chatter that I’m having a really good time. Then we continued upstream to the site of the dam that formed the upper, larger, of the two Ponds of the Scuppernong.

Then with perhaps the key insight of the morning, Dr. Heussner identified that the river was suffering from a gradient problem and that an elevation study was required (project #4). Take a listen.

As we progressed upstream, we considered that any further efforts would have to be done in sympathy with the establishment of the proper grade as Ben described above. We next arrived at the Emerald Spring where we discussed the idea of dredging the muck from the river to prevent it from going down stream once the improvements in the grade are achieved. This would be project #6.

Finally, we made our way over to the outflow channel from the Indian Spring, where Don had suggested some bio-logs might be useful. The doctors weigh in on project #6.

As Ben mentioned above, they will need to “chew on it” for a while to determine which of these projects they want to proceed with first. Depending on the needs of the project, we may try to enlist the South East Wisconsin Trout Unlimited group to give us a hand.

Pati and I had a great time hanging out with the DNR Fisheries team and “Double D” and we learned a lot! I hope you did too.

See you at the Springs!

McKeawn Spring

Posted on February 24, 2013 by paulmozina

McKeawn Springs flashes by pretty quickly as we speed along to where ever we’re going on Hwy 67. It is located halfway between Piper Rd and Road X just a bit south of the Scuppernong Springs. Until recently, I didn’t know this spring had a name, but after I documented our encounter with the intersection of the channel that flows from McKeawn Spring and the Scuppernong River, Mike Kuhr, from the South East Wisconsin Trout Unlimited group, provided the missing moniker.

As I was cutting buckthorn on the cut-off trail this morning, I thought today is the day I slow down, get out of my car, and take a closer look at the McKeawn Spring. But first, there was a little work to do…

I had the pleasure of meeting Anne, from Waterville, and Steve, from Milwaukee, while taking breaks to refuel with cookies and gas. I really do like to “See you at the Springs!” Pati arrived just as I was finishing the 6th tank of gas and I told her about my idea to follow the outflow of McKeawn Spring to where it joins the Scuppernong River. She was all over that.

Pati dragged my sled back to the truck and we loaded the gear and drove over to McKeawn Spring.

This is a perfect time of the year to explore wetlands and we walked right down the channel avoiding all of the brush. I took this video about half way to the Scuppernong River junction.

When we got to the river we were greeted by a Sand Hill Crane, our first sighting of the season.

We followed the Scuppernong River back to the marl pit bridge.

As if this wasn’t all too exciting, we heard the whir of a distant chainsaw when we got to marl pits and guessed that someone might be harvesting firewood down on the south end of the loop trail. We hastened to the sound of axe on wood and found our new friend Carl Baumann hard at work on a huge red oak that had recently fallen.