Kettle Moraine Land Trust | Scuppernong Springs Nature Trail

I’ve been asked to make a short presentation about my experience as a volunteer and volunteer opportunities at the upcoming Oak Savanna Alliance workshop.

I’m a little worried that The Buckthorn Man will show up and start ranting like he is prone to do. I asked him recently what his problem with volunteering was since he does so much of it, and that really set him off (don’t worry, none of this will make it into my presentation on May 16.) The Buckthorn Man talks fast and loud when he gets excited, but I think I got the gist of it, which I will relate here now.

We need Volunteers to start a Revolution!

Make informed, free will choices, to spend your time and attention, your spiritual currency, in harmony with Natural Law

and take RIGHT actions in the world!

The Trivium: Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric, are the tools a rational mind applies to make sense — common sense — conscience (to know together) out of the world we live in. You need a conscience to volunteer. You’ve got to see the need!

If not me, who? And if not now, when? Mikhail Gorbachev

I’ve been cutting buckthorn on State owned land for 20 years because I see the need. According to the Wisconsin Realtors Association: “Wisconsin consists of approximately 34.8 million acres of land. Over 5.7 million acres of this land, or 16.5 percent, is publicly owned and used for parks, forests, trails and natural resource protection.” The lands are owned by federal, state and county governments, none of which apply the resources necessary to be good stewards.

Yes, there are caring individuals in all levels of government (especially the Wisconsin DNR), who see the needs, but they are constrained by a lack of funds to providing only a veneer of stewardship i.e., just enough to maintain good public relations and earn money to help offset the maintenance costs. I’m not a fan of government, so I’m not suggesting we plead with them: I’m an anarchist (yes to rules, no to rulers). Government is mind control. It takes away rights we have and assumes rights no one has; taxes, prohibition, licenses and malum prohibitum laws are evidences of that.

Right here, right now, we have to deal with the cold, hard facts that, of the money government currently steals from us, the vast majority is going to fight wars of aggression, build an all powerful security state and line the pockets of the titans of finance who are really running the show. We are rapidly headed towards a One World Government, a New World Order, make no mistake about it.

The opportunity to volunteer has never been better. Open your eyes! An Abrams 1 tank costs $8.5 million and Wisconsin State government plans to spend only $5 million employing 33.5 full time employees on endangered resources in 2016. We have 673 State Natural Areas on which the Bureau of Natural Heritage Conservation (formerly endangered resources) focuses and they all need tender loving care but the priorities of politicians are elsewhere. The Department of Defense plans to spend $495 billion in 2015 as compared to the entire Wisconsin DNR budget of $570 million. The U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are estimated to have cost $6 trillion. We have spent almost $1 trillion on intelligence agencies since the false flag attacks of 9/11. Do you see the problem? I know I’m conflating state and federal budgets here, but the political hierarchies are just there to obscure the illegitimacy of the whole structure.

This is why the Volunteers Marty Balin sang about must start a revolution. We must say NO! and reject the whole concept of authority — that some folks have a right to rule, so long as some other folks say they do — and create a society of voluntary association. There never was a time when the politicians who styled themselves “The United States of America” were accountable to “we the people”. Read Gustavus Myers’ History of the Great American Fortunes, and see how this country was born in infamy. What, besides threats and coercion, binds you or I to the U.S. Constitution and grants jurisdiction i.e., control, to these bureaucrats?

It comes down to this: my problem with volunteering on publicly owned land is that it tends to make it look like the current system is succeeding. As a society, formed into bodies corporate and politic (governments), can we continue giving short shrift to being good stewards of the land in favor of exploitation and continued degradation while relying on expanding the army of volunteers to make everyone feel good about it? It ain’t RIGHT!

Remember, “You are the Crown of Creation, and you’ve got no place to go.”

Well, thanks Buckthorn Man, that was interesting, but I wouldn’t dare bring any of that up next Saturday at the Oak Savanna Alliance workshop. Personally, I volunteer to help restore the quality and diversity of “the commons” as a way to preserve my sanity in a world gone mad. Making a positive difference, no matter how small, means everything to me.

Way back on April 27th, I enjoyed the opportunity to help the Kettle Moraine Land Trust on a workday with young people from the Elkhorn Area High School at the Beulah Bluff Preserve.

Herb Sharpless introduces the plan for the day

Views from the bluff before we set to work

The view at the base of the bluff where we began working

It was a great day!

I’ve been super busy cleaning the house from top to bottom and preparing for my adventure in legal land, which is still ongoing, and I haven’t gotten out to The Springs nearly as much as I’d like to. But, I did find time to join Pat Witkowski and her team of “Monday Mudders” on a beautiful late afternoon working on the Ice Age Trail just east of The Springs. There is a short section of trail that was rerouted a couple years ago and Pat was not happy with the results, so she is moving the trail up the slope a little to improve the drainage.

Part of the team worked on a stewardship zone, just a bit up the trail, that Dave Cheever has had his eyes on. There is a cluster of 10 or so massive, native white pines, that stand out conspicuously from the surrounding red pine plantation, once you know what you are looking at, and Dave thought it would be a great idea to clear the buckthorn from around their bases. Right on!

I hope to join Pat and the “Monday Mudders” again soon!

Last week I finally got back to work again at The Springs and spent a morning pulling weeds in the area around the Scuppernong Springs. This patch of garlic mustard is history!

Last year Ben Johnson and I weeded the lupine patches on the west slope of the sand prairie and I returned to get any spotted knapweed that we missed. There is going to be a stunning outburst of lupine this year!

Some curious friends stopped to see what I was up to and show off the beautiful morels that they found in the river valley on the east side of the sand prairie. I went looking myself but came up empty.

The spring flowers are in full bloom!

Last Saturday I was planning to join Zach, Ginny and Jared for a State Natural Areas workday at Bluff Creek West, but I’m faced with fields of flowering garlic mustard at The Springs. Instead, I spent the day brush cutting garlic mustard. Now you may scoff at the idea of mowing garlic mustard but I am seeing great results in some areas. It depends on how much seed is dormant in the ground and how thoroughly you can prevent new seed from maturing. This was an unusually busy spring for me and I’m way behind on the garlic mustard, but I see that this approach, as opposed to foliar spraying poison, is going to work in the long run.

Late in the afternoon, I donned my chest waders and pulled watercress from the river. I’m not trying to get it all out, I just want to keep a channel open.

It was past 6:00pm when I finally called it quits.

See you at The Springs!

I took a break from The Springs this past week and joined forces with other teams of land stewards to help them on their restoration adventures. I was accompanied by Jules Verne, via A Journey to the Interior of the Earth, and the fearless professor Lidenbrock, his thoughtful nephew Axel, and their imperturbable guide Hans.

It was through the character of the unflappable Hans that Verne revealed the essence of the great eastern philosophies. Surrender completely to the present moment. Of all moments past and future, the present moment is the very best; the key to being enlightened.

My journey through the Kettle Moraine began last Tuesday when I helped the DNR burn the Hwy 67 East Horse Trail.

Burn boss Don Dane conferring with line the line bosses Brian and Paul.

Staging at the “anchor”.

The predominately northwest winds were strong — on the edge of the prescription — and the DNR team was extremely careful to lay down extensive black zones on the downwind perimeter of the burn unit beginning at point 6 on the map above.

We finally tied in the lines along Hwy 67 and then the north line team ignited a raging head fire driving flames 20′ high.

I was south of the tree line and missed the show but I did see Paul Sandgren light off the southeast edge of the horse trail.

The burn was a great success!

On Wednesday I joined Natalie Dorrier and her group from Nature’s Classroom Institute shoring up a bank of the Mukwonago River on the north end of what was the Rainbow Springs golf course. Last year, the DNR Fisheries Team, led by Ben Heussner, removed 7 culverts from this stretch of the river. I blackened in a little spot on the northeast section of the map below, where there is a fork in the river, to indicate the area that we worked in.

Rainbow Springs Lake.

The golf course reverting back to nature.

Dick Jenks poisoning buckthorn that he cut the day before. This was the source for the brush used to help stabilize the bank.

We cut more buckthorn along the south side of the river shown above until we ran out of stump poison.

Below is the river bank showing the work they accomplished on Tuesday and where we would continue.

Natalie marshaling her forces.

Passing brush across the river.

We extended the brush line all the way to the rocks where the river forks.

They warmed my heart with a cheer for The Buckthorn Man.

After the work was done, I wandered the property exploring a route that Dick suggested. When I see a beautiful piece of land like this scarred by a golf course, it makes me wish the game had never been invented.

On Thursday I joined: Herb Sharpless (the organizer), representing the Kettle Moraine Land Trust, Volunteers from the Lauderdale Lakes Improvement Association, and Camp Charles Allis, Students from Elkhorn High School and, last but not least, Eric Tarman-Ramcheck , who grew up on this property — to work on the Beulah Bluff Preserve. We focused on the hill immediately below the old homestead site overlooking Upper Beulah Lake to the south.

The students alternated between different tasks including: water quality testing, brush piling, stump treatment and learning how geology and prescribed burning shape the landscape. Herb provided an overview of the project and then we got after it.

Brush dragging and piling.

The Buckthorn Man, Ginny Coburn and Eric got in some good licks with their chainsaws on the steep hillside.

The view towards Upper Beulah Lake.

Who knows, maybe one or more of the young people there will be inspired to continue this restoration work, which is sorely needed.

After we wrapped up at the Beulah Bluff Preserve, I headed up to The Springs to pull some garlic mustard. I was stunned when I came around the bend on Hwy 67 and saw that the forest of towering, girdled, black locust, hulks on the south side of the Scuppernong Springs Nature Preserve property, had been laid waste.

The highway department was worried that any of these trees might fall across the road and they coordinated with Paul Sandgren, Superintendent of the Kettle Moraine State Forest–Southern Unit, to bring in contractors to remove them. They closed Hwy 67 on Wednesday to be safe. Steve Tabat was hard at work bucking up rounds of black locust when I got there. He has been cutting timber in the Kettle Moraine forests since the 1970’s — a real pro.

They plan to take down the black locust that I recently girdled in the area where westbound Hwy ZZ leaves Hwy 67 in the very near future. These are very positive steps in the restoration of the property!

Light showers fell as I took a walk around the Scuppernong Springs Nature Trail.