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.
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.
“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.
You have to walk a ways down south along the marl pit canal to get a good angle on the sun as it sets farther and farther north on the horizon. The rate of change in the amount of daylight increases as we approach the summer solstice and it is dramatically evident in the big sky country at The Springs. The trees, grasses, flowers and weeds, have responded luxuriantly to the sun and rain and the land is vibrant with myriad shades of lush greens. The Burn back on May 6th was definitely the highlight; a dramatically pivotal punctuation to Spring, 2013.
The Scuppernong Springs are a “world class site”, per former DNR Naturalist Ron Kurowski, and getting more and more well deserved love and attention these days. Spring Lover, Jon Bradley recently erected this beautiful, custom built, tree swallow house near the marl pit bridge.
Thanks Jon! It should be occupied in no time.
Amanda, Melanie and their crew of volunteers continued to install the new interpretive signs that Don Dane made. They look pretty darn good!
I was out at The Springs yesterday and sprayed some spotted knapweed on the Sauk Campground and some garlic mustard, creeping charlie and burdock between the old hotel and barn sites. “What is a weed? A Plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson (more good weed quotes here). Rich Csavoy taught me another weed, white cockle, which is in full bloom on the Sauk Campground. Reed Canarygrass is already going to seed amongst the many springs in the river valley. Isn’t it ironic that Cannabis Sativa, one of the most versatile plants on earth, goes by the nickname “weed”?
It was a beautiful afternoon with a refreshing north breeze, deep blue skies and cauliflower clouds sailing by. I cut a curtain of buckthorn and prickly ash between the cut-off trail and the river on a little peninsula where Carl Baumann took some serious cuts last winter. Here is how it looked when I got there.
Five hours later…
A view from the gaging station bridge.
I saved a couple of wild plum trees amongst the buckthorn and found a patch of blue flag irises.
I did some serious relaxing at the marl pit bridge in the evening and wandered down the canal a bit to get these shots of the sunset.
It was around this time last year that we met Don Dane and Tim Peters at The Springs and expanded the scope of our restoration effort to include opening up all of the springs that feed the Scuppernong River, and clearing the river itself. Like Neo in The Matrix, who followed the white rabbit to discover the truth, we are also on a journey of exploration and learning to discover “the truth” of what the Scuppernong Springs area was like before the invasion of the white settlers. Terence McKenna coined the term Archaic Revival and it strikes a chord with me.
I had the pleasure of spending Friday, May 24, at The Springs. The northeast winds that arrived the day before continued to blow and the sky was impeccably blue. DNR naturalist/guide Melanie Kapinos and long-time Ice Age Trail Alliance member Barbra Converse, who gives tour of The Springs, stopped out to chat.
Barb asked ‘why do you do it?’ and I really appreciated the opportunity to explain myself. It will take a long time to “revive” this area after many, many years of neglect. As I walk the land and observe the recovery from the burn, I see tons of weeds amongst the good native flowers and grasses. Much of the green you see in the post-burn pictures I have been posting is from buckthorn seedlings, thistle and burdock patches, phragmites, cattails, garlic mustard, spotted knapweed and other invasive plants. The journey back to health for the Scuppernong Springs Nature Preserve and the Scuppernong River Habitat Area will be long and I take every step with joyful anticipation.
I continued girdling Aspen on the slope behind the Hidden Spring. The fresh air made every breath a pleasure!
I spent the afternoon pulling watercress, phragmites and cattails from the Hatching House Springs and the Hillside Springs. These springs have nice, stony bottoms and look like great trout spawning habitats. I harvested a healthy dose of watercress at the Scuppernong Spring, which has the sweetest cress of them all.
Pati joined me for the rest of the day and we reveled in the beauty.
If you love clouds, check out this site! I tried to capture the wisps floating by.
I’m celebrating! Its been 2 years since I returned to the The Springs and 2 years since I had surgery to remove the cancerous tumor from my neck. So much has changed since then in both me and The Springs; I got healthy, retired and discovered philosophy, and The Springs got some tender loving care including a good cleaning.
One of the most exciting things we did last year was to uncover springs that were totally obscured by watercress, phragmites, cattails, buckthorn, and other brush.
We began the cleanup focused on removing the watercress that was damming the river, without consulting the map above, so it was one surprise after another as we “discovered” the two sets of Hillside Springs, The Hidden Spring and the Hatching House Springs. Yesterday, the morning light was just right and I paid respect to The Hidden Springs.
The views from the steps above the springs.
There are some nice bubblers here.
Marsh marigolds and skunk cabbage frame the springs.
In discovering philosophy, I found my own hidden spring; a spring for my soul. One of the very simple ideas I’m contemplating is from The Yogatattva Upanishad that I found extracted in C. W. Leadbeater’s book The Chakras:
What a beautiful way to visualize the body and breath in harmony with nature!
Chester W. Smith erected the first dam just below the Hotel Springs in 1846 to power a saw mill and the river valley was flooded until 1992. The fires have laid bare the landscape and it is clear where the trout farmers divided the flooded river valley to suit their purposes. We are hoping, if we can check the phragmites and cattails, that some of the original flora might resurface.
This embankment crosses the valley just north of The Hidden Spring.
I continued spraying spotted knapweed on the Indian Campground; this is working very effectively. I sprayed a lot of flowering garlic mustard in the area south of the trail that did not get burned.
This painted turtle was sunbathing on the trail just above the Indian Spring.
I finished girdling the aspen in the area around the old hotel site and piled the remaining brush there as well. Check out this video walking tour.
I spotted some Pussytoes and Wood Betony along the trail by spur to The Emerald Spring. A profusion of new growth is emerging!
How can I describe what a great time I had at The Springs yesterday? The temperature and humidity were as pleasant as a Pacific Island. The air was fresh and breezing and the sunlight clarified everything. My thoughts were occupied by the current time; the present moment. Time is a spiritual current-cy. How do we spend it? What do we pay attention to? ‘As you sow, so shall you reap’ and ‘what goes around, comes around’ aren’t just cliches; they are examples of Natural Law, specifically, the Law of Attraction, which is immutably in-force everywhere at all times. So when I say I had a “great time” at The Springs yesterday, I mean it was joyful to invest my spiritual currency paying attention to nature and working to help create the beautiful world that I want to see.
The morning light was flush on the Hillside Springs.
There are lush patches of fresh watercress just below the Scuppernong Spring and I harvested a bagful to include in my green juice recipe.
As I was rinsing the watercress at the point where the Scuppernong Spring spills out of its pool and starts to flow as a river, a brown trout emerged from beneath a rock rim and swam about in the pool. I don’t know for sure what is going on with the trout; are they visitors, or a local reproducing population?
Thousands of garlic mustard seedlings have emerged at the south end of the loop trail literally carpeting the ground. I carefully sprayed them with glyphosate trying to avoid the many good plants that are also emerging.
I conscientiously sprayed the spotted knapweed that dominates the sand prairie of the Indian Campground with clopyralid; carefully avoiding the many, many, diverse plants that are also coming up. This sand prairie is going to come alive with color in a couple weeks.
There were more aspen to girdle along the river valley. If we don’t do this, the clonal colonies will spread into and dominate the valley floor.
I piled brush in the afternoon by the old hotel site. You can see the foundation stones in many places now. I forgot to take some pictures, but if you’ve seen one brush pile… I was covered with soot when I finished and took a cool dip in the river by the marl pit bridge to wash off. Clouds moved in and I marveled at their beauty while doing some yoga asanas.
With the video below I attempted to capture one of those ‘you had to be there’ moments.
Siddhartha taught me to listen to the river. Time is an illusion; the “present” moment is an embraceable gift to us. Instead, we often treat time as a commodity to be spent, or saved, or wasted. The past haunts us, we fear for the future, all the while missing the gift of the present moment.
I was lucky to spend some time with the oaks this past weekend; paying attention, listening and feeling the gentle vibration of their subtle speech. The last few weeks I’ve been distracted with the burn, inmates and doctor visits but I found calm again in the present moment amongst the oaks.
On Saturday, May 11th, I joined Ginny Coburn and DNR Conservation Biologist Jared Urban for a workday at the Lone Tree Bluff Scenic Overlook to girdle some aspen trees. Jared leads the Endangered Resources (ER) team in southeastern Wisconsin. His crew varies in size from 3-5 people and they are responsible for approximately 20,000 acres.
Jared hobbled to the top of Lone Tree Bluff on crutches due to an ankle sprained while lighting a 90 acre prescribed burn at Lulu Lake on May 6th. This was after the ER team spent the bulk of the day helping to burn the Scuppernong. The expression “Still waters run deep”, was coined with Jared in mind; I calm down just being around him. But, you should have seen his face when he described the fires he lit at the Scuppernong; the tone vanished as his jaw dropped and I could see the 40′ flames reflected in his widened eyes. Below, Jared gives us a natural history lesson and explains the science behind girdling aspen trees.
When you contrast the billions and billions of dollars the government spends on the military, security industrial complex, versus what it spends to nurture the land, it recalls to mind TreeBeard’s lament in The Lord of the Rings that, ‘no one cares about the trees anymore’. The war mongers misleading us, our Saruman’s if you will, have propagandized us using the old divide and conquer strategy, demonizing Muslims, and distracting us from what our real priorities should be here in the homeLAND.
Whew, I’m ranting again. I’ll try to be more calmly passionate (sounds like something Joseph Conrad might have written, not to suggest I could have even sharpened his pencil). We had a lot of fun working together and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
In the back row Diane, Carol, SwordMan, Princess and Ginny and in the front row, Carol, Thayer and Jared.
I’m new to this area so I stayed to explore a little. Here are a few shots of the bluff.
The Bluff Creek Springs emerge from the north side of the moraine and feed Bluff Creek. I had to check them out.
I found another set of springs on the east side of the moraine.
I wanted to hear what the oak were saying up at Lapham Peak, where Mike Fort and the Lapham Peak Friends have been restoring the prairies, oak woodlands and oak savannas for over 20 years. They have perfected techniques for cutting, stacking and burning buckthorn that are models of efficiency. This past week they did a 75 acre prescribed burn in the area marked in white on the map below and they burned approximately 177 acres total in the park this spring burn season.
This huge swath of the north flank of the peak extends from “the big slide” cross country ski trail east to the tower hill road. I was in awe taking in the scope of the effort as I well remember this hillside was thick with buckthorn.
The oaks were swaying and singing gratefully with the blustery north wind, giving thanks for the tender loving care of the Lapham Peak Friends.
Approaching the tower.
A bird’s eye view from the tower (I need a wind screen for the camera mic).
If you haven’t visited Lapham Peak lately, or ever, consider paying attention to what the friends have accomplished and spend some present moments there.
On Sunday, May 12th, I was back at The Springs. Wow, I wonder how long it will take for the forest floor to become green again. I wonder if the native flowers and grasses will have enough strength in their roots to push up fresh growth this year; or next. I began the day spraying garlic mustard, which appeared in isolated patches that escaped the fires.
I was pleasantly surprised, and heart warmed, to see Lindsay, his wife, Connie and her granddaughter Sophia, arrive to pick up a load of wood.
When I talked to Don Dane after the burn he mentioned that this would be a great time to attack the spotted knapweed on the Indian Campground. Loaded with the recipe I got from Lindsay, I started that application. Spraying herbicide is my least favorite thing to do in the woods and I limit how much I do in a day. There is plenty more garlic mustard and spotted knapweed proliferating out there and I’ll be spraying for the next two months.
Some scenes from the Indian Campground.
Looking down into the river valley from the Indian Campground.
Next on the agenda was girdling aspen. I intended to continue working at the old hotel site, but I thought better of it as I was walking down the river valley, and I attacked a few isolated clonal colonies that were spreading into the valley.
A quick stop at the Scuppernong Spring.
Finally, I started piling buckthorn just north of the old barn site. I have been a cutting fool for the last couple months thinking that I would get a crew of inmates from the Sturtevant Transitional Facility to help me pile, but I don’t think that is going to work out, so I’ll be piling for the next few weeks to catch up. I made around 10 piles and it was very relaxing work with a great view down the river to the west.
DNR Visitor Services Associate extraordinaire Amanda Prange is leading an effort to install a new set of signposts to match the trail brochure.
The Hatching House Spring is looking great.
I followed the channel of the Indian Spring’s towards it’s junction with the Scuppernong River and caught this panorama video. The marl pit factory ruins are just to the right of the sun.
Scuppernong Springs Nature Trail 
