Hiking Hartland Marsh and the Ice Age Trail

The Bark River

Spring was still trying to catch up from our unseasonably cold April last week. But this day dawned brightly and suddenly turned unseasonably hot. Shedding jackets, a dozen or so of us gathered at the Cottonwood Wayside for a hike into Hartland Marsh led by Jeff Romagna, a volunteer with the Ice Age Trail Alliance.

Hartland Marsh Preserve is nestled between the Lake Country Industrial Park and the Gleason Commerce Center in Hartland. Its 180 acres is protected by the Waukesha County Land Conservancy in partnership with the Ice Age Trail Alliance and the Village of Hartland. The Bark River meanders through the middle of it, somewhere out where we couldn’t see it from the Wayside.

Our tour began on a mulched path, known as the John Muir Overlook, through a hardwood forest featuring ancient bur oaks. The trail narrowed, then led to a boardwalk across the marsh and over a small wooded island. 

Birds were plentiful, it being migration season. This is a rose-breasted grosbeak.

Another boardwalk looped through last year’s cattails and back to the forest. Here the trail was hemmed in with thickets of buckthorn. 

Most of the preserve has a far more open understory and the difference was striking. Jeff, our guide, introduced us to Paul Mozina, known as The Buckthorn Man, whose volunteer efforts have been largely responsible for removing this particularly obnoxious invasive species. Along with being more aesthetically pleasing to hike through, the cleared portions enable a more robust diversity of native species to flourish.

Across an open field we watched as a pair of sandhill cranes shepherded two chicks away from us towards a pond.

A side trail led us through a beautiful glade, over a hill and across the Bark River on a footbridge to another small island. Paul pointed out the many natural springs around the two hills that had led to its being a homestead, now vanished.

Four more sandhill cranes watched us warily from the marsh, their colors a nearly perfect match with the dead cattails. Can you spot all four?

According to the Ice Age Trail Alliance, wetland preserves like this are becoming more and more important as land is developed and urbanized. Wetlands serve critical ecological functions that help maintain environmental health as well as sustaining wildlife habitats.

Hickory sapling in bloom

By absorbing rainwater and nutrients, a marsh helps reduce flooding, prevents shoreline erosion along waterways, recharges groundwater, and enhances water quality.

Preserves like this one also provide opportunities for recreation, research and education, serving as both a laboratory and outdoor classroom for students and teachers.

The John Muir Overlook is a 1¼-mile loop linked (across Cottonwood Avenue) to the Hartland segment of the National Ice Age Scenic Trail. We hiked east along a portion of the trail until we reached the Aldo Leopold Overlook. The 45-foot tall glacial hill—which could be an esker or a moraine, according to Jeff—gave us views of the surrounding marsh. As we turned to go, a pair of brilliant white egrets sailed in to land on an open pond.

Tree huggers! It took three to reach around this enormous oak.

Jane’s Walk — The Milwaukee River Greenway: our premier urban wilderness

Picture yourself in a canoe, floating silently on a wide river in a valley flanked by tall wooded bluffs. You pass the occasional fisherman. Through the trees a lone jogger runs by on a riverside trail. A great blue heron starts up at your passing, rises on thermals, circles and soars away upstream. An idyllic vision.

View south from Locust Street

Now imagine being just minutes away from the towers of downtown. Welcome to the Milwaukee River Greenway, which, at over 840 acres, is larger than Central Park in New York. How many cities can you name where you might have an experience like this? One that approximates wilderness in the heart of a densely populated urban area.

I have been writing about Milwaukee’s “urban wilderness” for many years and I have numerous favorite places to go when I want to rejuvenate a spirit that longs for nature. But the Milwaukee River Greenway is among the jewels in the crown of an exemplary park system. It is our premier urban wilderness.

Rotary Centennial Arboretum

When I was invited to lead a walk for Jane’s Walk Milwaukee I immediately thought of sharing my love of this place. And so, I invite you to come experience the heart of the Milwaukee River Greenway, one of the greatest urban natural areas in the country.

If, like me, you are new to Jane’s Walk, I encourage you to check out the website and read up on Jane Jacobs, the author of The Death & Life of Great American Cities and the inspiration for this month-long citywide series of events.

I have recently embarked on a new project with Preserve Our Parks that will promote parks and encourage people to get out and explore them. We are calling it A Wealth of Nature to emphasize how fortunate we are to have an abundance of places to enjoy. I will introduce the group to the project and explain how you might use its features, which will include a new website that will help you find places to experience nature nearby.

For this tour I will be teaming up with Vince Bushell, who is Project Manager for the River Revitalization Foundation (RRF), Milwaukee's urban land trust. Vince knows a lot more than I do about the plants and animals we might see on our walk as well as the historic efforts by RRF and others to protect the Greenway.

Riverside Park

The details:

View north from North Avenue

Sunday, May 20 at 10 – 12 am.

The 2-mile tour will begin at the River Revitalization Foundation, 2134 N. Riverboat Rd., the former site of the North Ave. dam, and will end at the same location. There is street parking available.

From the Caesar's Park pedestrian bridge we will hike along the East Bank Trail north to Locust Street. This section of the tour is hard gravel and wheelchair accessible. After crossing the Locust Street Bridge we will walk back along the West Bank Trail, which is not accessible and may be muddy, depending on conditions. Points of interest include the Rotary Centennial Arboretum, Urban Ecology Center, Riverside Park and Gordon Park, with ruins from the period when it was a resort on the lake behind North Avenue dam. The views from Locust Street Bridge are a special highlight.

For more information and to register for the walk, go to our Facebook page. The tickets are free but there is a limit of 30 participants.

The ruins at Gordon Park

The walk is co-sponsored by Preserve Our Parks and River Revitalization Foundation.

View north from Locust Street

 To see more photos from the Milwaukee River Greenway go to my Flickr album.

Nashotah Park: A lovely winter day in April!!

The snow was soft, heavy and surprisingly deep the third day after an unseasonable blizzard in April. But the wide trails over hills and through woodlands were well-trodden and tracked by skis by the time I got there. All the same I had the place nearly to myself on a lovely midweek morning. I say lovely because it was—if you forgot for a moment it being April. Sunny and warm for February.

Like every single person I’ve spoken to since it snowed, I felt betrayed by the weather. I didn’t go out to enjoy it for two days. My loss. I’m glad I broke the spell and ventured out to Waukesha County to explore a park new to me. The snow made an already beautiful place even more enchanting.

Nashotah Park is 444 acres nestled within a glacial terrain of rolling hills, woodlands, wetlands, and grasslands. There are two large natural lakes, an oak forest and an oak savanna. There are wide open fields, a cedar glade (I’m told—I didn’t find it), and broad expanses of marsh. 

I did see a solitary hiker on a portion of the 10-kilometer trail system, which has multiple loops. 

Later, around noon, towards the end of my walk, several skiers zipped by, proving the popularity of the park for cross-country skiing, even after an unexpected spring snowfall. Although they hadn’t been groomed this late in the season, the trails are groomed in winter for both classic and skate style cross-country skiing. There is even a separate trail for snowshoeing, according to the Wisconsin Trail Guide website. 

The Waukesha County Parks website states, “Due to the variety of landscapes, Nashotah Park has an outstanding array of songbirds.” And I saw some, including this pair of male Eastern bluebirds, looking rather cold in the circumstances. I was also surprised to see a couple of great blue herons fly by over the oak canopy—although I suppose it shouldbe warm enough for them by now! The redwing blackbirds were making a ruckus in the snow-dusted cattails, too.

Don’t let the snow get you down! I know we’re all hoping for balmier conditions and spring flowers to bloom. But, hey! It’s lovely out there in the parks.

This is one of an ongoing series of stories about parks that I have undertaken as part of a long-term project called A Wealth of Nature. Anyone familiar with my Urban Wilderness blog will find little to differentiate the new series, for it is entirely consistent with my previous work. However, in an effort to be more comprehensive I am deliberately exploring parks all around Southeast Wisconsin that are new to me.

A website for the project is underway. Meanwhile, I have just created a new Instagram account (@awealthofnature) and Facebook page, which I invite you to like and follow. A Wealth of Nature is a project of Preserve Our Parks, on the board of which I serve.

Seymour Simon Preserve: Encounters in the Chicago Wilderness

On a Sunday afternoon recently I drove down from Milwaukee to pick up my wife at O’Hare. Her flight was due to arrive in the late afternoon when traffic tends to pile up as travelers return to Chicago from their weekend in Wisconsin. I’ve been in this position before. I like to avoid potential backups on the Interstate by going early and taking the time to stroll in one of the Forest Preserves along the Des Plaines River near the airport.

I happened upon a sign for the Seymour Simon Preserve and pulled into the nearly full parking lot next to a large open field. Large groups of people were using the shelters provided there. I found the Des Plaines River Trail and headed south along the river. Maybe it was the heat—somewhere between 80 and 90, depending on whether you were in shade or sun—but the trail was uncharacteristically busy that day. So was the river itself. I saw canoers and kayakers going upstream and down.

Here is a short photo essay from my stroll that afternoon. As you will see, wildlife is represented, but most of my encounters were of the human variety.

Riverkeeper leads Brew City Safari tour of Milwaukee River Greenway

The sun shone brightly on Saturday afternoon as I joined a throng gathering at Caesar's Pool Park for a hike on the Milwaukee River. Sponsored by Brew City Safari, the tour was led by guest guide, Cheryl Nenn, Milwaukee's Riverkeeper. I played leap-frog with the group to the halfway point at the Locust Street bridge. At that point I lost the group due to my penchant for wandering off to shoot photos. But I forged on. It was a perfect day for a hike in one of my favorite places. Here's my photo essay:

Riverkeeper Nenn leads group across the river at Caesar's Pool, site of the former North Avenue dam.

Seedling in protective tube planted by River Revitalization Foundation volunteers to restore native species along the West Bank Trail.

We saw several spots where bank stabilization work was underway to mitigate damage done by a storm in 2010.

The group circled the "graffiti wall" that adorns the ruins of a former bathing resort, when this part of the Milwaukee River Greenway was a lake impounded by the North Avenue dam.

This mattress, embedded in the tall riparian grasses, is evidence that people other than graffiti taggers frequent the spot.

On the east side of the river I enter the Rotary Arboretum and Riverside Park.

A series of cairn-like sculptures by Nic Thompkins now graces the park.

Planting native vegetation is also being done along the East Bank Trail. Here it is organized by the Urban Ecology Center, which is located in Riverside Park.

Evidence of beavers -- well, at least one beaver anyway!

One of a series of murals on the piers of the North Avenue Bridge.

And back again to Caesar's Pool Park. The next Brew City Safari hike is this coming Saturday, Oct. 15 at Havenwoods State Park. Check it out on their website.