First snow in Menomonee River Parkway: A photo essay

But for the snow it would have been a gloomy day. But the first snowfall is almost always joyous—especially if it falls on a Friday night or Saturday morning, as it did yesterday. Fortunately, I didn’t have to venture far from home to enjoy it. I headed for one of my favorite haunts along the Menomonee River Parkway.

Photo Essay: Update on Three Bridges Park

The next time you visit Three Bridges Park walk to it using the path from the Urban Ecology Center on Pierce Street. You will see an elegantly arched steel structure that has been newly placed along the Hank Aaron State Trail not far from the Valley Passage. On the inside surfaces of the twin arches you will see the laser-cut names of donors who made the park possible.

The primary purpose of the arches, which were dedicated recently, is to represent the named donors—and there are many. But they also symbolize the bridges for which the park is named, along with the metaphor of that name for a park that owes so much to so many and means so much to such a diverse constituency....

...Elsewhere in the park it was spring planting day. A couple dozen volunteers, along with Urban Ecology Center staff members, braved the heat to plant 900 small potted seedlings along the south edge of the park where lush vegetation meets a still running railroad. 

This story was published at Milwaukee Magazine.  Click here to continue reading.

The Menomonee River Parkway’s Paintball Dell

Redefining the wild in an unlikely urban wilderness

It’s a little hard to imagine a place in the City of Milwaukee that you might consider remote. I’m not talking about a place you have to drive a long distance to reach. I mean a natural landscape so secluded and, yes, wild that you wouldn’t expect to encounter another person there—unless they were doing something illicit.

There is such a place. It lies at the end of a long hike on trails next to the Menomonee River from my house to just shy of the Waukesha County line—or the short hike described here. The story of my first encounter was moving and memorable enough to include in my 2008 book, Urban Wilderness: Exploring a Metropolitan Watershed.

I don’t go back often. It’s not that I avoid the place—although fear did seem an appropriate reaction when I first discovered it over a decade ago and indeed there has been little enough reason to change my initial impression in subsequent years. Unlike other secluded spots in Milwaukee’s parks, I haven’t found it to be a peaceful destination. But a kind of morbid fascination draws me back now and then.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve last seen it. A cold, dreary week has given way to sunshine. I decide to see if another visit will reveal any fresh abomination.

I turn into 119^th Street, drive past huge piles of recycled asphalt and gravel and park between a trucking terminal and a packaging plant near the dead end. The chain link fence between this industrial hinterland and the backwoods along the river has long been breached—wide enough for thrill seekers to ride 4-wheel drive trucks through. Today the mud leaves no doubt that the practice continues.

 

Near the bottom of the slope, just before reaching the river, I come upon the wreckage of some unrecognizable vehicle. An omen, perhaps, for what lies ahead—or an unwitting monument to the occasionally fatal consequences of our actions.

The deep truck ruts end abruptly near the river at the verge of the forest. A dirt road once continued on through the trees. Deeper ruts here are mossy and overgrown. Timbers have toppled across the still visible passage. I take the footpath that lies closer to the river.

Animal tracks stipple the soft earth of the trail. But, surprisingly, there are no human prints. Plenty of people are out taking advantage, as I am, of a warm, sunny Saturday in Wisconsin’s fickle spring. I saw them in a constant stream as I drove along Menomonee River Parkway—jogging and biking; many simply strolling. The playgrounds were packed.

I knew this place was off the beaten path, but I didn’t expect to be so completely alone. As if to drive home the point, I have to step over a large trunk that blocks the trail. The colorless forest grows steadily wilder—the trees more twisted, the underbrush increasingly tangled and impenetrable.

The land rises along a steepening riverside escarpment. Mountain bikers have altered the trail: banking curves, kicking up gravel, compressing the earth. But the tread marks are faint, strewn with decaying leaves. No one, it seems, has cleared branches and other debris that fell over the winter. The sense of isolation deepens.

Reaching the summit, I see ahead the familiar river bend and the dell that I know to be the journey’s end—in more ways than one. The barren trees make it look desolate. For the moment, however, bright, inviting afternoon sunshine dispels the sense of impending doom.

I gaze down the steep drop into the dell. There in prominent view lie the hulking remains of an old van, looking more casually forlorn than its violent end might suggest. I pick my way gingerly down the muddy slope and slowly circle the van. It is no less obvious an intrusion, and yet somehow less repugnant than I remember. Fresh graffiti adorns rear and side panels, rust has etched deeper into unpainted steel, and the whole thing seems to have settled into the ground. Drab, snow-matted grasses appear to crest like static waves over the mired vehicle.

I step carefully. Like a maze of booby traps, the matted grasses hide additional chunks of even more corroded steel; an engine block here, an axle there, several wheel rims and the skeleton of a chassis. Aside from the risk of a twisted ankle, it all looks remarkably benign compared to my memory of the time when I first encountered it. Then this was a veritable battlefield. The various car parts, hoods, door panels, and odd bits of sheet metal had been placed deliberately and strategically around what was open, uneven terrain, scoured by floodwater that had washed over the oxbow in the river.

All of it—trees and the rock-strewn ground as well as the makeshift fortifications—had been completely spattered with colorful splotches of paint. No trace of that remains. I guess no one comes to play war games any more.

I find the mountain bike trail, which loops around the circumference of the oxbow, and leads me to the secret of the dell’s remoteness. I am confronted with a massive expanse of concrete—a railroad bridge resembling a medieval fortress. A long freight train rests silently on top. The river emerges through three arched openings. This imposing rampart, along with the private property of commercial enterprises on the opposite side, effectively thwarts entry from nearby 124^th Street.

A continuous frieze of graffiti decorates the lower sections of concrete. But this too, like the trail and the “battlefield,” looks tired and dingy. Even the freshest-looking paint has started to peel. Seams in the concrete weep and run, staining the tags as well as the walls.

I head back to the dell to look for my favorite car, an ancient Gremlin I once photographed when it was iridescent with pink and chartreuse paintball paint. Even knowing where to look it’s hard to find. The rusted relic nestles among fallen logs, more akin to the patient earth beneath it than to the automobile-enamored culture that created it.

Nearby I find a smooth log and sit; close my eyes and turn my head towards the sun spilling all around, welcoming a solitude from which the demons have been expelled. Nothing, essentially, has changed. No one has come to remove wreckage or wash off graffiti. But despite the lingering evidence of abuse and degradation, it all seems paradoxically more natural than before. Against all odds, it is finally peaceful. 

This story was first published by Milwaukee Magazine on April 11, 2017.

Definition of Wild

This story is reprised from my 2008 book, Urban Wilderness: Exploring a Metropolitan Watershed. It has long been one of my favorite stories and I recently revisited the site to report on how the place has changed. Stay tuned for that.

The riverside wood opens into a cutover area under high-tension wires. Run-off from an unsheltered, gravelly slope has gouged deep ditches across the path. Some of these have been filled rudely with smashed wooden palettes and sawn posts. This was not done for the mountain bikers who frequent the trail.

The path widens and forks as it enters a deeper wood. I choose the fork nearer the river, though as I proceed the land rises steadily. A large area has become a dirt-bike course, with criss-crossing trails, banked curves, and groomed jumps. Despite this obvious human interference, an uneven terrain, cut with deep ravines, and a heavy tree canopy hung with thick vines makes it seem wilder and wilder. 

Reaching the crest of an escarpment I look down into the broad hollow below with a mixture of wonder and dread. If wilderness means pristine land, untainted by society, then I am nowhere near it, but if it means untamed, savage conditions then I have discovered the "heart of darkness" in metropolitan Milwaukee. Distrusting my senses I climb down the steep slope, clutching tightly at branches as if their stability will also ensure sanity.

Up close the scene at the bottom appears more surreal than sinister. It has a campy air of post-apocalyptic devastation splattered with carnival colors. The rusting hulk of an ancient Gremlin is nestled into the ground, hood and doors ripped from hinges. The original color is long forgotten, concealed by successive layers of pink and chartreuse paint-ball splotches. The topmost layer is moist and vivid. I glance around nervously.  This is the indisputable domain of renegade paintballers. No one is visible.

The rotting guts of several other unidentifiable cars decorate the scene at strategic intervals, radiators and engine blocks exposed, batteries tossed aside, hoses and wires protruding from all angles. Doors and side panels have been propped here and there against living trees and fallen logs alike. These redoubts are reinforced with river rocks, driftwood, plastic mesh fencing, and long strips of sheet metal. Though I am appalled by the wanton disrespect for nature, there is a place deep inside of me that holds a spark of childhood delight. From my own youthful war games I recognize a dormant instinct to assess the territory quickly for maximum tactical advantage. Its virtual remoteness makes this an ideal setting for clandestine conflict.

The river encircles the 'battlefield" in a wide arc. Stands of huge willows and cottonwoods, along with smaller box elders and hawthorns, anchor a bit of higher ground in the center of the oxbow. Floodwaters have cleansed the ground repeatedly, scouring away the soil, exposing underlying rock, and leaving twisted tangles of debris wrapped around the upstream sides of trees, boulders, and bulky metallic carcasses alike.  Wargames aside, this would be a truly wild and dangerous place after a thunderstorm.

The secret of this place's remoteness lies just ahead. The river emerges from gargantuan triple arches under the massive concrete wall of a railroad bridge rising higher even than the bluff down which I scrambled. Inside the tunnel under one of the arches I meet the perpetrators. I had imagined teenagers out for a bit of a lark. I find the truth more chilling. There are four men, dressed in camouflage, ranging in age from thirty to fifty or so. They don't appear to be having fun, bearing grim expressions and nasty-looking short-barreled weapons. In the dimness I make out several opened ammo boxes and numerous small pink and yellow balls, along with beer cans in the dirt and graffiti on the walls. Most incongruous is a complete set of bleachers propped on a sandbar like a reviewing stand for the military exercises outside. How it came to be here is beyond my imagination.

Distracted, the men look up at me. I wave briefly and say something politely banal. They go back to loading their weapons.

Next to the railroad embankment is a slope slightly less steep, which explains the presence of the abandoned cars, if not the bleachers. A remaining mystery is yet to be solved: how can we learn to appreciate the wildness inherent in the land, and not debase it with barbarity?

Excerpt from Urban Wilderness: Exploring a Metropolitan Watershed, published by the Center for American Places at Columbia College Chicago, 2008, p. 78. © Eddee Daniel.

The constant lure of adventure: Kayaking a surprisingly wild urban river

I expected adventure, but no new surprises. For several perfectly rational and utterly absurd reasons I thought I knew the Menomonee River—my river—too well for that. How very wrong I was!

Little Menomonee River

One of our small company gets a dunking right off the bat. Even before we’ve launched our kayaks, the slippery bank where we put in exacts a toll. “Well, at least that’s out of the way!” is the cheerful response to the undignified baptism. We settle into our low-slung fiberglass hulls and push off, immediately sliding beneath the Highway 100 overpass.

We’d parked our cars in the vacant lot of an abandoned Beauty School. Little did we know then that, except for a couple bridges, that unfortunate structure was the last of civilization we would see for several hours. We had embarked on our journey for the very purpose—to escape civilization and our quotidian lives for a little while. The first surprise was how quickly and thoroughly the river obliged.

After paddling no more than a hundred yards the first of many logjams blocks our passage. Staying dry was never an option. I do try to avoid the suction of fetid muck as I clamber over and around logs, dragging my kayak behind.

The confluence of the Little Menomonee with the Menomonee

We’d put in on the Little Menomonee River, a narrow tributary of the Menomonee proper. At the confluence with the wider river clear water rushes over gravelly shallows. I am reminded that several miles of the Little Menomonee once had been biologically dead, its reconstruction the subject of a federal Superfund clean up project over a decade ago. For much of the Twentieth Century a wood preservative factory had dumped toxic waste into the water. I wonder how much of that chemical stew lingers in the stream banks and sediments of the revived river?

“Restoration is about accepting the brokenness of things,” wrote author and bioregionalist Stephanie Mills, and “reinhabiting exploited and abandoned places.”¹ When is restoration complete, I wonder? And yet here we are, kayaking a once abandoned stream.

Drifting peacefully

Passing the concrete pillars of the Hampton Avenue Bridge we drift peacefully into an intensely green world that suddenly seems remarkably remote. The very air has a richer sensation, redolent of freshly unfurled foliage and ancient forests. I feel transported to a simpler, more native time and place. Trees toppled with the unmistakable marks of beaver prove that more than adventurous humans have reinhabited this river. Enchanted, I float with the current in quiet contemplation.

The Menomonee threads its way through the most densely populated region of Wisconsin. Like so many urban rivers, historically it has been intensively used, sorely abused and thoroughly altered. Why have we chosen this river for our little adventure? Our motivations reflect varied backgrounds.

Kurt Chandler

Kurt Chandler, former editor of Milwaukee Magazine and instigator of our outing, told me “I’ve lived within 200 yards of the Menomonee for nearly 16 years. I’ve hiked its banks, crossed its bridges, and seen it flood and freeze over. But I’d never been on its waters until now. I don’t know why it took so long.”

Cheryl Nenn, Milwaukee Riverkeeper

As Milwaukee’s official Riverkeeper,* Cheryl Nenn has the most pragmatic reasons for joining the team. Caring for the condition of the rivers is literally part of her job description and “there is no better way to assess threats to water quality and wildlife than to get in the water and paddle downstream.” She also tells us that “the Menomonee is undergoing a renaissance of sorts” and to keep an eye out for recent restoration projects.

Denny Caneff, Executive Director, River Alliance of Wisconsin

Another seasoned professional; Denny Caneff is Executive Director of the River Alliance of Wisconsin.** Denny is “always interested in good paddling trips” and is particularly fond of urban streams, which, he says, “are almost always better than people expect.” But Denny also came with a specific and admittedly quirky agenda. “I'm keeping track of the rivers I've paddled in Wisconsin,” he says, “and this year my goal is to hit rivers with the same name. For example, there are three White Rivers, two Blacks, two Reds, three Yellows and four Pines as well as the Menomonee, the Menominee, and the Menomonie.”

And me? This is a journey delayed far too long. Nearly 20 years ago I began a six-year process of exploring the Menomonee watershed, a project that culminated with the publication in 2008 of my book, Urban Wilderness: Exploring a Metropolitan Watershed. Like Kurt, I live near the river and have spent countless hours communing with it without ever getting in a boat and running it. To paraphrase Thoreau, the river is a constant lure, as it flows by my door, to enterprise and adventure.² Finally in a kayak, I am ecstatic, floating in more ways than one.

Flotsam backed up behind a logjam

A mountainous logjam brings me back to earth. Or rather to the water’s surface, which is filthy with backed up scum and flotsam. The others are already pulling kayaks up a nearby bank. We drag them along a riverside trail and slide them back in the water.

Hours pass in this fashion: periods of calm, drifting beneath a high, arching canopy, scanning for wildlife, alternate with brief struggles to get over, under or around logjams of various proportions. In that time we see exactly two other people: the mountain biker who is merely a flash of colorful spandex in the foliage and a man on the grassy bank watching his dog frolic in the stream. We don’t catch a glimpse of the elusive beaver, nor of mink or otter, which Cheryl assures us also have reinhabited the watershed. But there are birds aplenty, plying the riverside as well as enlivening the nearly unbroken canopy overhead.

Great blue heron

“You could fool people into thinking we’re in a wilderness,” says Denny. Indeed. That’s been a major part of my mission as a photographer. But it’s not a deception to identify and celebrate the wildness in our midst.

Thoreau’s famous dictum, “In wildness is the preservation of the world,” was parsed by author David Gessner in a book about his own urban river voyage. “While wilderness might be untrammeled land along the Alaskan coast,” Gessner wrote, “wildness can happen anywhere…. It can happen…on a city river.” His conclusion resonates as I duck my head and guide my kayak under a particularly hoary tangle of brush: “It is of vital importance that we not define this wildness as wilderness, that we not construct intellectual walls between the natural and the human.”³

That the natural coexists with the human and we can enjoy it in a city represents a fairly recent, but essential shift in ecological consciousness. In a dramatic and welcome break with conventional civic promotion—traditionally the province of Chambers of Commerce—cities now vie for the title of “greenest” and tout sustainability, parks and bike lanes. Long-established natural areas like the Menomonee River Parkway, irreplaceable assets that they are, now compete with exciting, new and reimagined urban spaces like New York’s High Line and Milwaukee’s Menomonee Valley.

Currie Park Golf Course

We emerge from the Capitol Drive overpass, abruptly confronted with open, sun-drenched sky and the highly civilized landscape of Currie Park Golf Course. Two golfers in spotless whites waiting to tee off wave as we paddle by. We drift past gently rolling fairways carpeted with closely cropped lawns running down to the river’s edge. The next obstacle to our progress isn’t another logjam but the concrete slab of a golf cart crossing.

We stop there for water and granola bars. Cheryl explains that Milwaukee Riverkeeper had lobbied to have the dam-like structure replaced with a more fish-friendly one. But some higher-up determined that it didn’t impede fish migration enough to warrant the cost. The recommendation was ignored.

From previous experience I had been certain that Currie Park would be a pivotal point beyond which our reverie would become increasingly marred by intrusive signs of our urban circumstances. The moment we disembark from the concrete slab, however, I am dealt another pleasant surprise. Like Alice falling down a rabbit-hole in a suburban hedge, we plunge again into unanticipated wilds. The golf course surrounding us vanishes completely, marvelously. The wild river carries us on.

 Currie Park

And so it goes for the rest of the day. After all the exploring I have done before and all my research about the Menomonee River, nothing has prepared me for being on the river like this. An hour or more goes by between bridges. We catch occasional glimpses of people walking or cycling beside the river. The gothic tower of Mount Mary University looms briefly in the distance. Mostly we drift in peaceful solitude. The gurgling on a rocky decline and cheerful birdsong grow louder than the sound of traffic.

While there are far fewer obstructions and no more logjams on this middle leg of the route, we now contend with low water and a rocky bottom. I get out and walk several times to avoid scraping the kayak. Denny says that after a rainfall, with sufficient water in the river, some of these riffles could be considered Class II rapids (which means gentle rapids with smaller waves, clear channels that are obvious without scouting, possibly requiring some maneuvering.⁴) Not bad for a modest urban waterway.

On the final leg of the journey I begin to feel like we are returning to civilization. Through the trees on a steep bluff we can easily see the picture windows of houses situated to exploit the view. After passing through the tunnel-like North Avenue Bridge, I feel something whizz by just over my head and duck instinctively. Thwaackk! A golf ball smacks the shallow water and ricochets off a rock inches from the end of my paddle. A dangerously eroded bank hides the golfer from view. As I speed down the rapids another ball bounces silently on the green across the river.

Bank erosion at Hanson Golf Course

More erosion reveals a bank failure caused by the recent addition of a multi-use path alongside the newly redesigned and rebuilt Menomonee River Parkway road. Being a cyclist myself, I am among multitudes grateful for the new off-road path on this busy stretch of roadway. However, this represents an unusual dispute that erupted among normally allied environmental groups about how to improve the parkway. Safety and cycling, rather than riverbank stability won the day. None of the improvements are visible from the river, however, and Cheryl makes note of the problem still to be addressed.

The Parkway becomes Hoyt Park and after that Hart Park in the Village of Wauwatosa, the most intensively used segments of the Menomonee River. More houses, bridges and people come into view. We endure the roar and screech of a freight train where tracks run next to the river. Despite it all, however, once again I am surprised to find the experience at water level hardly less wild and invigorating than it was upstream.

Hoyt Park suspension bridge

It is in Hoyt Park where we see the most obvious evidence of restoration efforts. Looking decidedly unnatural, gleaming white limestone riprap adorned the banks at several places. We notice also wide breaks in the riparian woodland that were cut to allow heavy equipment access to the water. In 2015 four long-abandoned sewer crossings that had acted like dams were removed to improve fish passage.

I run the newly freed rapids with satisfaction. Here, where the damaged condition of the river is most visible, we also find the most hopeful signs. We have become a society that cares enough to repair the ecological damage done by previous generations. Healing the river is a necessary prerequisite to healing our relationship to nature and natural processes. Our future and our children’s future depend on this.

Bullfrog

Kurt and I both live next to Hoyt Park. It is as familiar as a backyard and yet, even here, the kayak affords an experience both unprecedented and unforeseen. Denny’s prediction proved true: it was better than expected. Summing up the expedition, he says, “For an urban amenity I found it surprisingly appealing—a blue and green ribbon winding through a densely settled urban area, a place that feels remote and removed even though the city thrums nearby.” After a somewhat arduous six hours on the river, when we finally pull the kayaks out at Jacobus Park, everyone agrees they’re ready to repeat the adventure—the river already is luring us back.


Go to my Flickr album to see additional photos relating to this story. 

Notes:

*Milwaukee Riverkeeper is a non-profit organization, associated with the international Waterkeeper Alliance, whose mission is to protect, improve and advocate for water quality, riparian wildlife habitat, and sound land management in the Milwaukee area watersheds.

**The River Alliance of Wisconsin is a non-profit organization whose mission is to advocate for the protection, enhancement and restoration of Wisconsin's rivers and watersheds.

1.Mills, Stephanie. In Service of the Wild: Restoring and Reinhabiting Damaged Land. Beacon Press, Boston. 1995. p.2.

2. Thoreau, Henry David. A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Princeton University Press. 2004 (originally 1849)

[Rivers] are a constant lure, when they flow by our doors, to distant enterprise and adventure….

3. Gessner, David. My Green Manifesto: Down the Charles River in Pursuit of a New Environmentalism. Milkweed Editions, 2011. pg. 110.

4. http://wetplanetwhitewater.com/rafting/class-system/

This story first appeared in City Creatures blog at the Center for Humans and Nature, posted on July 11, 2016.

A new year in the Urban Wilderness begins with joy!

You've gotta see this crazy mouse I found running in circles on the parkway! Okay, a little context:

What brings you joy? One of the many things that work for me is walking along the rivers in Milwaukee's many urban parkways. Another is encountering wildlife along the way. This happened recently, on the Menomonee River Parkway in Wauwatosa. It was one of the drab, snowless wintry days we've had so many of lately. The colors were muted and the sun near to setting, which happens early so close to the winter solstice.

I was walking at a brisk pace due to the cold when I stopped abruptly at the sight of something moving in a curious fashion ahead on the trail. It looked like a mouse, or more likely a vole, and it was running in circles on the dirt of the path. I slowly moved closer, trying not to scare it off. I needn't have worried, though. I soon learned that it was not going to be deterred by my presence.

It continued running in the same circle, like a wind-up toy, until I was hovering right over it. It bumped into my boot but that only made it swerve a bit. Kept right on going.

I shot several videos of this. It did pause now and then to munch on some grass. But before long it started up again, in the same place, doing donuts across the path.

Click here to view video.

I got tired of its game well before it did and continued on my way. Later I retraced my steps. I wondered about the little creature. If it was gone I wouldn't know if it had become hawk food or had finally decided to end its obsession and wandered away. But no, there it was, still going at it.

I might have left it going around and around, joyfully. At least I could say the curiosity of the crazy encounter had made me joyful. Can't say what the vole was feeling. But I worried about the poor guy. Hawk bait, for sure, I thought. So I nudged it off the open path and under a tangle of brush.

May you have a joyful new year full of encounters with urban wildlife!

Bearing Witness in the Menomonee Valley

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The bend in the Menomonee just downstream from Miller Park is one of my favorite haunts in the Valley. There the river makes one of several ninety-degree turns that remind us, if we attend to them, that the watercourse is not “natural” but as manufactured as the industries that replaced the wild rice marsh from which the river was carved. But that’s history. Today this corner of the river is rare for its seclusion—and for a blessed illusion: paradoxically, it is one of the few stretches of seemingly natural landscape without a glimpse of the surrounding city.

It is a place prized by anglers and I am not surprised to find a suitably costumed one casting repeatedly in the shallow water. I ask what’s biting and he grimaces before grumbling amiably, “Nothing yet.” Then he adds, “But it’s a lovely afternoon and the autumn colors are beautiful.” He continues casting. 

By chance I spot the remains of a hawk, victim of some unknown violent end, splayed across the ground near the river. I might have missed it; so closely do its colors blend with the earth on which it rests. I haven’t come seeking this, but here I am and here it is.

Without clearly understanding why, I record the scene with my camera.

Photography famously excels at representing the material world. Just point and shoot, as they say, with a camera—or a phone—and you have a lasting record that is often far more detailed than what you’ve consciously observed. But my mind is on a branch of Zen Buddhism that encourages a practice known as bearing witness.* Bearing witness is more than observing your surroundings.

I observe the crushed body of the hawk, the pattern on its feathers, the curved talons—their vicious sharpness rendered impotent by death. Noted later, my camera also records matted, muddied entrails; twisted brown leaves scattered all around among surprisingly fresh green shoots; even the grit of the sandy earth.

After shooting the dead body I move on, turn the bend, and 
climb an overgrown slope to the Hank Aaron Trail. There in the middle of the asphalt I find another, smaller carcass: a vole. (Perhaps a mouse, but mice have pointier snouts. Its flattened state makes the attribution tentative. In any case, common prey for a hawk.) This one has not died a natural wild rodent death—most likely it was squashed by a speeding cyclist. Nor did it provide sustenance for a hawk. The flies busily digging in its punctured hide, however, care nothing for how it perished. In nature nothing is wasted. Death begets life.

I have not come looking for hawks or voles. I’m not seeking memento mori. I did have a purpose in mind when I chose to walk this bend in the river today but once I arrived I let that purpose subside. Buddhism teaches us to let go of attachments. It is a practice I deliberately bring to my photography, if not always to the rest of my life. Had I stuck to my purpose I might have noticed neither hawk nor vole. Letting go of my purpose and being present in the moment allows me the freedom to discover things I am not seeking.

But the idea of bearing witness goes deeper. You are not merely present in the moment and open to experience, though these are the necessary conditions that make bearing witness possible. Bearing witness is an act of social engagement, not only being aware of the life—and death—around you but embodying it. Allow yourself to embody the experience of the other—that which is outside yourself—and you may become one with it: hawk, vole, predator and prey, river, trail, Menomonee Valley, city, Earth. Words, ideas, experiences.

Occasionally photographs.

Bearing witness isn’t about the photographs. It isn’t about the words. It isn’t about death either, unless it is death to which you attend.

Ultimately—ideally—bearing witness is about the dissolution of self, becoming one with all life, with the universe. By embodying the universe you assume responsibility for it. Not because of a moral obligation—too intellectual—but because you experience the other as yourself, inseparable. If you embody the other then the other is you and you will naturally care for it as you do yourself.

The Menomonee Valley represents an unusual kind of oneness, the planned reintegration of nature within an urban fabric. The inseparability of natural and built environments is being made manifest here. I come to the Valley to be present, to bear witness, to try with due humility to embody this universe.

In Zen practice bearing witness commonly addresses injustice and inequality, promotes peace and reconciliation. But we must also bear witness to progress and hope. Like the hawk and the vole, here in the Valley it is easy to find dead carcasses of abandoned factories in various states of decay. But I haven’t come seeking death.

I have come seeking renewal. The Valley provides that in abundance.

*Glassman, Bernie. Bearing Witness: A Zen Master’s Lessons in Making Peace. 1998. Bell Tower, New York.

This post is one in a series that relates to my Menomonee Valley Artist in Residency. For more information about the residency and links to previous posts and photographs, go to MV AiR.  

Meter Hero wants to help you conserve water & energy

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The first thing I notice upon entering the Meter Hero office is the bulletin board next to the door. Pinned to it are T-shirts, photos, newspaper clippings and a large poster of Milwaukee’s North Point water tower with the text, “Conserve Differently.” At a glance it looks like a display of memorabilia and success stories typical of a business or environmental organization proud of its accomplishments. McGee Young, the founder of Meter Hero, quickly corrects my false impression.

“We call this our ‘learning wall’ because it documents our failures.” He says this with as much pride as I would expect if it had in fact commemorated successes.

 

Please go to Arts Without Borders for the rest of this story and photos.


This post is one in a series that relates to my Menomonee Valley Artist in Residency. For more information about the residency and links to previous posts and photographs, go to MV AiR. 

Celebrating a sunless solstice morning

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I’ve had June 21—today—on my calendar for over a month, looking forward to the solstice, longest day of the year. I arose early to see the solstice sunrise from 3 Bridges Park in the Menomonee Valley. If you were out this morning you already know what I saw: fog.

Here is the view from the park in the direction of sunrise. I was out for a couple hours but there was no hint of sunshine. The gods must be displeased with something. I didn’t take it personally and did use the opportunity to take a quiet walk in the park. I wasn’t alone, either. Every few minutes I’d see a cyclist or someone walking along the Hank Aaron Trail.

More often than not they’d reply to my “Good morning” with “Buenos Días.” Despite the fog, it was a very good morning. Here are a few things that I saw.

I caught a few shots from other parts of the Valley as well. Fog inspires introspection. I've been thinking about the Viaducts and how they serve simultaneously to make a connection across the Valley and a barrier to access the Valley itself.

 

This post is one in a series that relates to my Menomonee Valley Artist in Residency. For more information about the residency and links to previous posts and photographs, go to MV AiR.