Photo essay: Milwaukee River Greenway in white

Riverside Park

Another gloomy winter day made lovely by gently falling snow. The landscapes of the Greenway look faded, like sepia-toned etchings discovered in a disused trunk. The starkness of the season, paradoxically, increases the sense of wildness while simultaneously making it hard to ignore the urban in the urban wilderness.

Shelter 1, Riverside Park

 

Winter tapestry, Rotary Centennial Arboretum

 

Renegade cyclist, Riverside Park

 

Shelter 2, Riverside Park

 

Gordon and Riverside Parks from Locust Street Bridge

 

Riverside Pumping Station

 

Shelter 3, Cambridge Woods

 

Tunnel to nowhere, Cambridge Woods

Bluff trail, Cambridge Woods

 

Grafitti, Cambridge Woods

 

The river, Cambridge Woods

 

Red sandstone cairn, Riverside Park

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.

Oak savannas in Milwaukee County

Indian Community School, Franklin, WI

Remnants of once-vast ecosystem linger on public and private properties

The big trees lean this way and that like preadolescents at a middle school dance who want to be seen together but aren’t quite ready to touch. The small stand—little over half a dozen oaks—is defined as much by the space around the trees as by the substantial bulk of their individual trunks. It is a classic example of an ecosystem known as oak savanna—or, I must hasten to add, what is left of one.

Stahl-Conrad Homestead, Hales Corners, WI

An undisturbed oak savanna is primarily grassland dotted with oaks. This remarkably diverse ecosystem once stretched in a wide belt from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico, creating a transition between the tallgrass prairie to the west and the dense broadleaf forest to the east. Unfortunately, of the 50 million acres that existed prior to European settlement little remains, almost none of it undisturbed....

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

Greenfield Park: A walk in the woods

With apologies to T. S. Eliot:

October is the coolest month, breeding

asters out of the dying land, mixing

memory and desire, stirring

bright colors with cold autumn nights.

Winter will make us shiver, cover

Earth in forgetful snow, but today

resilient life and exuberant canopies!*

I’ve always loved October. Indian Summers and autumn colors enable me to put off the threat of winter for the time being. So far this October has been everything I’ve always loved about it.

Last year I was away from Milwaukee during the entire month of October. While I’m not complaining about my time in foreign places—I feel fortunate to be able to travel—I did vow to remain in Milwaukee this year and take in the colors. In fact, I’ve been out enjoying Milwaukee’s parks and the changing colors so often that I’m finding it hard to keep up with my excursions in my blog. Milwaukee and my mood are equally far from Eliot's "Waste Land."

So, here is one of my recent adventures, in Greenfield Park. Just photos:

To see many more photos from many more of Milwaukee's parks go to my Flickr album.

*Adapted from the opening passage of The Waste Land, by T. S. Eliot:

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering 
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.

Mangan Woods blossoms with spring: A photo essay

Mangan Woods is located between Whitnall Park and the Root River Parkway in Greendale. This lovely park is worth visiting any time of the year due to the healthy stands of mature hardwoods, like this giant maple.

But spring is a particularly lovely time because of the remarkable wealth of wildflowers. Stay on the (well-trodden) paths because a stray step is likely to crush a beautiful flower.

Along with the common white trillium, Mangan boasts the rarer and more delicate red trillium, here nestled among sedge.

There were some patches of enormous may apples...

the blossoms of which are usually hard to see without groveling on the ground--although I found my iPhone a handy way to capture a ground-level view.

There is a lot of scurrying through the underbrush. The creatures mostly stayed out of sight, but this toad held still just long enough.

I hadn't been to Mangan for at least a few years. Since then, sadly, garlic mustard has taken over large swaths of the more open areas. I also found it popping up here and there in the deeper sections of the forest.

Here a Virginia waterlily is entwined in garlic mustard.

This is a lovely-looking specimen of Dame's rocket...

until you look around and see that it, too, is aggressively invasive.

I also happened upon a more unusual alien species the day I was there. Nonbox, a Milwaukee ad agency, was filming a commercial for Shield, a huge outdoor sporting goods company.

I came knowing that I was likely to find Jack in the pulpit blossoming this time of year, having seen them before...

but I was completely caught by surprise at the sheer number of them, in open, sun-drenched places...

and also in the shadowy parts of the deep forest.

Not only did I see more Jacks in the pulpit than in any other place I can recall, but also the largest ones, which reached nearly to knee-level.

Mangan Woods, a dramatic and subtle place. I hope to return more often in the future.