Chasing autumn in Milwaukee area parks

Noyes Park, Milwaukee

For many people, myself included, this is the best time of the year. But let’s face it. Autumn 2017 in Milwaukee has been disappointing. Blame climate change or natural variability but it was unusually mild early in the season. While that’s hard to complain about as the prospect of another Wisconsin winter nears, it seems to have dulled the colors. Many tree species, oaks in particular, seem to have gone directly from green to brown. Others have remained green far longer than normal. Some, like the maples, were finally turning as the calendar went from October to November.

Vernon Wildlife Area, Waukesha County

I finally found a few brilliant sparks amid the embers of the season but it was more challenging than last year. Here is a selection of five area parks that I visited recently. Two of them—Holy Hill and Greenfield Park—are old favorites, worth revisiting often. The other three were new to me: Glacier Hills in Washington County, Vernon Wildlife Area in Waukesha County, and Noyes in Milwaukee. If you act quickly, you too may still be able to capture a little of the fading glory of autumn.

This story was published in my column at Milwaukee Magazine. Click here to read further.

Here is just one of the photos from each of the five parks included in the story:

Glacier Hills County Park

Ice Age Trail at Holy Hill

Vernon Wildlife Area 

Greenfield Park

Noyes Park

 

 

 To see the rest, click here.

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.

It Takes One: A feature by The Cultural Landscape Foundation

I've had the honor to be featured on The Cultural Landscape Foundation's website. I recently went to Houston to attend a TCLF conference called "Leading with Landscape: The Transformation of Houston." In getting to know a few of the TCLF members there I shared a little about my work and what's going on in Milwaukee. They were interested enough to interview me for their feature, "It Takes One." I'm reprinting it below. If you want to read the original on their website, click here.

It Takes One: Eddee Daniel

I am a photographer and writer specializing in urban ecologies and cultural landscapes. My practice is multidimensional. I tell stories about particular places. I also examine how we perceive and construct understandings of nature in the contexts of culture and the built environment. I have long characterized my work with the paradoxical term ‘Urban Wilderness,’ which symbolizes the complexity of my subject matter as well as its inherent tensions.

I have degrees in art education with an emphasis on photography. After more than 30 years of teaching art, photography, and architecture in secondary- and higher-educational settings, for the past six years I have pursued my current practice full time. I also have a long record of environmental advocacy, having served on the boards of several local non-profit organizations. I love all of the arts. Currently, I am collaborating with two choreographers, who are incorporating my imagery into environmental-themed dance programs. My interest in cultural landscapes is less a conscious choice than a thoroughly ingrained personal temperament.

Menomonee River reconstruction, Milwaukee, WI

How do you define a cultural landscape?
A cultural landscape is a place, whether natural, built, or otherwise designed, that has felt the impact of the human imprint. These places may be interpreted broadly or very particularly. Today, at the beginning of what some are calling the Anthropocene Epoch—when human influence has begun to affect ecology on a planetary scale—an argument can be made that all landscapes have a cultural aspect. For the purposes of my artistic practice, I generally choose to examine landscapes where the human and natural elements are inextricably interconnected: Either there has been a deliberate effort to modify a place or the features of a place have motivated humans to adapt to it. To me, cultural landscapes are places that live in the imagination as well as exist as earthy terrain: They have stories worth telling.

What is the Urban Wilderness Project?

The Urban Wilderness Project began as a voyage of discovery as well as a means to advocate for conservation and restoration of natural habitats within my local urban and suburban setting. It was also about how to perceive a watershed while living in a city. I set out to explore and document the existing conditions within the Menomonee River watershed, which begins in an exurban area of farms and encroaching suburbs and runs through the heart of industrial Milwaukee. I spent six years exploring the physical features of the region and, in particular, its rivers and riparian parks. The project dealt with issues of land use, flood management, economic development, recreational opportunities, pollution, wildlife diversity, and habitat restoration. The outcome was a book entitled Urban Wilderness: Exploring a Metropolitan Watershed, published by the Center for American Places at Columbia College Chicago.

Beyond that specific project, I have used the term ‘Urban Wilderness’ more generally to symbolize the complexity of my experiences as well as my creative responses to the tensions and themes symbolized by this idea. The term, which for me is rich with hope as well as contradiction, has provided the conceptual underpinning for various bodies of work I have undertaken in the past 20 years. Although these bodies of work are loosely unified by the overarching ‘Urban Wilderness’ concept, they vary in focus and style from documentary realism to abstract formalism. Throughout, I try to emphasize an experience of the world that is relational and conditional rather than singular and fixed.

St. Louis Art Museum, Forest Park, St. Louis

How do you choose your projects?
In a world that seems to have become an endless series of ecological catastrophes, I have made a determined effort to choose projects that tell a more hopeful story. I admire the efforts of others to raise awareness about a wide variety of important and pressing environmental concerns; that is essential. However, I seek places where I see positive transformation either underway or being planned. In 2014, I served as the inaugural artist-in-residence in Milwaukee’s Menomonee Valley, a blighted post-industrial landscape that is in the midst of economic and environmental revitalization. In 2015, I worked with the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District to document its Kinnickinnic River Project, which will eventually remove several miles of concrete channel and recreate a more naturalized river.

Is your work primarily documentary, or does it strive to do something else?
My work can be difficult to categorize. Much of what I do is documentary. My writing can be described as creative non-fiction. My photography veers between straightforward documentary and the fine art formalism that was the basis of my artistic education. I am unquestionably an advocate for many things: the creation and enjoyment of urban parklands, sustainable development, river revitalization, instilling a love of nature in children, just and equitable access to nature, etc. My artistic work often reflects this. Sometimes it is more abstract or symbolic, like the long-running personal project I call Synecdoche: the fragment that represents the whole. Uncharacteristically, but importantly, that project is not devoted to a specific place. Instead, it suggests a more universal experience of nature as fragmentary and that what remains must stand in for what has been lost.

I would like to think that I observe the world with a childlike sense of wonder. Occasionally I believe I achieve that valuable goal. But in truth, there is nearly always a defining conceptual basis to the work I do, whether symbolic, as in Synecdoche, or pragmatic, as in the restoration of a damaged river.

Curtain Wall, from Synecdoche: the fragment that represents the whole

What are the advantages and disadvantages of the medium of photography in capturing the essence of a place?
Photography has nearly universal appeal due to its accessibility and democratic character. People generally believe what they see and photography can lend credence to the subject it represents. That can be an asset for a documentary project. It enables viewers to visualize a place and helps drive a narrative. However, to turn the old saw on its head, a photograph often requires a thousand words to put it into context. Without contextual support, a single image can easily be misunderstood. To remedy this potential pitfall, I rarely depend upon a single image and I include written narratives to support my theses.

Alienation from nature is a frequent theme in your work. Are parks and maintained natural areas a true remedy to such alienation?
While I am sensitive to the issue of alienation from nature, I don’t consider that a starting point. It is my fundamental belief that the human/nature divide is a false one. If I have a starting point for my practice it is the idea of the interdependency of all life and the interconnection between nature and the built environment symbolized by the theme of 'Urban Wilderness.' Having said that, in an increasingly urbanized world we do have to deal with alienation from traditional experiences of nature. I believe that urban parks and natural areas are indeed a vital component in combatting what author Richard Louv refers to as “nature deficit disorder.” In my experience, the well-documented health and spiritual benefits of exposure to the natural world accrue to time spent in urban natural areas as readily as elsewhere.

Urban Wilderness, from the Urban Wilderness Project

What message would you like to give our readers that may inspire them to make a difference?
Like most people who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, a huge percentage of my youth was spent outdoors and unsupervised. That kind of upbringing is so rare today that children fortunate enough (from my perspective) to have that experience are dubbed “free-range kids.” If children are not provided with daily opportunities to run free in nature, the consequences will not only affect their own development, potentially leading to an increase in physical disabilities, decreased mental acuity and spiritual poverty, it will also create a society that no longer values nature enough to protect what remains.

As more and more of the global population lives in urban settings, sensitively designed public parks and natural areas become increasingly vital to everyone’s future. We cannot reset the clock to 1955, but we can create a future that enables people of all ages to see and touch nature within their own communities.

Forest Park, St. Louis, MO

Stay tuned for a blog post about Houston and my experiences there.

An invitation to Milwaukee's Urban Wilderness

Peace like a river

The theme of Wauwatosa's 2016 "All-City Read" is the title of a novel, "Peace like a River," by Leif Enger.

As one of the many events being sponsored by the city for this theme, I've been asked to share my experiences in Milwaukee's Urban Wilderness. I will show images from Milwaukee's three rivers and copious parklands and illustrate why I believe we have a world-class, eco-friendly city and region.

I invite you to come spend some time with me as we explore Milwaukee's great outdoors.

You have two opportunities to catch my presentation:

February 4 @ 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm

 

Hart Park Senior Center (Muellner Building), 7300 Chestnut St., Wauwatosa

February 13 @ 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm

 

The Grand Hall at Hoyt Park Pool, 1800 N. Swan Boulevard, Wauwatosa


For more information about the 2016 All-City Read, click here. 
To learn more about me and my work, check out my website. 

 

Peregrine falcon banding in the Menomonee Valley

I wrote the following story approximately ten years ago when I was working on my first book, Urban Wilderness: Exploring a Metropolitan Watershed. It has always been one of my favorites. I reprint it now because after ten years I have just returned to witness another falcon banding session at the same location. This time I also went to four additional banding sites in Milwaukee. Stay tuned for the new story--and many more photos!

Power Plant 

One hundred and twenty feet up the chimney of a coal-fired power plant, wind roars in my ears. Far below and all around are the signs of a century of enterprising development and subsequent decline. Black roofs mark the few remaining factories. Vacant parcels are littered with faintly twinkling glass. Tiny trucks pick and prod at a mountain of coal to feed the furnaces beneath my feet. They have the look of ants fussily tending an anthill. Across the canal in the city impoundment lot, carelessly arranged carcasses of abandoned automobiles lie atop the contours of a huge mound of gravel. In another direction lies their probable fate: scrap metal awaiting reclamation is being sorted into irregular piles.

This isn't the kind of setting one expects nature lovers to seek out; nevertheless, this vertiginous height is one of several area nesting sites for the once-endangered peregrine falcon. As such, it is a significant outpost in the urban wilderness—symbolic of a dramatic environmental success story—and I am witnessing as much wild fury as a pair of falcons can muster.

Tolerance of humans and adaptation to their synthetic environments has helped bring the species back from the brink of extinction, but tolerance has its limits. With no way to communicate their benign intentions, the banding team is provoking the falcons in the most distressing way possible, by raiding their nest and stealing their young. In a frenzy, the adult birds dive at us, swerving by as close as they dare. They circle around and dive again, screaming all the while in high-pitched desperation.

Greg, the naturalist in charge of the operation is getting an equally ferocious reaction from the fledglings in the nest. In what they only can perceive as a battle for existence, they simultaneously claw, peck, and struggle to evade his grasp with great feathery commotion. But it is a futile fight, as gloved hands deftly snatch each chick and transfer it to a waiting cage. All the while the parents continue the attack. Capable of speeds as high as 230 M.P.H., which makes them the fastest animals on earth—their intimidation is real. The larger female aims straight at my head, eyes blazing with passionate intensity. Just beyond reach, she stalls her headlong plunge with a wide sweep of her wings, talons writhing with frustration, and veers away.

Once in their lives these wild creatures must endure this violation because our society has decided to care whether they live or die. The look in their eyes is a clear sign that banding doesn't tame them, but it creates a platform on which we can build a case for mutual survival. In the urban wilderness, nature's indifference must be guided by humanity's care and stewardship.

Once inside, identifying bands are applied expertly to the fledglings' legs. Held as gently as possible, they nevertheless struggle continuously. Sharp beaks and talons flex and strain, eyes glare with a vehemence born of panic. The banding team's calm, scholarly attention to detail belies a genuine respect and affection for the fate of the individual birds as well as the species. They are given names. Personalities are noted along with physical traits. All is done with such alacrity that we are soon back up on the chimney, returning them to the nest. No longer attacking, the adult falcons continue to circle, eyeing us suspiciously.

When I return to solid ground I turn to look up through a lattice of steel structures toward the tiny white nest box affixed to a narrow railing on the massive vertical form of the stack. Two even tinier black specks with wings whip around like torn bits of cloth whirling in an updraft. Then each circles the stack one more time, swoops gracefully up to the nest, and disappears inside. The only sound is the wind in my ears. 

This story and the photograph of the Fledgling Falcon are from Urban Wilderness: Exploring a Metropolitan Watershed, Center for American Places at Columbia College Chicago. © Eddee Daniel 2008.

Happy Anniversary! The Wilderness Act turns 50 today.

President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Wilderness Act into law on September 3, 1964. Today there are 758 designated wilderness areas in the United States and Puerto Rico.

Happy anniversary, from the (undesignated) Urban Wilderness!

The photo is of the Fox River near Muckwanago from a recent canoe trip.

North Park, Lincolnshire, IL: We all live in a watershed

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There is a lovely woodland on the west side of Interstate 94 north of Chicago that I’ve driven past innumerable times on my way to and from that great city and points east or south of it. Its name, or even whether or not it had one, has always been a mystery—until today.

Since I am the “designated driver” in my family when we are anywhere near Chicago, I’ve rarely gotten more than a passing glance at this park as it flashed by at prevailing freeway speeds. But I do glance. Many of metropolitan Chicago’s patches of forest preserves lie alongside the freeway corridors. There they are welcome variations in the otherwise dull “viewsheds” that have in recent years become dominated (or shall we say it bluntly: obliterated) by the sound-absorbing barriers erected to protect burgeoning subdivisions.

When the patches of woodland green flash past I invariably take a glance (or two, road conditions permitting!) Over the years I’ve gotten to know quite a few of these fleeting bastions of nature. Or, to be more precise, I’ve become superficially familiar with the face they present to the freeway. (There’s no “stopping by woods on a snowy evening” along the freeway, of course.) This particular stretch of woods has seemed especially inviting. On occasions when the sun’s rays stream through the tree canopy they reveal, even at freeway speeds, an open understory that can appear quite enchanting. A gracefully arched footbridge is visible, as it crosses over some watercourse unknowable from the road.

Welcome as these brief, beguiling glimpses are as visual distractions on a road trip, they are definitely unsatisfactory to someone who desires an intimate “acquaintance with nature,” as Thoreau put it. I cannot recount how often I have yearned to take the next exit and double back to find this park. That it took so long may be attributed to destination-minded driving, to the inertial logic of freeway traffic, or to an internalized skepticism about the chances that roadside parkland can live up to my imagination of it as urban wilderness.

Today I resist skepticism—and I plan time into my return from an errand in Chicago. I exit the freeway at Half Day Road and turn north on the ambivalently named Riverwoods Road Trail. Definitely a road; not a trail. The park is easy to find but the name, when I finally see it on the entrance sign, is disappointingly prosaic: North Park. No matter: “A rose is a rose is a rose” and, prosaic or not, it will “smell as sweet,” to mix quotations. And the Shakespeare, referencing smell, will prove very apt indeed, as we shall see.

I drive past a series of athletic fields, down a very long, narrow set of parking spaces, every one of them empty today. Not surprising, though: it’s just after noon on the first day of the new school year. (I’ve just driven past Daniel Wright Junior High, which has a packed parking lot and a marquee sign reading, “Welcome back!”) I park at the far end, delighted, as always, to have the woods to myself. Tempting to throw in the Thoreau quote about companionable solitude, but I so recently used it, I’ll resist. Besides, although there is no one else about, as I enter the woods the solitude and otherwise bucolic character of the woods is immediately and, as it will turn out, irrevocably compromised by the incessant roar of the beastly freeway; ironically, the very conduit that led me to this moment of exploration.

It is a small sacrifice, I always think as I embark on a new urban wilderness adventure, to have to endure the racket in order to enjoy the nature. Unfortunately, it is one to which I am accustomed. I forge ahead. At first the forest is dense and shadowy, but soon the understory opens as I had foreseen from the freeway. A wide, neatly mulched trail makes the trek decidedly tame. But the sun is pouring through the foliage; it spreads across the dry ground like butter on toast. I can ignore the noise. The scent of the earth is sufficient, I think to myself, to transport me away from the Interstate, away from Illinois, into that enchanted place that I have been imagining here all these years.

The air is sultry. The leaves, still vibrantly green, haven’t begun to turn. And yet the dry, earthy scent no longer speaks of summer. It is an autumn scent, redolent of finality. But it is the finality of transformation, of new beginnings as well as endings. Summer, the season of indolent days and endless youth, is over. Autumn may presage winter, but begins with a new school year full of hopes and promises. This is the finality of cyclical nature, not the finality of death. For, unlike we mortals who walk in its paths, nature never dies.

Unless it is paved over.

OK, OK: sorry. I had to do it. I was getting a little maudlin there, with the syrupy sentiments. The trucks are still roaring by on the Interstate. I’m trying to ignore them, but there they are, RIGHT THERE. The trail I am walking angles towards the freeway and the scrim of trees is tapering. The traffic, no longer merely audible, is a clearly visible blur. I can now make out brand names on the trucks—and super-graphics of fresh vegetables on their way to the shelves of some supermarket.

It is true that nature never dies. Nature will outlast us. Paradoxically, perhaps, it’s also true that we’ve been killing it little by little for at least a couple thousand years, but lately at a rapidly accelerating pace. A freeway through here, a new subdivision there, a little more carbon in the atmosphere, another 200,000 people added to the planet since yesterday.

Well, yes, it is all of a piece: a new year; hopes, promises, youthful vigor and ambition—these things come burdened with death and decay, violence in the Mideast, global warming, and so on. A walk in these woods comes with the roar of trucks on the Interstate. One ball of wax. Yin and yang. Urban wilderness. Every little—and big—thing “hitched to everything else in the universe.” Forever and ever, Amen.

I’m still walking through the lovely woods, breathing the sultry air, basking in the buttery sunlight, stopping to delight in the glow of asters and goldenrod. It’s still beautiful. I come to a sign, posted knee high, encased in watertight acrylic, and canted for easy viewing. “We all live in a watershed,” it proclaims to those who pass.

I approve, of course. Having written Urban Wilderness about a watershed, I’m all for educating the public about the importance of drainages, aquifers, wetlands and rivers; of understanding natural geography—biodiversity, ecosystems and watersheds—instead of the imposed geography of cities, streets, counties and freeways. “North Park was designed to protect the natural area and watershed of the Chicago River,” it says. Then it asks, “What can we do to protect the watershed?” And, appropriately, goes on to provide a detailed list of answers.

Halfway down the list I read, “Preserve our open spaces.” Indeed, I think ruefully, as a truck RIGHT THERE on the freeway throttles down, engine groaning. “Restoration of the natural area here at North Park will improve water quality and reduce flooding along the Chicago River.” Yes, it will. In a curious bit of graphic invention, the map on the sign shows the Village of Lincolnshire as an unnaturally spiky purple blotch that appears attached to the side of the smooth green shape of the watershed like a parasite or a cancerous growth. North Park is a tiny blue shape shoehorned between Lincolnshire and Interstate 94. Three long forks of the North Branch of the Chicago River extend down and away from this point at one of the headwaters.

What is missing, however, are all the adjacent, equally irregular and obtrusive shapes of towns and villages like Lincolnshire here in Lake County, Illinois that overlay the entire watershed. Lake County is home to over 700,000 residents. They all live in a watershed. Unless they choose to walk this trail in North Park and to stop to read this sign, I wonder, how would they know that?

I reflect on the word watershed, which has another, related, meaning. If I walk west from North Park to the far side of Lincolnshire, at some invisible point I will cross from the Chicago River drainage to where all the rainwater flows into the Des Plaines River instead. Temporally, too, the tipping point when everything changes is often referred to as a “watershed moment.”

Not long ago we were warned that once carbon levels in the atmosphere reached 350 parts per million (ppm) there would be no stopping the disastrous effects of global warming. Today, as CO₂ levels approach 400 ppm some organizations, businesses and countries are scrambling to reverse the trend and re-cross the watershed.

This week there were news reports that a long-awaited turnaround has sent home prices soaring again. A watershed. Good news, of course, for the many people still caught in financial straits brought on by the Great Recession. Rising home prices, however, also means rising prices on land and a resurgent demand for development. According to the New York Times, “The latest land rush is in full swing, as developers realize that they have failed to feed the zoning, permitting and mapping pipeline, which can take months or years to turn raw fields into buildable lots.” Municipalities are adjusting rules, lowering development fees, and using other strategies designed to encourage this new “land rush.”

We all live in a watershed.

The warm, autumn scented wood is dappled with sunlight. The flowers are dazzling. I reach the gracefully arched footbridge I’d glimpsed so many times through the trees from the freeway. A faint trickle of water sparkles here and there amongst lush wetland reeds and grasses. Meager headwaters of the West Fork of the North Branch of the Chicago River in an obscure little woodland squeezed between Riverwoods Road Trail and Interstate 94. Never more important than today, right now in the watershed.

How wild is London?

This is the first in a series of installments that I plan to write about my recent experiences in London. These will alternate on my two blogs, as I was there to discover both parks and the wealth of arts that London has to offer. In the end I envision a synthesis of these interests for one of the most important things I learned in London, an enormous city that is both ancient and modern, is that separating things into discrete categories is difficult and in the end a distortion of the total experience.

Installment 1: Arrival

The aluminum tube with wings that delivered my wife and me across the Atlantic Ocean lands without incident at Heathrow Airport somewhere on the outskirts of London. After a brief train ride aboveground through a dreary-looking urban landscape, reminiscent of BBC productions of Masterpiece Mystery, we are deposited in Paddington Station. We descend to London’s famous underground for a ride on the Tube. An hour and a half and two transfers later, we ascend two long escalators. We have traversed most of London and crossed under the river Thames, although there is no way of knowing this. Completely disoriented, we huddle in the shelter of the Cutty Sark Station in Greenwich, greeted with gusting flurries of snow.

Our ten-day adventure in London begins with this auspicious sign. Others might have viewed it with apprehension. Snow in April, while not unheard of, is definitely not what we expected. We would soon learn that Londoners too were particularly happy to be rid of March, which had broken records for cold temperatures. So far April was proving to be similarly disappointing. But for me the blustery weather signals the presence of the unexpected, which author David Gessner identifies as one of the primary characteristics of the wild.

Gessner proclaims, “…wildness can happen anywhere. You can’t put a fence around it. It can happen in the jungle or on a city river.” Perhaps even on a city street, although I wouldn’t want to pound the idea into meaninglessness. This snow isn’t what I came to London to experience by any means. I would have been far happier with warm sunshine. But the unseasonable snow is nature’s way of asserting itself—inserting itself into even one of the largest cities on the planet. And its unpredictability quotient has increased in recent years, to the point where only the few and the rigidly ideological deny the effects of climate change.

Still dragging my rolling luggage behind me, I tighten my scarf, zip up my coat, and walk into the swirl of snow. Welcome to London.

The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. The towers of London's docklands dissolve in the misty background. 

To read installment number 2, about London's National Gallery of Art, click here. 

Marks and remarks from the Urban Wilderness

As I went out this morning light snow drifted slowly out of a clear blue sky. It was beautiful and mysterious, perhaps a portent on the cusp of a new year. Though if I believed in omens I might choose instead the coyote I spotted in the Menomonee Valley a few days ago. Instead of being sunny, a deep overcast was spitting sleet in spurts. The coyote's fur was sodden and dripping as it loped across the pavement in front of my car. It splashed in the icy roadside ditch, slipped through a chain link fence and on into the narrow field between the vast stadium parking lot and the railroad. The bent grasses amongst which it paused looked as bedraggled as it did. Above, I could see a steady stream of cars speeding by on the freeway. The coyote looked around briefly, then turned and slipped out of sight.

Some indigenous peoples of North America revere the coyote as the Creator. More commonly known as a Trickster, though, coyote may appear the fool or the clever impersonator. As I watched this lone, scrubby coyote disappear into perfect camouflage of its wintry surroundings, one thing is unambiguous - here is the wild incarnate. And, against what odds I can only guess, it lives in the heart of Milwaukee. The coyote may not in itself be the creator of the wild, but wherever it goes it does far more than impersonate what is wild. Coyote embodies the wild. To my way of thinking, that it can do this in the city is a good omen indeed.

In addition to my glimpse of the coyote, I caught many a photograph this year, as you may have come to expect if you are a regular to my blog. Three that I shot just yesterday near the Milwaukee River in Gordon Park accompany this post.

2012 was a year for the record books. Much of the reason was bad news. But as December draws to a close, I am mindful of a more hopeful report I heard this week that claimed this was a watershed year for at least one important reason. Due to several extreme climatic events, including Superstorm Sandy and the worst drought conditions since the Dust Bowl, the general public and the media finally caught up with scientists regarding the real and inarguable effects of global warming.

Here at Urban Wilderness I like to recall high points of the passing year, as do many of us. I feel fortunate to have been able to explore both near and far, to revisit familiar places and to discover new ones. There were a number of surprises along the way, which I recorded in posts throughout the year. Listed below, with brief annotations, is what I consider my best of 2012.

The most significant event of the year was the most personal, the loss of my mother at 87. In August I wrote about her influence on me and my love of nature: In memoriam

Other than that, my favorite moments, in chronological order:

The year began softly, in a January blizzard. My meditation on the day is called A snowy silence

In February I covered one of my most regular beats, the Milwaukee County Grounds with Ronald McDonald House plans expansion. Although the specific request by Ronald McDonald House was settled by the County Board of Supervisors in July (see my update), questions remain about the ultimate fate of one final corner of unprotected land.

Also in February, Historic Milwaukee held a forum called "Remarkable Milwaukee." I weighed in with What's remarkable about Milwaukee?

An illuminating trip to Houston, Texas inspired a trilogy of posts. The first installment is called Waking to a new world. (Links to subsequent installments follow each.)

In March I explored a new (to me) park in the Milwaukee County system : A warm gray day in Grobschmidt Park.

In April I was invited by the Great Waters Group of the Sierra Club to give a keynote address for their annual Earth Day celebration. Here is what I told them: Reflections on Earth Day

A new trail in the Cambridge Woods portion of the Milwaukee River Greenway generated controversy in May: Urban wilderness and accessibility

In June I visited the Chicago Wilderness along the Des Plaines River: The scent of summer

And a trip to Phoenix resulted in a two-part post: It's a desert out there! (A link to part 2 follows this post.)

In July I finally made a long-awaited pilgrimage to visit Aldo Leopold's shack on the Wisconsin River north of Madison: A visit to Sand County

There was wonderful news to report in September: A new branch of the Urban Ecology Center opens in the Menomonee Valley

In October, another two-part post, this time from New York City: The High Line: Good and Bad. (A link to part 2 follows this post.)

In November a short excursion led to a surprising discovery - Starved Rock State Park - two hours southwest of Chicago: Off Season

This was also the year when I finally got around to putting the finishing touches on a book too long in the works: The Milwaukee County Grounds: Island of Hope

Happy New Year from the Urban Wilderness!

Earth Day Reflections on Milwaukee's Urban Wilderness

Adapted from a talk at the annual Earth Day celebration sponsored by the Great Waters Group of the Sierra Club.

When I decided in 1999 to name my book Urban Wilderness, I had never heard the term. I thought I’d found a new, wonderfully paradoxical metaphor for the powerful experiences I’d had in Milwaukee. I found out later that someone else had a book so named back in the 1980’s about New York City’s parks, but the term certainly was not in common usage. Today, it’s a different story. Google alerts me whenever someone in cyberspace uses the term and it happens a couple times a week. I think it is an indication of how far we’ve come since 1999.

Fallen giant - Riverside Park

Definitions of “urban wilderness” generally emphasize two things: First, the ability of a natural area to sustain a level of biodiversity that is not typical of urban parks; and second, the aesthetic of wildness, which is to say an appearance of not being managed (almost universally an illusion). The idea of “urban wilderness,” with all its contradictions, challenges, and aspirations, seems part of the spirit of the times. I consider it a hopeful measure of how we see ourselves in the world. To embrace the idea of urban wilderness is to welcome nature into our lives wherever we live, especially in cities or in suburbs.

This may not seem like a radical notion. After all, the Sierra Club has been caring for the earth for over a hundred years. But during most of that time “nature” meant pristine parklands, usually far away and in need of protection from ourselves. Truly more radical, “urban wilderness” expresses the idea that we can enjoy valuable experiences with nature without leaving the city. Olmsted conceived something like it, to be sure, but the casual way the term is used today seems a recent shift in public awareness.

County Grounds Park

As our cities grow ever larger (which they must because high-density living is the only sensible way to avoid sprawl), we will need more opportunities to spend time in relatively wild nature – not just parks – within our urban communities. We must be vigilant constantly about what little parkland and open spaces we have left. Although this requires leadership, it is too important to be left solely to traditional “environmental advocates.” Open green spaces are simultaneously the most important places to save for public use as parklands and the easiest to exploit for economic development. In contrast to the usual scenarios in which “environmentalists” are pitted against “developers,” we cannot afford to see this as a conflict between “good and evil.” We need economic development. We also need to preserve green space. The questions are where and how.

I believe “urban wilderness” is a hopeful idea. But it is also a challenging one. Its central paradox is that urban natural areas are not natural. Their existence depends on deliberate decision-making, planning, and – yes – management. Wherever there is open space there will be pressure to take advantage of it. Conflicts often arise out of genuine needs that seem to be in opposition.

Underwood Creek Parkway

I don’t have to look far from home for examples. We Energies and the American Transmission Company want to run power lines through Milwaukee County’s Underwood Creek Parkway. That has never happened before; thus, it would set a tragic precedent. The plan is broadly and justifiably opposed. But the problem is complex. We all bear responsibility for the need to have power lines because of our energy-intensive lifestyles. We also need unsullied parks and parkways. Any alternative route must acceptable to We Energies – and all stakeholders – as well as the outraged public. But an alternative must be found.

Another example is the Milwaukee County Grounds, where most of the land once considered for economic development has been preserved as open green space. But after more than ten years of public pressure to “preserve the County Grounds,” and after many compromises were reached, one of the most beautiful sections of this remarkable landscape remains unprotected and zoned for economic development.

Economic Development?

Ronald McDonald House provides an indisputably good service. They need to expand. The Milwaukee County Regional Medical Complex, which serves the health needs of thousands of people from all over the region and beyond, continues to grow. There is no evil here. These and other stakeholders -- everyone in the community -- must agree that saving such a beautiful natural place as the County Grounds is in their own interest, which it is.

Managing an “urban wilderness” involves balancing myriad competing interests that rarely can be conveniently dismissed as a struggle for good versus evil. To paraphrase Ken Leinbach, director of the Urban Ecology Center, “this game of preserving, managing, and restoring very public green space in our fair city is not a game for the faint-hearted. Trying to accommodate one user often alienates another.” Avoiding the polarization that is so commonplace today is hard work – but essential if we are to maximize the potential of our urban green spaces.

It makes good economic sense to preserve green space in cities where, to be physically and psychologically healthy, people need access to nature. The evidence for this is well documented. All across the nation, civic and business leaders, and the general public, are beginning to promote healthy, sustainable urban environments that include natural areas. As Peter Harnik, author of Urban Green: Innovative Parks for Resurgent Cities, wrote, “Cities are vying with one another for ‘best park system’ and the ‘livability crown.’” I’ve long thought Milwaukee could be a contender. Instead, parks budgets continue to dwindle and shortsighted land-use policies prevail.

We must always keep the big picture in mind. Many ingredients make up resilient, sustainable, and livable cities, including a vibrant economy. One of the most important ingredients is excellent parks and natural areas. We residents of Milwaukee County have been endowed with one of the nation’s best park systems. Instead of continuing to nibble away at our greatest asset, it’s time we recognize and promote their vitality. Let’s embrace nature and confront the challenges with the hope embodied in the idea of urban wilderness.

Milwaukee River Greenway

A Snowy Silence

A walk during our recent snowstorm led to some musings:

One of the best times to escape the turmoil of hurried lives in an urban society is immediately after a snowfall – or even while the storm swirls all around. When the world is covered in white, everything slows down. Sharp edges are layered in softness; colors are muted.

I love to go out before the plows have begun their noisy scraping and clearing of streets; before the snow blowers start to rev up. I am drawn, as always, to the parks, to nature. But in a snowstorm it isn’t even necessary to get away from my neighborhood to find silence, peace. I walk down the middle of the street, cutting the first tracks, like an adventurer in the wilderness, a wilderness that for the moment lurks right outside my door.

If I huddle inside I lose a precious opportunity. I’ve learned not to turn on the television at times like this. Forecasters trumpet catastrophe on slight evidence, like Old Testament prophets of doom. If I don’t have to drive anywhere, the storm is far more of a blessing than a danger.

In “The House at Pooh Corner” A. A. Milne has Eeyore say this bit of wisdom:

"I shouldn't be surprised if it hailed a good deal to-morrow…. Blizzards and what-not. Being fine today doesn't Mean Anything. It has no sig—what's that word? Well, it has none of that. It's just a small piece of weather."

Don’t tell the TV weather forecasters – with their Doppler radar and remote on-the-scene camera crews, who hold microphones and wear no hats – that it’s “just a small piece of weather.”

I digress. Today the wilderness outside my door beckoned and I answered the call. The snow was light but a steady wind whipped it around me as I trudged through Hoyt Park. By the time I reached the County Grounds I was warm with exertion and ready for the open range.

I find it curious that even in the midst of a snowstorm nature can present distinct moods.

Where a woodland or ravine provides shelter from the wind, silence prevails. It is this peaceful silence that I generally find most conducive to introspection and spiritual resuscitation. Because the city is so seldom silent the occasion seems wondrous. To paraphrase Thoreau, silence is an opportunity for the soul to commune with its own infinity.

Infinity and eternity are easy to contemplate in a world turned white and silent.

The blizzard also is a reminder of the limits of human activity. We throw tremendous resources into our attempts to pacify nature, to make winter not merely survivable, but comfortable, for example. However, we can never completely cast out the wilderness. 

As I walk out into the open prairie on the County Grounds, my mood swings drastically as I am buffeted by the storm. I face an elemental force of nature, but not in opposition, like Ahab confronting the White Whale. I open myself to the gentle fury of the blowing snow. I am one with the wind, the snow, and the land. Again I count my blessings. Still so close to home that I am at liberty to expose myself this way. Wrapped in Gore-Tex and Wellingtons, I have no fear for my welfare. In my urban wilderness experience, the storm is not only survivable, not only comfortable, it is exhilarating!

After about half an hour the wind dies down, the snow tapers off, and the sun comes out. The wilderness settles into the familiarity of home. I head back, thankful for a small piece of weather that can transport me so profoundly.