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.

Sanctuary Woods at the Milwaukee County Grounds gets national recognition

The Cultural Landscape Foundation lists the Wauwatosa property as threatened in its Landslide program

Sanctuary Woods in Wauwatosa has attracted a lot of attention over the past year as concerned citizens reacted to a controversial plan to develop portions of it. As of today, that attention has gone national for the first time. This morning The Cultural Landscape Foundation, a prestigious non-profit organization based in Washington DC, unveiled its annual call to action in support of important places it considers threatened. Following a rigorous application, jurying and vetting process, Milwaukee County’s Sanctuary Woods has been included among 13 at-risk landscapes from all over the country.

The mission of The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) is to connect people to places, to educate and engage the public “to make our shared landscape heritage more visible, identify its value, and empower its stewards.” One of the ways the foundation does this is through a program it calls Landslide: Open Season on Open Space, which draws attention to threatened places. The purposes of Landslide are to reveal the value of identified places, to highlight and monitor at-risk landscapes, and to save our heritage for future generations. This year Sanctuary Woods shares the Landslide spotlight with 12 other new entries that range from a tiny pocket park in Manhattan to the million-acre Boundary Waters Wilderness Area in Minnesota.

The Landslide designation recognizes that the southeast corner of the Milwaukee County Grounds, popularly known as Sanctuary Woods, is far more than a patch of woodland. Preservation advocates and development promoters alike have largely focused on its wildlife habitat and recreational value. As important as those things are, they do not tell the whole story. TCLF defines cultural landscapes as ones “that have been affected, influenced, or shaped by human involvement.” They can be repositories of cultural narratives and expressions of regional identity. Not only does Sanctuary Woods have a rich and compelling history, but fragments of that narrative are still evident in the landscape.

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

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.

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. 

Wauwatosa committee moves to protect County Grounds

Sunset, County Grounds Park

Vote is a victory for opponents of controversial master plan

A Wauwatosa Common Council committee voted unanimously Tuesday night to put on hold the controversial master plan for what is being called the Life Sciences District.

“We have been listening,” Kathleen Causier, Chair of the council’s Community Affairs Committee, told the packed room in the council chambers. The size of the audience for a committee meeting indicated once again the amount of concern and attention being paid to this issue by the community. The outcome included a provision that seemed to surprise nearly everyone in attendance.

During the public comment period before the committee deliberations the contentiousness that had characterized so many previous meetings simmered but never boiled over. The idea of putting the master planning process on hold was itself uncontroversial. Speaker after speaker rose to agree with it. Despite the narrow focus of the issue at hand, many couldn’t resist the opportunity to reiterate their opposition to elements of the plan itself.

When it came time for the committee to deliberate, Ald. Cheryl Berdan made the motion, which was to put the planning process on hold until such time as the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission and Milwaukee County both completed environmental impact assessments of County Grounds Park and the non-park county land commonly known as “Sanctuary Woods.” Initially there was little opposition and the decision seemed a foregone conclusion.

Autumn, Wil-O-Way Woods, DNR State Forest, County Grounds

Then alderman Jason Wilke proposed what he considered a “friendly amendment” that add new protections to not only the two parcels stipulated in the original motion but also to the Wil-O-Way Woods property north of Swan Boulevard. This proposal was met with some confusion and Berdan refused to accept the “friendly amendment” to her motion. Wilke then moved to amend the motion without the “friendly” designation, which led to a lively discussion about the intent and feasibility of adding the protection.

The public is clearly disturbed by the part of the plan that involves these three parcels, Wilke explained, and protecting them would serve to reassure people and allow the rest of the plan to move forward. This clarification seemed to satisfy the committee members. The audience listened with rapt attention as nearly every member of the committee expressed agreement in principle with the intent to protect the land. Causier summed up the sentiments by saying “none of us want to see anything going in there,” referring to development on the three parcels.

The final hurdle to acceptance was a consideration of the City’s role in providing permanent protection. City attorney Alan Kesner explained that permanent protection required more than zoning, which is within the purview of the city. A conservation easement or other instrument of protection would require consent of the landowners—Milwaukee County and the State of Wisconsin. While acknowledging the possibility of resistance, in the end the committee voted unanimously to include Wilke’s amendment to do “whatever it takes to preserve in perpetuity” the three parcels.

It was a stunning development in the now yearlong controversy over the Life Sciences District Master Plan and the committee’s decision was met with loud applause from the audience.

Spring, Sanctuary Woods, County Grounds

The decision means that the scheduled May 15 meeting of the Plan Commission and others will be canceled or postponed until the conditions of last night’s decision have been met. If they are not met, we can expect to hear this issue come up again sometime in the future. However, today we can thank the Community Affairs Committee for their vote to save the County Grounds.

Attention now turns to Milwaukee County, where the decision to act on the Community Affairs Committee decision rests. Those concerned with actually saving the County Grounds will want to make their feelings known to County Executive Chris Abele and the County Board.

There is a meeting of the County Board Committee on Parks, Energy and the Environment Tuesday, May 16 at 9:00 a.m. at the Milwaukee County Courthouse, 901 N. 9^th Street, room 201. 

As always, you can see more photos of Sanctuary Woods and the rest of the County Grounds on Flickr.

Transformation: The week spring sprang

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Greenfield Park, West Allis, WI

Spring has been particularly fitful this year, one moment teasing with sunshine and warmth, the next plunging back towards winter. I’ve gone out for a walk in the past week, happily warm in a T-shirt only to find myself an hour later wishing I’d brought along a sweatshirt and a jacket!

Blue buttercups, Zillmer Trail, Kettle Moraine State Forest, Northern Unit

I find it essential now and then to pay attention to wildflowers. The cultivated ones are easily seen, often gaudily demanding attention. Seeing wildflowers in the forest requires a kind of mindfulness that is like meditation. It shifts your awareness from larger concerns to something humble on the ground, swaying gently in the breeze.

Greenfield Park, West Allis, WI

In a little over a week the landscape has blossomed. Woodlands that were barren and monochromatic now blush with new life. Here is a selection of photos that highlight the change, along with a few poetic musings about spring and nature.

Whitnall Park Pond, Franklin, WI.

I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.  ~ John Burroughs

Franklin Savanna State Natural Area, Franklin, WI

Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature -if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you -know that the morning and spring of your life are past. Thus may you feel your pulse. ~ Henry David Thoreau 

Mangan Woods, Root River Parkway, Franklin, WI

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul. ~John Muir

Boerner Botanical Gardens, Whitnall Park, Hales Corners, WI

When I speak of flowers                   

it is to recall                                                        

that at one time 

we were young.

~William Carlos Williams

Hubbard Park and Milwaukee River Greenway, Shorewood, WI

Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems by heart. ~ Reiner Maria Rilke

Trout lilies, McGovern Park, Milwaukee, WI

I want to do what spring does with cherry trees. ~ Pablo Neruda

Kletsch Park, Glendale, WI

The day came when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. ~ Anaïs Nin

Jacobus Park, Wauwatosa, WI

See more spring photos from the wild lands of Milwaukee's parks and natural areas at Flickr.

Somber skies and solitude at Schlitz Audubon Nature Center

View of the lake from the bluff-top observation tower

Snow lingers on north-facing slopes and the shadowy parts of the forest. Out in the open the meadows and prairies are mostly bare and brown. It is that time of the year when the land is lusterless. If you pay close attention, there are small signs of spring here and there. Pussy willow catkins have fuzzed out and there are a few more bird calls than I've been hearing on my winter walks. But, especially on this overcast day, the mood is somber.

Pussy willow catkins

On this moody Saturday morning at the cusp of spring there are a half-dozen or so cars in the parking lot of the Schlitz Audubon Nature Center. But the great room of the main building is quieter than usual. As I walk the trails I see surprisingly few people. I am having a blast, however. I love the solitude. And the monochromatic landscape offers up enough photographic opportunities to satisfy my appetite. Here is what I found.

A log tepee within sight of the main building.

The tracks of a pair of geese leading into a large puddle of melting snow.

As if herding together, intermingled tracks of geese, humans and a couple of other creatures.

Birches in one of the ravines.

Ice shrinking to the edges of the ponds and wetlands.

Shriveled leaves still clinging to branches, looking so out of place that I was reminded of the Cornelia Parker sculpture of suspended chunks of chalk at the Milwaukee Art Museum.

Many dead trunks and limbs that have provided a feast for the woodpeckers.

Flattened reeds, like a natural tapestry, between the bluff and the beach.

Sand embedded in curiously shaped ice formations at the base of beachfront shrubbery.

A single fellow traveler enjoying the solitude of the urban wilderness.