A program to
generate interest in the outdoors dovetails with 30th Street
Industrial Corridor redevelopment
When two members
of the Great Waters Group, the local chapter of the Sierra Club,
offered to take me on a hike along Lincoln Creek near 35th Street I
didn’t quite know what to expect. But I never would have expected to see a
great blue heron. It is December 23, officially winter. The heron would have
been a surprise even in summer here in Milwaukee’s 30th Street
Industrial Corridor. It certainly doesn’t belong here now! I watch it rise, circle
slowly over the neighborhood like a protective spirit, then slide silently off to
the northeast, following the watercourse.
The appearance of
the heron, although surprising in itself, represents something truly
revelatory: sufficient natural habitat to sustain it in this unlikely setting. West
of 35th Street the formerly channelized Lincoln Creek runs straight
and narrow between rows of neighborhood houses. It’s easy to imagine the
concrete that once controlled the flow of water. But we walk east—and north, where
the creek bends and the greenway, now decked in wintry shades of ochre and
rust, widens.
The land slopes
into a shallow valley. We thread our way through tall thickets of Japanese
knotweed, beautiful but invasive. Stands of trees rise on either side of the
stream. When they leaf out again in spring they might even hide from view the
line of black tank cars that frames the eastern horizon. The ever-present railroad
still defines the industrial corridor, even as the factories have disappeared,
leaving behind brownfields and blight.
This story was published in my column at Milwaukee Magazine. Click here to read further.
Those Great Blue Herons light up my life here at Hart Park Square , a care facility at 68th and State in Wauwatosa. I saw the first one this season on Februaary 24. They fly past my windows almost on aschedule as they patrol along the river. Three thirty CST
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