Urban Wilderness on Wisconsin Public Radio

Wisconsin Public Radio has a feature called Wisconsin Life for which people around the state are invited to tell a story. I recently recorded a story about finding evidence of beavers in the only remaining wetland in the historic estuary in downtown Milwaukee. The radio piece was adapted from one of my Urban Wilderness posts, called Seiche. The radio piece aired this morning, but you can download the podcast and listen to it by clicking here. It is three minutes long.



The original story, Seiche, is longer and includes photographs. I posted it Oct. 30, 2011. To read that version, click here.

A River Doesn’t Run Through It

 After two days in Albuquerque, where I enjoyed the urban wilderness along the Rio Grande (see previous post), I eagerly went north to Santa Fe. Although the Santa Fe brand has become a sort of theme park – I don’t know of another city outside of Orlando that has codified and enforced such strict building codes to achieve total aesthetic harmony – it’s still enchanting and full of great art. I enjoyed all that but also wanted to explore the Santa Fe River and discover the state of urban wilderness there. The only part of the river I’d seen on prior trips was where it trickles at the bottom of a narrow, walled trench near the historic downtown Plaza.

I began my exploration upstream, east of the city center, where the map in my guidebook showed a welcoming, large patch of green nestled against the rising mountain slopes. The sign over the entrance to the parking lot identified it as the Santa Fe Canyon Preserve. The map on a pedestal at the trail head, however, revealed a crazy quilt patchwork of connected parklands administered by five different private and public entities: city, county, federal, Nature Conservancy, and Audubon Society. Can one hope that there is unified approach to habitat protection and not turf wars between agencies? I don’t know, but, sadly, I could clearly see construction going on in a donut hole in the midst of all the protected land.

The trail led me along a small pond and wetland backed up behind the low straight line of a manmade dam. This was notable because it wasn’t long before I came to a much more natural looking stick-built dam, curving in irregular arcs, obviously made by beavers. The edges of the wetland were a devastation of gnawed stumps. Slipping on the ice could’ve been very painful! While quietly maneuvering to set up my tripod for a photo I heard the scraping sound of teeth gouging into wood but I never caught a glimpse of a beaver.

As I continued along the trail I discovered a whole series of beaver dams, one after another in quick succession. There was obviously an active family of beavers at work, following instincts that closely parallel our own desire to control our physical environment. I hiked a loop trail around the wetland, wishing I had time to explore farther up towards the headwaters of the river but glad to have seen evidence of wildlife.

Next I went downstream from the Plaza. I was sorry to see that, unlike in Albuquerque, there was no long riparian parkland indicated on the map. I was even more disappointed when I reached it to find that there was no water in the river; not even a trickle. I hopped down into the sandy riverbed and walked in the direction that should have been upstream, had there been a stream. The river was intermittently walled with a variety of materials to protect the private property that backed up to it. Some wall sections had caved in and serious erosion in other places showed that there was good reason to fear the force of water, when it rains hard enough to fill the arroyo. Footprints showed that others had used the riverbed as a place to walk. Debris showed that some had used it as a dump.

I walked quite a ways but little changed and I never found where the water disappeared.

In Wilderness Reader Edward Abbey said “…There is no shortage of water in the desert but exactly the right amount, a perfect ratio of water to rock. …There is no lack of water here, unless you try to establish a city where no city should be.” I like Santa Fe for many reasons, but who can find peace sitting by the river when it is drained of its water? The bigger problem, I think, is how so many people can live out their busy lives not noticing that it’s gone. This problem is far from unique to Santa Fe or the desert southwest.

As I walked back “downstream” my feet sank in the loose, dry sand.

To see additional photos of New Mexico, go to my flickr page.

This is the second installment in a series about New Mexico. To read the first, about Albuquerque, click here.

The Menomonee River wilderness in Wauwatosa

I love to walk in the woods beside the constantly changing river. The flowing water and the scent of moldering leaves soothe and invigorate. I recently revisited one of my favorite stretches of the Menomonee River, between Capitol Dr. and Hampton Ave. This is no ordinary stretch of urban river and a hike in the woods along either side is far from your typical walk in the park. It was this stretch, as much as any other, that helped me to refine my understanding of urban wilderness when I began my project several years ago. A leisurely two hours allowed me to complete a loop up one side and back the other while shooting a few pictures along the way. (The pictures slow me down. This hike could be done in half the time.)

I welcomed the invitation from an outdoors group at Unitarian Universalist Church West to lead a hike for them as it provided the impetus to see this special mile of river again. Although these relatively wild riparian paths were among my most frequent destinations during the six years of my urban wilderness book project, it has been at least two years since my last visit. I was eager to see what changes the intervening time had wrought. Change can happen very quickly indeed in urban wild lands.

Erosion. Rivers flow and inevitably erode the land, an eternal and natural phenomenon. But too much erosion too fast can quickly destabilize the banks and diminish the absorptive qualities of the floodplain. The river seems to flow in a deeper channel than before, one lined with the exposed roots of trees nearly everywhere along the banks. Many magnificent trees have fallen into and across the river. In several place they are heaved up into gargantuan logjams. It gives me pause to think of the force of water that can move whole trees this way.

Some things don’t change: pollutants still plague the quality of the water.

The always distinct characters of the two sides of the river have become reversed. I’d always found the west to be the wilder side, but now an officially marked and well worn mountain bike path makes that side the easier to navigate. The east side, away from the paved Oak Leaf Trail, is the place where I found a former riparian path to be disused, overgrown, entangled, wild.

On a beautiful, unseasonably mild day I met more people than I was accustomed to seeing: a young woman walking with her two enormous white Labradors; an elderly couple sauntering with walking sticks; two teens in black garb sporting metallic facial piercings; even a fashionably dressed woman who told me she was visiting from out of town. One free spirit sat in lotus position on a spit of land where two channels converge, deep in meditation.

As I had in years past, I saw clear evidence of recent beaver activity, on both sides of the river. The most surprising discovery, right along the paved trail near Hampton, was what I can only describe as a “beaver sculpture.” I’ve never seen a beaver chew like this before. Here are a few “gallery shots” of the “work.”