Menomonee River Parkway: Close encounters in an April snowstorm

You may think last week's snowstorms were an unseasonable fluke or a sign of the changing climate. You may have felt cheated of spring on the cusp of Earth Day. You may have grumbled about having to shovel out so late in the year. I know I did. However...

It was beautiful! (Look closely at the center of the photo to see the two deer.)

I'm not sorry it's melting away now. All I'm saying is when the climate gives you lemons, make lemonade. In this case, go out and enjoy the snow. I know I did.

One lovely, snowy evening I went to one of my favorite haunts along the Menomonee River Parkway just north of North Avenue. I didn't expect to see the deer, but I saw them, in spades. Both sides of the river. A few of them, as you can see, got up close and personal. (I was not using a telephoto lens.)

They seemed surprisingly tame, curious...and hungry. When I didn't offer them anything to eat they returned to rooting in the snow.

The deer were not the only wildlife blindsided by the blizzard. Numerous ducks swam about on the river, ducking for cover.

Most of the snow had melted by the weekend. On Saturday I joined the hundreds of volunteers for the annual river clean up sponsored by Milwaukee Riverkeeper. While I didn't actually do any cleaning up, I did take a bunch of photos, which you can see on Flickr.

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.

The Menomonee River Parkway’s Paintball Dell

Redefining the wild in an unlikely urban wilderness

It’s a little hard to imagine a place in the City of Milwaukee that you might consider remote. I’m not talking about a place you have to drive a long distance to reach. I mean a natural landscape so secluded and, yes, wild that you wouldn’t expect to encounter another person there—unless they were doing something illicit.

There is such a place. It lies at the end of a long hike on trails next to the Menomonee River from my house to just shy of the Waukesha County line—or the short hike described here. The story of my first encounter was moving and memorable enough to include in my 2008 book, Urban Wilderness: Exploring a Metropolitan Watershed.

I don’t go back often. It’s not that I avoid the place—although fear did seem an appropriate reaction when I first discovered it over a decade ago and indeed there has been little enough reason to change my initial impression in subsequent years. Unlike other secluded spots in Milwaukee’s parks, I haven’t found it to be a peaceful destination. But a kind of morbid fascination draws me back now and then.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve last seen it. A cold, dreary week has given way to sunshine. I decide to see if another visit will reveal any fresh abomination.

I turn into 119^th Street, drive past huge piles of recycled asphalt and gravel and park between a trucking terminal and a packaging plant near the dead end. The chain link fence between this industrial hinterland and the backwoods along the river has long been breached—wide enough for thrill seekers to ride 4-wheel drive trucks through. Today the mud leaves no doubt that the practice continues.

 

Near the bottom of the slope, just before reaching the river, I come upon the wreckage of some unrecognizable vehicle. An omen, perhaps, for what lies ahead—or an unwitting monument to the occasionally fatal consequences of our actions.

The deep truck ruts end abruptly near the river at the verge of the forest. A dirt road once continued on through the trees. Deeper ruts here are mossy and overgrown. Timbers have toppled across the still visible passage. I take the footpath that lies closer to the river.

Animal tracks stipple the soft earth of the trail. But, surprisingly, there are no human prints. Plenty of people are out taking advantage, as I am, of a warm, sunny Saturday in Wisconsin’s fickle spring. I saw them in a constant stream as I drove along Menomonee River Parkway—jogging and biking; many simply strolling. The playgrounds were packed.

I knew this place was off the beaten path, but I didn’t expect to be so completely alone. As if to drive home the point, I have to step over a large trunk that blocks the trail. The colorless forest grows steadily wilder—the trees more twisted, the underbrush increasingly tangled and impenetrable.

The land rises along a steepening riverside escarpment. Mountain bikers have altered the trail: banking curves, kicking up gravel, compressing the earth. But the tread marks are faint, strewn with decaying leaves. No one, it seems, has cleared branches and other debris that fell over the winter. The sense of isolation deepens.

Reaching the summit, I see ahead the familiar river bend and the dell that I know to be the journey’s end—in more ways than one. The barren trees make it look desolate. For the moment, however, bright, inviting afternoon sunshine dispels the sense of impending doom.

I gaze down the steep drop into the dell. There in prominent view lie the hulking remains of an old van, looking more casually forlorn than its violent end might suggest. I pick my way gingerly down the muddy slope and slowly circle the van. It is no less obvious an intrusion, and yet somehow less repugnant than I remember. Fresh graffiti adorns rear and side panels, rust has etched deeper into unpainted steel, and the whole thing seems to have settled into the ground. Drab, snow-matted grasses appear to crest like static waves over the mired vehicle.

I step carefully. Like a maze of booby traps, the matted grasses hide additional chunks of even more corroded steel; an engine block here, an axle there, several wheel rims and the skeleton of a chassis. Aside from the risk of a twisted ankle, it all looks remarkably benign compared to my memory of the time when I first encountered it. Then this was a veritable battlefield. The various car parts, hoods, door panels, and odd bits of sheet metal had been placed deliberately and strategically around what was open, uneven terrain, scoured by floodwater that had washed over the oxbow in the river.

All of it—trees and the rock-strewn ground as well as the makeshift fortifications—had been completely spattered with colorful splotches of paint. No trace of that remains. I guess no one comes to play war games any more.

I find the mountain bike trail, which loops around the circumference of the oxbow, and leads me to the secret of the dell’s remoteness. I am confronted with a massive expanse of concrete—a railroad bridge resembling a medieval fortress. A long freight train rests silently on top. The river emerges through three arched openings. This imposing rampart, along with the private property of commercial enterprises on the opposite side, effectively thwarts entry from nearby 124^th Street.

A continuous frieze of graffiti decorates the lower sections of concrete. But this too, like the trail and the “battlefield,” looks tired and dingy. Even the freshest-looking paint has started to peel. Seams in the concrete weep and run, staining the tags as well as the walls.

I head back to the dell to look for my favorite car, an ancient Gremlin I once photographed when it was iridescent with pink and chartreuse paintball paint. Even knowing where to look it’s hard to find. The rusted relic nestles among fallen logs, more akin to the patient earth beneath it than to the automobile-enamored culture that created it.

Nearby I find a smooth log and sit; close my eyes and turn my head towards the sun spilling all around, welcoming a solitude from which the demons have been expelled. Nothing, essentially, has changed. No one has come to remove wreckage or wash off graffiti. But despite the lingering evidence of abuse and degradation, it all seems paradoxically more natural than before. Against all odds, it is finally peaceful. 

This story was first published by Milwaukee Magazine on April 11, 2017.

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.

Underwood Creek in Wauwatosa is getting a makeover

Restoration is underway and the bulldozers and power shovels in the creek are a welcome sight.

For now you can still see some of the concrete that until recently has lined much of Underwood Creek like a straightjacket for over forty years. The channel, once so smooth and straight I’ve seen skateboarders on it in dry weather, is pocked with holes and severely cracked. Jackhammers have been working their way downstream towards the confluence with the Menomonee River near North Avenue.

View from Hansen Golf Course of the east end of the existing channel.

Upstream the work is further along. West of 102^nd Street, where the creek is sandwiched between Fisher Parkway and a very active railroad line, all of the concrete has been removed and trucked away to be recycled. Bulldozers, excavators and earthmovers have reshaped the streambed, reintroducing meandering curves. Tons of rock have been laboriously deposited to stabilize the new channel and prevent erosion.

Work in progress on the newly restored and meandering creek bed.

Oddly enough the incongruous sight of huge power shovels squatting in the streambed is a welcome one—a long overdue remediation of the outdated and discredited policy of “channelizing” rivers and streams. The idea behind pouring concrete into waterways, popular in the Milwaukee region in the 1960s, was to move stormwater quickly through neighborhoods in an attempt to minimize flooding.

Houses along Fisher Parkway back onto the creek channel.

Unfortunately for everyone, the solution became increasingly obsolete as the problem of flooding was exacerbated by unrelenting new development upstream from the channels. Until recent implementation of more effective stormwater management techniques and policies, new development has led to increased stormwater entering—and more frequently breaching—the channels.

Pumps at the upstream end of the project divert creek water into pipes.

Of course, pouring concrete into rivers has always been devastating to the rivers themselves—along with the fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds, and other wildlife that depend on healthy waterways and riparian habitats for their survival. The suffering of plants and animals in degraded river systems is accompanied by a diminished quality of life for the human communities that surround them. And so it has come to this, that we need—and desire—bulldozers in the creek to correct our past mistakes.

View of Underwood Creek channel looking west from 115^th Street.

This project, which began in November 2016, will remove 4,400 linear feet of concrete between Mayfair Road and North Avenue. The work is being overseen by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in partnership with Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD) and could be complete as early as this fall.

Previously restored section of Underwood Creek along Mayfair Road.

The current Underwood Creek project is part of a longer-term effort to address up-to-date stormwater issues, improve water quality, restore and naturalize the creek, increase fish passage and rehabilitate wildlife habitats. Another section of Underwood Creek just upstream from the new project was previously restored. There also are plans to undertake feasibility studies for channel removal on additional sections west and south of Mayfair Road.

MMSD has undertaken similar channel restoration projects on all three of Milwaukee’s major watersheds. These have included completed projects on Lincoln Creek and the Menomonee River as well as its huge on-going Kinnickinnic River Project.

View of the pipe from the underground passage at Hansen Golf Course.

One of the more fascinating aspects of this work, at least for me, is how the normal flow of water in the stream is handled during demolition and restoration. If you peek through the passage beneath the railroad at Hansen Golf Course you may be startled to see a large black pipe suspended in the air across your field of vision. Although rain and snowmelt still fill the channel on occasion, this pipe, which snakes all the way alongside the creek, carries the normal dry weather flow.

The pipe that holds creek flow running along the project site.

The best news I’ve heard yet about this project was from one of the construction workers at the site. “It’s already working,” he told me. “We’ve had to rescue half a dozen salmon that swam up and got stuck in here.”

A restored section of the creek within the project site.

A slightly edited version of this story was published by Milwaukee Magazine on March 27, 2017. 

A new year in the Urban Wilderness begins with joy!

You've gotta see this crazy mouse I found running in circles on the parkway! Okay, a little context:

What brings you joy? One of the many things that work for me is walking along the rivers in Milwaukee's many urban parkways. Another is encountering wildlife along the way. This happened recently, on the Menomonee River Parkway in Wauwatosa. It was one of the drab, snowless wintry days we've had so many of lately. The colors were muted and the sun near to setting, which happens early so close to the winter solstice.

I was walking at a brisk pace due to the cold when I stopped abruptly at the sight of something moving in a curious fashion ahead on the trail. It looked like a mouse, or more likely a vole, and it was running in circles on the dirt of the path. I slowly moved closer, trying not to scare it off. I needn't have worried, though. I soon learned that it was not going to be deterred by my presence.

It continued running in the same circle, like a wind-up toy, until I was hovering right over it. It bumped into my boot but that only made it swerve a bit. Kept right on going.

I shot several videos of this. It did pause now and then to munch on some grass. But before long it started up again, in the same place, doing donuts across the path.

Click here to view video.

I got tired of its game well before it did and continued on my way. Later I retraced my steps. I wondered about the little creature. If it was gone I wouldn't know if it had become hawk food or had finally decided to end its obsession and wandered away. But no, there it was, still going at it.

I might have left it going around and around, joyfully. At least I could say the curiosity of the crazy encounter had made me joyful. Can't say what the vole was feeling. But I worried about the poor guy. Hawk bait, for sure, I thought. So I nudged it off the open path and under a tangle of brush.

May you have a joyful new year full of encounters with urban wildlife!

Underwood Parkway: Wildlife graces construction zones

It seems as though there is construction going on everywhere this summer - including in some of our parklands. Underwood Parkway, between 115th St. and Bluemound in Wauwatosa, is one of my regular routes. I've passed by its labyrinthine arrangement of construction fences many times since construction began on new power lines last June. (See my previous post about that unfortunate project.)

Yesterday as I drove along the parkway I spotted two adolescent fawns. One was between two lines of fencing, browsing on the grass. The other was standing directly in front of the closest rank of construction fences, as if the bright orange pattern was a studio backdrop. I wish! Fortunately, I had my camera with me. Unfortunately, it was in the trunk of the car. By the time I pulled over, got the camera out and lined up a shot the deer had jumped over the fence to join its sibling.

I took a few shots. As I was doing so, leaning casually against my car in order to minimize the chance of startling them (they looked up at me periodically to see what I might be doing), a large doe wandered into the scene.

After taking a few more shots I continued on with my errand. On my way back I slowed to see if I would spot the deer again. Lo and behold, not deer this time, but no fewer than seven wild turkeys were strolling along the lawn near the fencing. Three of them were youngsters (or females?), judging by size and coloration. But the other four were the largest wild turkeys I've ever seen!

They were predictably camera shy (maybe thinking about Thanksgiving as autumn arrives!) They scurried off into the riparian woods when I started trying to get close for a good photo.

ATC begins tree cutting in Underwood Parkway

Those who have been following the Underwood Creek Parkway controversy about placing power lines through there to provide power to the proposed We Energies substation on the County Grounds know that permission was granted by the WI Public Service Commission months ago. (Read my original post describing the issues by clicking here.)

The work began in earnest recently. Wauwatosa, an officially designated "Tree City USA," is losing more of them. The power lines will run along the north side of the railroad tracks from the existing powerlines near 119th St. to 115th St. (above) They will then cross the tracks, the road, and Underwood Creek to follow the Oak Leaf Trail east of 115th St. (below)

I don't know what is being done in the park between the Parkway road and the creek west of 115th, but something is. Construction fences surround many of the existing trees and cyclone fences surround at least two sections where work is being done. Here's what it looked like over the weekend.

Help redesign the Menomonee River Parkway

Two years ago I wrote a post about the potholes on the Menomonee River Parkway. Since then condition of the parkway has only worsened. However, there is finally a plan--and, more important, money in the budget--not only for repaving but also for redesigning the parkway. About time!

All aspects of parkway design are to be considered, including "pedestrian access, bike and pedestrian safety, traffic flow, traffic calming, and aesthetics of the parkway" as well as runoff water quality. 

You can help! Please do. (Read on, or click here to go directly to the County Parks Menomonee River Renewal site.) 

The parks department held a public open house last week at Mount Mary University that was very well attended--by the public as well as a variety of officials.

Those who attended were able to fill out a survey and leave comments and suggestions. If you missed the open house, you have until December 6 to go to the County Parks Menomonee River Renewal website and fill out their survey. Be sure to include comments.

My suggestions were these:

The Parkway ought to be considered a park and not a highway. Therefore, bicycle and pedestrian access and safety should be considered more important than the speed or convenience of vehicular traffic. (I live right next to the parkway and I drive on it daily. I'm happy to slow down for bikes and pedestrians.)

Off-road bike paths should be included along the entire length of the parkway, as already exists in Hoyt Park.

Street design should encourage drivers to slow down. (Check out the maps provided on the website and share in the horror when you learn how many accidents there have been all along the parkway.)

Except for invasive species, existing trees should be preserved. Let's not clearcut the parkway and then plant new seedlings (as we've seen done elsewhere in Wauwatosa!)

The wild sections of the parkway along the river are among my favorite places to walk. These should be preserved and not cleared or paved. They are the urban wildernesses that our children and grandchildren need be able to explore.

Go to Menomonee River Renewal today and make your voice heard. Let's get this right, shall we?

Parkway between Burleigh and Hwy 100