Searching for Spring: Parks can help ease late winter blues

Case Eagle Park, Burlington, Racine Co.

It’s that time again—the dregs of the year. The snows of winter have melted. The leaves and the wildflowers have yet to bud or bloom. The earth everywhere is brown and gray. Still cold. Groundhog lied again. The first of April arrives and the joke is on everyone who expects it to feel like spring.

Brown Deer Park, Brown Deer, Milwaukee Co.

In a song about the seasons John Denver included an instrumental bridge for a fifth season, late winter, early spring, to which he added parenthetically “when everyone goes to Mexico.” Spoken out of privilege, of course. Maybe everyone wishes they could go to Mexico. I know I do. But, since that isn’t an option, I’ve gone to a few local parks to see nature stripped bare. Here are a selection of images and the parks where I found them.

Brown Deer Park

This 363-acre park in the Village of Brown Deer is part of the Milwaukee County Park System. The northern half consists of several woodlots separated by grassy fields, along with a 5-acre lake. The southern half is a golf course, which is groomed in winter for skate style cross-country skiing. A second trail, maintained for classic-style skiing, winds around and through the woodlands. In warmer weather a disc golf course runs through some sections. The pond is stocked with panfish, trout and largemouth bass.

The Oak Leaf Trail runs along the north end of the park on the park road between Range Line Rd. on the east and Bradley Rd. on the west. The park has numerous amenities, including a boat house, athletic fields, playground, and restrooms.

Brown Deer Park location: 7835 N Green Bay Road, Brown Deer, WI 53209

For a Milwaukee County Parks map, click here.

Case Eagle Park

This 239-acre park features nature trails and a canoe launch on the Fox River, which runs through the park. The Seven Waters Trail, a Racine County bike trail also runs through the park. The 17-mile long, wheelchair accessible trail runs from Burlington to Muskego Lake and encourages the following activities: biking, cross-country skiing, inline skating and walking. It connects with the White River State Trail in Burlington.

Part of the Racine County Park System, the entrance is located off S. Rochester Street, which is also County Highway J. Access is also possible from N. Brown’s Lake Dr., which is also County Highway W. Amenities include baseball diamonds and a fenced dog park.

Sumac bobs

Case Eagle Park location: 310 S. Rochester St., Rochester, WI 53105

Honey Creek Wildlife Area

This 1,495-acre Wildlife Area is made up of four separate parcels in western Racine County and eastern Walworth County. Habitats include oak woodland, lowland woodland, shallow and deep marsh, and grassland. Waterways include Long Lake, Honey Creek, and Sugar Creek. Wildlife includes deer, turkey, waterfowl, pheasants and other small game.

The easternmost parcel includes the 83-acre Cherry Lake Sedge Meadow State Natural Area, which contains southern sedge meadow, fen, and northern wet forest communities. Of special interest are round-leaved sundew, shrubby cinquefoil, yellow twayblade, marsh St. Johns-wort, marsh fern, and sphagnum moss.

Honey Creek is featured in the Lake Michigan Region of the Great Wisconsin Birding and Nature Trail as a property with a mix of habitats that provides opportunities to see flycatchers, terns, great blue herons, American bitterns and Sandhill cranes.

According to the DNR website, additional recreational opportunities include canoeing, cross-country skiing, hiking, trapping, wild edibles/gathering and wildlife viewing. However, there are no designated trails.

For more information, go to Honey Creek Wildlife Area.
Three of the four parcels have parking areas. For locations and WDNR map, click here.

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Jackson Marsh: A Wildlife Area for all seasons

Jackson Swamp, photo by Noah Froh

If you are looking for a place to get away from it all one of the many DNR wildlife areas in Southeast Wisconsin might be just the thing. Let me introduce you to Jackson Marsh Wildlife Area, which is located just east of the Village of Jackson in Washington County, a mere 25 miles from Milwaukee.

At 2,312 acres, the property is large enough to support a variety of terrains and habitats, including wetlands, grasslands, woodlots, streams and small ponds. Cedar Creek, a 32-mile long tributary of the Milwaukee River, runs the length of the property. In wet weather—including winter thaws like those we’ve had recently—the main creek and its feeder streams may spill over their banks and pool in the surrounding wetlands. Some trails, which are generally found atop dikes that crisscross the wetlands, can be inundated at these times.

The core of the Wildlife Area is 1,571-acre Jackson Swamp, which is designated as a State Natural Area. This section features wet silver maple forest and white cedar and tamarack swamp, habitats that are more typical of northern Wisconsin. The Wisconsin State Natural Areas Program has been called “the nation’s largest and most successful statewide

nature preserve system.” * The program’s mission is to protect outstanding examples of Wisconsin's native landscape, including natural habitats, geological formations and archeological sites, and to provide refuge for rare plants and animals.

This story was published in my column at Milwaukee Magazine. Click here to continue reading. 

Cedar Creek, Photo by Noah Froh

Paradise Valley?

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Photo by Noah Froh

Did you know there is a place called Paradise Valley in Waukesha County? Hard to imagine the origin of the name. It’s about as flat a landscape as I’ve seen anywhere in Wisconsin.

Someone tried to farm the wet soil here for a while until it proved unfruitful. The Wisconsin DNR purchased the land in 2012 and began a management plan that has been encouraging it to revert to wetland. The Bark River channel once flowed through the “valley” but the farmers diked the property and diverted the river. Now, with the dike breached, the river simply floods into the marsh.

I was introduced to the place recently by DNR wildlife biologist Dianne Robinson. She hosts regular tours of wildlife areas in Southeastern Wisconsin. The theme this time was tracking. We walked along the snow-covered roads that divide the marsh, watching for tracks along the way. There were plenty.

Larger animals, like weasels and coyotes tended to follow a straight line, taking advantage of the road just like we do. The smaller tracks of field mice, voles and the like tended to wander across from side to side. We learned to distinguish between dogs and coyotes and that the “thumb” of a mink is on the outside of its paw where our pinky is.

Robinson showed us how to measure the size of the print. People often overestimate, she said, because the impression in the snow can be quite a bit larger than the actual footprint.

We also saw sled tracks that veered off into the marsh grass. Paradise Valley is a popular spot for hunting and trapping, Robinson told us.

We saw the most tracks when we ventured out onto the frozen Bark River. However, with the thermometer reading a neat 0° Fahrenheit and wind chills approaching -15, we didn’t linger long.

The most surprising find was a cache of fish carcasses in amongst the cattails. Robinson speculated that they might have been hauled up by some predator before the water in a nearby pond froze over. More likely, she thought, the wetland dried up under them, leaving them high and dry to be picked apart by birds and passing animals.

The DNR website provides a long list of recreational opportunities for the Paradise Valley Wildlife Area. In addition to hunting and trapping they include birding, canoeing, cross-country skiing, fishing, hiking, snowshoeing, wild edibles gathering and wildlife viewing. There is even an accessible blind for hunters with disabilities. The sight lines are totally unimpeded under a sky as broad as the horizon.

I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce Noah Froh, who is a student at Bennington College in Vermont. Noah, whose home is in Milwaukee, is interning with me during the winter interim period. This was our first outing together. Noah contributed the photo featured at the top of the post.