A Dutch Hollow Almanac: Growing Up As Mother Nature's Son

06/13/2022

09/20/2020

This is a transcription of a book I never published, and I dedicate it to my Conservation teacher from Wonewoc Center High, Mr. John Cler. He introduced Aldo Leopold's 'A Sand County Almanac' to me and I realized I was literally living Leopold's dream right there at Dutch Hollow. Thanks again Mr. Cler!


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TO OPEN THE BOOK CLICK "See More" at the bottom of the visible post....

INTRODUCTION TO A DUTCH HOLLOW ALMANAC:
Aldo Leopold's Dream: A Dual Community Living in Harmony

"Conservation is getting nowhere because it is incompatible with our Abrahamic concept of land. We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may use it with love and respect." -Aldo Leopold, author of 'A Sand County Almanac'

In 1948, naturalist and author Aldo Leopold forwarded a daring and enduring idea, one that fueled the 'back to nature' movement of the 1960's, inspired the music of such artists as John Denver, and became the genesis of a special lake community in west-central Wisconsin where I grew up.
It has become known as the Land Ethic.

From Leopold's A Sand County Almanac:
"In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo Sapiens from conquerer of the land community to just plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow members, and also respect for the community as such."

The Dutch Hollow Lake development began by damming up Dutch Hollow creek in 1971. Inspired by Earth Day and the growing environmental movement, Dutch Hollow Lake was ecologically designed as a place where the lake community residents could live side-by-side with the timeless natural community of Dutch Hollow around them, to allow man to co-exist in a wilderness setting while leaving a minimal footprint upon the land. A place of dual communities merging and becoming one.

Dutch Hollow is big- over four square miles- over 90% of the Dutch Hollow valley and its watershed are controlled and managed by the Dutch Hollow Property Owner's Association. Working closely with the State Department of Natural Resources, the deep valleys, hollows and coulees are managed as wildlife areas in an interconnecting network of 'greenway' that is permanently set aside as undeveloped and untouched wilderness tracts, including the ridgelines that were too steep to cultivate or access, plus ecologically sensitive areas like valleys, streams and springs.

By design, the Dutch Hollow development is hidden and low-profile. The roads are hidden by their placement, using the land itself to conceal their visibility. The lots are hidden downhill from the roads, many which follow the spine of the hills down towards the lake or tucked into hollows, so few homes or lots 'skyline' the view. Because of the deep, long valleys and innumerable hollows and coulees, the subdivision roads of necessity branch inward from a nine-mile peremeter road that follows the edge of the watershed encircling the valley, reducing traffic to that subdivision. The hum and roar of continuous traffic is conspicuously absent.

Dutch Hollow is not only a lake, but an entire valley preserved for itself. All around the lake the valleys are untouched, with undisturbed streams (few roads bridge the creeks feeding the lake, leaving them undisturbed as a source of water, as well as preserving habitat for native flora and fauna) and the native stretches of forest shelter an amazing density and variety of wildlife. Of the 1,200 lots surrounding the lake, only 100 have direct shoreline access- the others are set back and buffered by the greenway, with the lots and homes around the lake hidden by the natural shoreline, 90% of which is, and will remain undeveloped and wild in perpetuity, giving the lakeshore itself an undeveloped natural look. The many quiet, undisturbed coves and inlets attract waterfowl, amphibians and gamefish, as well as annual migrations of ducks and geese stop by in March and October.

To further minimize the footprint of the development on the land, all utilities are buried- no marching telephone poles string wire across the landscape nor are there streetlights visible even at intersections. A common remark I get no end of amusement from is how dark it gets here at night. There is no 'urban glare', the darkness is complete, the crystalline haze of the Milky Way is clearly visible with the unaided eye. At night as well as in daytime, as much as possible the lake development of Dutch Hollow Lake blends seamlessly into the hills of Dutch Hollow. Had Aldo Leopold lived to see the day of Dutch Hollow Lake's development, he would not only approved that his idea of the dual communities blending into one became reality, but he would have retired here, exploring the trails, banding the chickadees and becoming a part of the natural community he so loved.

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INTRODUCTION PART II.

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DUTCH HOLLOW:
A LAND UNTOUCHED BY TIME

Dutch Hollow Lake lies at the juncture of two distinct landforms, the meeting of which provides a varied and picturesque landscape unlike anything in the Midwest. The dominant landform to the south and west is a winding tabletop ridge of precambrian iron-impregnated dolomite sandstone, the eastern rim of a high plain referred to as the Western uplands. This ridge in itself is interesting in that it is a flat tabletop ridge or mesa- the ridge top stands at an almost uniform elevation of 1250 to 1300 feet above sea level, the highest landform in northwest Sauk and eastern Vernon counties. Indeed, the geography of the entire region more resembles the sharper, eroded landforms of the arid desert Southwest with mesa-like ridges, buttes and high bluffs than the rolling, undulating hills of the glaciated Midwest.
These are preserved from the beginning of time as the only exposed landforms that survived the ice ages that flattened and covered the rest of the Midwest with glacial till, referred to in geoogists' lay term as 'drift'. Because the glacier never entered this area known as the 'Driftless Area', no foreign or transported boulders, rounded stones, loose gravel or other glacial till exist in the Dutch Hollow valleys. Instead, the hills dropping down from the ridge are actually ancient dunes- a soft, verigated white sandstone known as "Wonewoc" sandstone, laid down by a ancient shallow sea some 12 million years ago, covered with a thin layer of topsoil, just a few feet covering the hills that has accumulated over the millenia. Once tilled, towards the hilltops the soil is almost sandy, while the lower slopes are more fertile with deeper topsoil and more humus. This is why the higher hills towards the ridge are forested- the soil itself is poor, plus the steep terrains are subject to erosion.

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GLACIAL LAKE WISCONSIN: THE SIXTH GREAT LAKE

Below the dam, the high exposed bluffs overlooking the Baraboo River valley have a more recent- and much more fascinating- history, one dating back to just 15,000 years ago, at the close of the last ice age.

When the glacial ice blocked the original outlet of the Wisconsin River through the Baraboo Hills during the last ice age, the glacial meltwater backed up, creating a vast lake (comperable in size to Great Salt Lake) which geologists call 'Glacial Lake Wisconsin'. It is this body of water that melted the advancing edges of the glacier and prevented it from advancing into southwestern Wisconsin. The Baraboo river valley was likewise flooded, giving the lake a "J"shape.

There are clear indications that the quartize Baraboo Hills, an ancient eroded mountain range containing some of the oldest exposed rock on earth, has created this unlikely phenomenon repeatedly over past ice ages- the summer meltwater pooling in the central Wisconsin river vally, melting the advancing ice- because no glacial till-pebbles, transported rock, etc. exist at any level, beneath the entire substrata of southwest Wisconsin-in fact, the dolomite sandstone and bluff outcroppings are undisturbed, exposed bedrock that is older than any landforms (besides the Baraboo Hills themselves, estimated at over a hundred million years old) in the entire Mississippi River valley drainage system of the central United States, the rest having been pulverized by glacial ice.

Lee Clayton, co-author of Geology of Sauk County, Wisconsin (1990)*,explains the dynamics of the lake during the last ice age here in the upper Baraboo River valley:

"The lake existed from roughly 25,000 to about 14,000 years ago. Just before it drained for the last time, it was at an elevation of about 937 ft, which would bring it to the south edge of Elroy, 25 ft above present floodplain at Wonewoc, and 40 ft above at La Valle."

The 'design' or spillway level full elevation of Dutch Hollow Lake is 960 ft above sea level. The site of the dam, in fact, was a narrow canyon that had to be blasted out to seal the sandstone and prevent seepage through the ancient rock.

The biotic community was consistant with what can be found in the 'voyeuger' country of the Minnesota-Ontario border, and harboring the same residents; eagles and ospreys perched over the cliffs rising from the water crowned with stands of spruce and birch as giant pike and arctic grayling, a larger cousin to the steelhead trout, prowled the deep. Wolves and bears would still have been around, as well as woodland elk, although the elk back then and today are dependent on specific plant communities that disappeared over time as the climate warmed. Even so, remnants of the cooler climate remain in isolated plant communities in the shaded north facing bluffs; aspen and birch are very much in evidence along the cliffs, and in the shade of the bluffs the last remnants of the lake remain in sloughs of hemlock, white cedar and tamarack, these species hundreds of miles south of their common range.

The first explorers and settlers were greeted by magnificent stands of White Pine covering the valley, triggering a local lumber boom. Both La Valle and Wonewoc began as lumber boom towns in the 1840's, and over 10 million board feet of pine were logged off and floated downriver to Sauk City by 1850. Remnants of the pine stands can still be seen along and above the bluffs, inaccessible to ax or plow.

Following the lumber boom, most of the remaining hemlock and tamarack sloughs were ditched, drained and cultivated as farmland. Hemlock Slough, a county park on the way to Dutch Hollow Lake from LaValle preserves the bottomland as it existed after the valley drained after the meltwater overflowed and cut a new outlet through the soft sandstone at Wisconsin Dells, dropping the level of the lake as much as 50 feet in a matter of weeks as it carved a new channel to eventually drain the lake. In fact, to look at the Wisconsin Dells today is to see how the flooded Baraboo River valley looked 15,000 years ago.

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A Dutch Hollow Almanac:
Growing Up As Mother Nature's Son

JANUARY:
READING BY THE FIRE

I remember quiet times as a youth on cold January evenings when there was nothing else to do but curl up by the fire and read a good book. Cable television was yet to be discovered, satellite dishes were still the domain of military communication or for television stations to bring network programming to local viewers, and at the very edge of reception, even with an aerial antenna, there wasn't much on the big four networks-ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS to watch that held my interest. The technology we have today- cellphones, IPods, IPads and laptops, much less Windows PC's didn't exist. In winter, I lived in a world of my own creation because the world outside was inhospitable. And so I read.

It all began with Earnest Hemingway's short story Big Two-Hearted River. Upon this was based a whole series of short stories of the pioneer of 'outdoor fiction', Gordon Macquarrie, collected in The Stories of the Old Duck Hunters and Other Drivel. Far from being Garrison Keillor-type small-town cracker barrel nostalgia, MacQuarrie's merry tales of his exploits with his father-in-law Al Peck, whom he dubbed "The President of the Old Duck Hunter's Association. Inc." were timeless tales about, as he put it, "meeting the outdoors on its own terms". The stories could have been written last week, but 'Mac', who was an outdoor columnist for the Milwaukee Journal for over 20 years, hung up his fly rod and chest waders in 1956. I fished for June brook trout and hunted October grouse many times besides the fire while a fine January blizzard howled outside and in countless times and places since.

Another author I loved was the legendary western writer Louis L'Amour. He was no ecologist, but his narratives showed he knew how the mind works in translating the printed word to an inner movie. One absorbed his stories rather than read them. And like MacQuarrie, L'Amour had a knack of personalizing the story outside of time and space for the reader, making them timeless in nature. One of his many characters, Logan Pollard, took in a young boy whose father was killed by an Indian attack. In teaching him how to survive, he said, 'I had over two thousand volumes back East, but this'- sweeping his arm around him- 'is my favorite. It's always different, always changing. The wilderness is a book. Learn how to read it.'

Perhaps best at reading the land was the true father of true environmentalism, Aldo Leopold. His classic A Sand County Almanac was the inspiration for this collection of essays, and much of what he wrote in the '50's on his sand farm retreat on the Wisconsin River below the Wisconsin Dells was what I was coming to experience: that man can co-exist with nature in a setting he calls the 'man-land community, where each co-exists,in harmony and becoming as he put it, as 'not a conqueror of the land community, but plain member and citizen of it". As a living community, I came to learn of its collective existence as a living organism, feeling its moods, experiencing its changes through the day, the seasons, and the years, and learned of the lessons it had to teach within its classrooms, be it besides a steam, in a birch and aspen-filled hollow, or overlooking the valley from the ridge. I was developing not only a respect for, but ultimately intimacy with the land. So as I close "A Sand County Almanac" and watch the dying coals of the fire, I realized that in me in this place, was fulfilling everything Leopold envisioned and hoped for. And so it is to him more than anyone else this book is dedicated, that all that lived in him now resided in me.
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FEBRUARY:
' JUMPING ' GAME

Some of the best times I've had as a boy was on the trails in wintertime. Now it would be prosaic and woodsy to say I took up snowshoeing and staff in hand, ventured forth to leave shuffling tracks across the countryside, blazing new trails and discovering new places. But naw, walking through the snow seemed too much effort for too little distance, and besides, this was the nineteen seventies . . . the golden age of the snowmobile.

In those days of few houses and fewer plowed roads, a snowmobile was almost a necessity. If on a cold sunny Febuary afternoon I wanted to get away from it all or, seeing I was already away from it all up in the middle of west-central Wisconsin six miles from the nearest town, and I was just plain bored, I'd hop on the ol' sled and go jumping game.

Now, jumping game is far different than chasing game. Few things arouse my wrath more than some sadistic idiot chasing deer with a snowmobile. I've wanted to chase them down myself and give them a taste of my cleated, spinning treads facedown in the snow. But, as intent on the chase as they are there'll always be a gully they haven't seen with their name on it. Faceplant in the snow included at no charge.

At any rate, a real wildlife lover wants to meet the neighbors, and since the feeling isn't always mutual, I need them to know I'm not a predator, not a theat. As powerful as our Bolens 440 Sprint was, it was a fairly quiet runner on the trails, especially at lower speeds. It didn't have the wasp-wing whine of Yamahas or Ski-Doos, but it made enough noise to get attention, and it did. Rabbits bouncing through fresh snow was always an amusing site, and a deer ghosting along the edge of the woods or sprinting across a meadow was always worth a short halt and a long look. You do need to stop, however... I learned that the hard way. Blackberry scrub with all its thorns hanging over the trail won't jump up out of your way when a half dozen deer bedded down 50 feet off the trail jump up out of the snow without warning. (Always wear a scarf around your neck. Your helmet and jacket won't protect your neck, and blackberry vines know this. 'How'd you get those long wicked scratches around your neck and throat?' people asked. It wasn't an easy question to answer).

A hidden bonus of those days of sparsely populated roads is that if there wasn't a house on a particular road, drive or cul-de-sac, it just wasn't plowed, and it too, became a trail. In fact, all the roads in those days were snowpacked simply because they were gravel- the paved madacam roads (basically pea gravel poured onto a thick layer of tar on a shaved gravel roadway and flattened with a steamroller) were years in the future- and the plows removed only the fresh snow. They didn't want to bite too deep with the plow and shave too much gravel off the road or they'd have to come back the next summer and replace it. So every road was a potential trail, but the unplowed ones with no houses to disturb were the best. I had my favorites. Cool Brook court in Hidden Meadows subdivision off Summit Point Drive was not only empty, but a nice long winding drive along and up a hill. From there I'd climb up to the main ridge overlooking the valley at the end of Dutch Hollow Court using the old jeep trail that Braniger's sales reps used when you got a jeep tour of Dutch Hollow while they were still building the roads in 1972. I jumped a lot of deer along that road, and as far as I could tell I was the only one using it. Leaning Tree Trail, which winds up to the ridge on the opposite side of Hidden Meadows valley, had another jeep trail leading up to the ridge above Hidden Springs, and the trail crosses there just below the ridge through some of the prettiest aspen and birch filled hollows on the trail. Aspen twigs are favored by deer and it's a sure place to find deer. Souix Trails north of the yet-unbuilt Woodland boat landing likewise wasn't 'settled' for a long time, and its unplowed roads and empty cul-de-sacs always turned up something interesting.

In those days people didn't mind snowmobiles trekking the open undeveloped hillsides, private property or not, likely because no one was around. Local farmers still harvested hay on former hayfields, so the open hillsides, mown smooth of the leftover clover and alfalfa were made for snowmobiling. These days those open empty expanses are gone,and of the 1270 lots originally platted, nearly half have homes on them. Our home, built soon after we purchased out parcel of lots in 1972, was the tenth home constructed on Dutch Hollow Lake, on the point where the main body of the lake splits into the southern and western 'arms' of the lake.

Today, just about every road around Dutch Hollow are paved and plowed like any residential neighborhood, and the wild freedom to explore is now gone. As I look around and see neighborhoods where once stood empty fields and unused roads that were mine for the exploring, I can't help but feel a sense of loss, as I suppose any mountain man did when others discovered his private little paradise. I guess progress always comes at the cost of freedom.
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MARCH:
THE TRUMPETS OF SPRING

Dutch Hollow in March is a lady in waiting-- waiting for the snow to melt, waiting for the ice to go out, waiting for the land to thaw. It's a long wait. The winter to spring transition is excruciatingly slow. In the beginning of the month it is still full winter, but as the spring solstace nears, winter slowly begins to relent. The snowpack melts, revealing matted-down w**ds and sedges; the sun creeps higher into the sky, and the ice begins dissolving- not all at once, but in a slow march from the ends of the bays where meltwater from the creeks slowly warms the water, a degree at a time. It takes several weeks for the ice to retreat towards the center of the lake, an ever-shrinking honeycombed blue-black raft brittle as glass. From one side to the lake to the other, the wind pushes the ice until it tinkles and shatters against the shore, only to be pushed back at the change in the wind to crinkle against the opposite shore.

One morning the trumpets announcing spring float from the heavens and turning an eye upwards, undulating arrowheads fly northwards to the muskeg- subarctic bogs ideal for raising broods of goslings. As the afternoon wears on they start dropping down, creating rafts of birds calling their kindred travelers. I'd have bought a goose call to call them in but the clamor in the middle of the lake prevents my voice from being heard.

Aldo Leopold surmises that the November flocks passing high over his fabled shack on the Wisconsin River knew that every marsh bristled with guns, but such isn't the case. After all, these migrations precede the invention of gunpowder; the real answer is rooted within species instincts and behavior. Geese are late-stayers. Once that first Arctic blast comes howling over the Manitoba muskeg, the geese hurry south to beat the frost on their pinions. Along with bluebills and goldeneyes, they make up what hunters call 'the big flight' and in a short few days the air is filled with southbound flocks. But not so in March. Off and on the flight could last up to a month. There is no danger in the coming spring, so there is time for liesurely sightseeing by day, exploring new food sources and reporting their discoveries at the end of the day in excited chatter among the rafted geese one does not hear in the hurried November geese with winter flying up their tailfeathers.

The debate resumes early in the morning when they draw reeds to see who will be the first to lift off and lead the rest up north. As with anything, the winners are cheered more loudly as they take off, the rest of the group following, trumpeting a new season, new life and renewal to the land below. And as they leave, for the first time you notice the first of the new grass is poking up through the tangles of last year's growth. Spring is coming. The trumpets of spring sound again as yet another skein of geese fly overhead.
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APRIL:
GROWING UP ON "THE POINT"

There lies way down inside each of us a special place, a sacred place inviolate of pressure, problems or stress, a place untouched by time and unblurred by distance. Such places are timeless, like a favorite song it opens the door to memory of the peace and contentment of our youth. Even more so, it brings with it all our hopes and dreams for the future. A mark of old age, I fear, is the realization of the disappointment things turned out quite often becomes the musings of "the good ol' days" around the cracker barrel. I haven't seen a cracker barrel in my life so my audience I suspect one day will be grandchildren on my knee.

I have been fortunate to have grown up at Dutch Hollow. I have my choice of dozens of meadows, glens, streams and gurgling springs issuing forth from birch-filled hollows held in memory to choose from, and return there often; but the place I return to more often than not is the point where I grew up and discovered the natural world around me.

The point is the most commanding landmark on the lake. It splits the main body of the lake into two smaller arms, which in turn brach and subdivide into the many bays, coves and inlets on the south and west end of the lake. Conveniently, as we were the tenth home to be built around the lake shortly after we bought the land in 1972, I came to know the point intimately even before we moved up as full-time residents four years later.

Because of the geography of the land trending towards narrower, steeper valleys Dutch Hollow would have been smaller- thinner I should say- unless the lakeshore was widened at certain shorelines. The point and the shorelines extending westward and southward from the point were one of these shorelines, and the point tself is a k**b of exposed sandstone overlooking an apron of sandy beach below formed when the lake rose initially to eight feet below spillway level.

I learned to visualize what the shoreline would look like years from now when the lake was filled. With excavating equipment a family friend had cleared 8-foot wide shelves on either side of the point- leaving the point itself untouched-that were to become submerged and fill in as a natural beach. I saw, however, that these shelves were five feet above the 'design level' indicated by the fluorescent orange stakes posted every 100 feet along the shoreline. However, I saw in those shelves the makeup of the substratum of rock underlying Dutch Hollow. Seeps- not quite springs as they oozed rather than flowed- were uncovered and flowed across the bare rock, which in time became partially covered by uphill washout, which gave rise to various species of wildflowers and saplings. Leaving the shelves to restore themselves was an interesting long term observation, but there would be no beaches there.

My attention turned then to the point. As I envisioned the lakeshore erosion creating vertical shelved rock shores like the bluffs overlooking the Baraboo river valley that were created by glacial meltwater, I carefully considered the topography and where the lake would rise to. I dug to expose the top of the k**b to guage the depth of the soil. I also researched native species that would best grow in such an environment. I decided to create an environment- an oasis of northwoods I could call my own.

Although 'popple' was considered little more than a mere w**d by local farmers, Quaking Aspen grows in an amazing variety of conditions, from out of cracks in the bluffs to the wettest boggiest mire the Baraboo River valley still had to offer. Quaking aspen is a vanguard transitional species to return the cleared area to reforestation. Actually, they seemed best suited to the terrain as they grew on rocky slopes and began to cover the roadcuts around the lake. So along the lake around the point a screen of aspen saplings were transplanted and arranged around the waterline. Once the water reached 'design level', the waves would topple them into the water, where their crowns would provide cover for minnows and other small fish, but also, as is the way with softwoods, would decay and disappear quickly . But 'popple', even in the best of conditions grow like w**ds and proliferate just as quickly- and last just about as long. An ancient popple with dark fissured bark at their base is merely thirty years old if that. Predictably, most of the ones I planted are long gone. With the aspen covering the slopes up around the point to secure the soil, I was already preparing for longer-living hardwoods that would be the long term residents of the point.

The loamy soil also was receptive to White Pine and Paper Birch, based on what I had studied of these species around the lake. One white pine grew down the shore, and pine seedlings were scattered on the slope below the design level would be. Why let them drown and die in vain? I transplanted them to the point, well above design level, as they prefer the drier loamy sandy soil. From the north-facing roadcuts I thinned out and transplanted paper birch seedlings to among the popple, knowing that the shade of the popple would protect them from full sunlight and burn them out. This area is at the very southern range of paper birch, so they only thrive in cooler pockets away from direct sunlight, or protected by other species to screen out the sunlight. Birch grew more slowly, so by the time the aspen died out, both the white pines and the birch would be well established and perhaps mature enough to spread descendents at their feet. I knew that in the gradually warming climate both these species were declining in favor of more temperate woodland species such as oak and maple. Leopold noticed the white pines being coming more scarce on his sand farm southeast of Wisconsin Dells, so Leopold planted entire fields with pines, row by row like any crop. No, this would be natural, and instead of just planting birch and pine and be done with it, I would do it the way nature does it- naturally.
The pines stand today are just as I envisioned them- a thick carpet of pine needles beneath intertwined pine branches trimmed to over the height of a man to walk beneath them with even a picnic table beneath. It's hard to believe those pines I planted in 1978 amongst rapidly-growing aspens were knee-high saplings. Now they are fifty feet tall. The aspen are gone, but the birch are still there, but thinned out, just to the right of the pines. You can't see the picnic table from here, though I assure you it is there, atop a thick carpet of fallen pine needles. A new generation of pines along the shoreline have provided screening and privacy I hadn't even anticipated. I was as pleased with that as much as the picnic table to make my vision complete.

No matter who owns and pays taxes on the land today, like one's child grown with a life and a family of their own, the point is, and forever will, be mine.
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MAY:
COULEE CLASSROOMS

The nice thing about May is that you can explore around the greenways without the bother of reeds, w**ds or barbed seeds like thistles catching a ride on your clothing. The best part of May is... just being May. This is the time, after school let out for the summer, for me to visit other classrooms, dimpled high into the winding ridge that forms the skyline on the south and west side of Dutch Hollow, and take an eclectic and changing curriculum of classes that teach me about the community I've become a part of. It's time for class, here in these coulee classrooms.

Here in these coulees I would sit for hours and learn of the undisturbed natural community, and how it functions. I became aware that the community around me was an organism, and I was experiencing its very being. Each coulee has its own personality, and offers itself as needed to meet my needs. Some are more open and expansive, some smaller and more intimate, and some hidden and secluded.

Surprisingly, I have found that to a degree, how I approach a coulee is a reflection of my state of mind. The coulees themselves become a barometer of my moods and needs that day. When I am feeling good, as I do this morning, I can stand on the rim or sit on an outcropping of the ridge, and take in the long view as I reflect on higher understanding and a greater affinity and appreciation of the whole as I look across the coulee and into the hollows and valleys below. I seek what I have yet to learn, in places I have yet to explore. Yet the answers are not up here, but down there, in the coulees themselves. That's why I call them coulee classrooms. I need to descend to get a better look, and learn what they have to teach me.

Walking up into a coulee is a different experience. Then is the time I feel in need, when the things I need to understand are not within the coulee, but within myself. Each is a natural ampitheater, quiet, isolated from its neighbors, and from the valley below as well as the ridgetop above. From the first time walking up into these sanctuaries I get the sensation of being hugged, the folds of the slopes extending downward past me on either side like arms, welcoming me again in a fond loving embrace. I have been hugged many, many, many times.

Regardless of the way I finally leave the coulee, it cannot be the same way I entered. Having been reassured within myself, I must still continue to the top, and stand on the ridge and look around- I mean really look around- and regain a balance between the short and long-term view. Different perspectives have not changed the coulees themselves, but how I see them.

Coulees have much to teach us. Away from the rush of modern living, we can truly spend quality time with ourselves and meditate on greater questions that often brings into perspective things that needlessly preoccupy us. If you think of the journey not as a means to the end, but the end itself, you will truly have arrived. As the land becomes a part of you, you become part of the land, and actually commune and become part of our surroundings. As we absorb the peaceful serenity around us, our senses expand to take in all that is around us. The effect is a subtle yet profound response for our need for solitude. It is then we have learned what the coulees have to teach, but even more, what they have yet to teach us. One cannot graduate from these classrooms, for tomorrow there will always be more to learn.
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JUNE:
DAYBREAK AND THE SILLY FAWN

4:39 a.m. : Dawn unfolded slowly over the hollows and coulees nestled against the ridgetop where I stood, awaiting the June sunrise. This particular coulee drops from a ring of buried bluffs encircling the ridge that is but a finger of what is actually a sprawling mesa. Having never been flattened by ice, these coulees are ancient, actually the oldest exposed landforms in the Midwest, or anywhere between the Rocky and Appalachian mountains. Time has made these coulees a sacred place, untouched by none but the elements and the finger of its Creator. Time hangs heavy on such a place, giving a majesty that is unknown but to the coulees themselves.

4:52 a.m. : As the shy dawn slowly blushed rosy hues across the northeastern horizon, I tuned into the awakening land. Already varied birdsong filled the hollow, and more joined in by the minute. Had Aldo Leopold tried, notebook in hand, to note the time as each species awakened this hollow, as he did on his abandoned sand farm, he would have found it all but impossible. I have been awakened camping by the sheer volume of birds singing their new hymns to the day. The roar of a Lambeau Field during a Packers game has scarcely any less voices. Time has not only untouched the land, but the environment as well- all is in perfect harmony as it has been for millenia. Here amongst the dozens of different tree species and hundreds of lesser shrubs, flowers and grasses, a variety of life flourishes, each feeding and thriving on what the others leave behind, be it animal and bird droppings, seeds, leaves or nectar. It is a fine-tuned harmony that packs more and a greater variety of life per square foot than anywhere else I know of. I sit transfixed, overwhelmed by the cacophony of sound, yet knowing, and almost eager, for what is to come.

5:07 a.m. : There. In a clearing around the spring below, I saw a large doe watching her twin fawns drinking. I knew who she was, having named her Ashley, and I waited patiently, intent on her body language. She looked up, ears cupped,looking into a tangle of blackberry scrub and let forth a small bleat, and I instantly knew she'd done it again this year- Ashley had triplets. She was watchful, ears flicking at the gnats hovering above the spring, staring intently into the briars. She was coaxing the smaller, third fawn out of the brush to come have a drink. The fawn was timid. But, perhaps not for long. Each year the 'odd one out' lived up to the character.

5:12 a.m. : The minutes dragged by. Ashley flicked her ears. Did a few head-bobs. I knew the fawn was there, but screened to my view. Does don't square dance or curtsy to blackberry vines in my memory. I knew this one would be a maverick. Mama doe was getting impatient, and finally she put her hoof down. Then it happened, as it always seemed to. This one would break ranks, as the others did in years past. She stomped once and a fawn emerged from between the vines just into the clearing. He stopped, and stomped back. Well, he's sassy, all right. As I watched, a mental dialog began between mother and child, no doubt well rehearsed by this time:
"Get over here and get a drink!"
"No!! I wanna play!!" The fawn stood his ground, although yet on wobbly legs. The mother gave the fawn a look all mothers have and all children know well. It said: 'Don't you stomp back at me, young man! You can always nurse last, you know!' The fawn, now knowing what irritated mom most, began to perfect his skills right in front of her. Stomp, stomp, stomp. Now he joined his back legs in the maneuver, bouncing around the clearing with the joyful abandon of youth. My muffled snickers were becoming hard to control, yet the fawn was determined to either drive mom nuts or for me to betray my presence. The mental dialog continued... "See? I can stomp too! I can stomp too! This is GREAT!" The little fawn cavorted around the clearing, while my gut ached from holding in the laughter so hard that tears sprouted from my eyes.

The other two fawns just watched him, thinking, 'Boy, is he ever gonna be sorry.' The fawn found that out quickly enough. He bounced into the soft mud around the spring and slipped. With a wrenching bawl he landed on his butt, and trying to stand up he kicked and splattered mud everywhere. Mama got a faceful of muddy water, and the twin fawns now had new black spots to offset their white ones. It was too much. I tried holding it back, but my first outburst got everyone's attention, and with a sidelong glare to the muddy fawn, "NOW SEE WHAT YOU'VE DONE?!?", I lost control completely, laughing helplessly on my back while all four deer rocketed into the trees. I finally gained control, then realized the hollow had gone completely silent. I imagined hundreds of eyes in the trees looking at me and thinking 'What the hell...?', which only started me laughing again.

Okay, I confess I broke the quiet harmony and violated the sanctity of that quiet hollow... but that stupid fawn started it.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • •

JULY:
THE LITTLE SAILBOAT

In 1972 when our parents bought four lots at Dutch Hollow Lake, then a new development with a fledgling lake and winding roads empty of homes, with each lot sold by the developer came a little two-person, lateen-rigged sailboat, with a triangular sail and a styrofoam hull, the same as you see in camp and resort brochures. We ended up with three, having bought the lot across the street from the Point later, and predictably the family enjoyed them to excess, ripping the hulls over rocks and leaving tiny pebbles of styrofoam in our wake. I was surprised to find they resembled some sort of larvae, judging how eagerly the little bluegills would clean up after us.

Over the years first one boat, then another, became so gouged and beaten they were thrown away. By this time, however, I had mastered seamanship and the last boat, along with various spare parts saved from the previous ones, fell into my hands.

The little sailboat lasted a good long while- some fifteen years- before it too succumbed to age and deterioration of the polystyrene hull. Until that time I was constantly in it during the summers, often forsaking the Boston Whaler with the 40-horsepower Johnson outboard I learned to water-ski behind, which I did on weekends and holiday weekends when the 18' Bayliners and Chris-Craft cruise boats made sailing hazardous from all the waves they kicked up. While it was unsinkable, the 18" of freeboard was often breached by boat wake waves which left me sitting in water. During the week when the lake was silent, the passing boats few and far between, I claimed the entire lake as my own, the only sound the creak of the rigging and the gentle slap of waves against the hull. The red and white triangular sail became as much a fixture on the lake as the waves themselves.

There are simple, profound lessons I have learned at the helm. As I explored the constantly changing shoreline as the lake level rose then fell, I learned that nature has its moods, changing not only day by day, but hour by hour, even minute by minute as a sudden breeze would create a wave of fresh ripples across the water's surface, darkening the water to deeper shades of blue of grey or both, depending on the cloud cover reflected off the waves at that time. I learned that an afternoon spent tacking into the wind, meeting opposite shores back and forth, yielded new and ever changing viewpoints of the forest and field rising above the same rocky shorelines. I never before appreciated this this dimension of redefinition of the same elements by time and vantage point. I learned there is no "right" place or correct distance to view something. The rocky point is not changed by the elements such as light and shadow that paint it different hues by the minute, or where and when it is viewed. The variables of change are around, not within the rock itself. The same can be true of myself; I need not be redefined by the changes around me simply because they exist. I have a choice, and self-determination is not controlling the changes around me, but how, or even if, those changes control me. [The rock has no such luxury].

Often other lessons were enjoined and provided multidimensional teaching. One was learned one afternoon on a becalmed lake that had yielded a good breeze earlier. There I was, floating helplessly while great-lakes class pleasure boats offered the same fate given to the Titanic and the Edmund Fitzgerald, and while securely afloat I was also half-swamped. Instead of fuming over being stranded, I resigned myself to floating serenely for a while, taking in the tranquility around me (the supper hour approached, and thankfully the lake had emptied itself of speedboats for the time being). After all, in recent years I had found little chance to camp, much less sail. I relaxed, adjusting to nature's own pace, resigning myself to her own timeline, and realized as I studied the shorelines how interdependent nature itself is. Each member of the natural commun ity fulfills a role to benefit another, not just exist for its own sake. I still marvel at the flawless self-governing harmony of nature itself, the natural community sacrificing elements of itself to benefit the whole through the seasons. .

Betrayed by my daydreaming, time had slipped away as I pondered such erudite concepts. Sunset was at hand, and I become aware of the growing hum of mosquitoes. Too late!! I slap and paddle and curse my way to shore, and with that I learned a final lesson: with wisdom there must also be vigilance, or else a lot of mosquito dope and a bigger paddle....
• • • • • • • • • • • • • •

AUGUST:
DROUTH

The year was 1976. The entire Midwest had been suffering a two-year drought, and this was a large factor in the decline of the water level of Dutch Hollow Lake in those years. As the land burned up the water table dropped, as did the lake level, and springs dried up leaving streams as mere trickles and shorelines as cracked mud. It was a viscious cycle that would take a mighty change to reverse, but none was forthcoming.
The rains did not come.
Having moved up to Dutch Hollow that summer, we endured new and strange things that year. Swarms of so-called 'potato bugs', a harmless weevil that hadthe annoying habit of climbing walls and ceilings. Frequently, the ones on the ceiling dropped in for dinner. By dropping into your dinner. Worse yet, the wheat-kernel sized invaders had a hard protective shell. We never went without shoes, because they crunched like popcorn underfoot, a most unpleasant sensation in bare feet. Needless to say, we welcomed the first hard freezes with open arms.
That autumn and winter proved to be even drier, and critical mass was reached. With no replenishing rains to support the water table, the level dropped beneath the lake and the lake level began dropping not inches a month, but feet. From the November freeze-up level, the lake dropped five feet that winter, leaving great tilting slabs of ice on the shore. That winter I would lie awake in the darkness and listen to the eerie sound of pressure cracks reverberate across the ice. The only way to describe it is a sound like a string from a guitar being plucked and the sound racing back and forth beneath the ice in a rippling sound wave that spread in all directions in a sonic splash. It is without a doubt the creepiest sound nature has to offer, and having prowled the outdoors in all seasons for years since that time, I can attest to that as fact.
The following summer saw the Necedah fire cloak the northeast horizon in a brown haze and the acrid foul smell of burning peat filled the air as tamarack, red and jack pine fires burned along the Wisconsin River twenty-five miles away. Without a supporting water table to stabilize the water level, the lake continued to drop, and because of the fire danger from sparks the fireworks for LaValle were held not in LaValle but at Dutch Hollow Lake in front of the Clubhouse. The clubhouse grounds accomodated hundreds of people with cars parked in a makeshift parking lot on the grass on the point beyond the clubhouse. Even so, the crowd spilled over on and beyond the beach in front of the Clubhouse and pool, and there were cars parked on both shoulders of Clubhouse Drive beyond the gate almost to the top of the hill. Reedsburg cancelled their fireworks completely owing to the fires so close to the north, and the Reedsburg Fire Department threw in with LaValle in moving their fireworks show to the lake and this added to the crowd. Over a thousand people came to watch the only fireworks show in northwest Sauk county that year. With two towns' supplies of fireworks to shoot off, the sky was filled constantly for over 45 minutes, the biggest display ever seen by many and talked about for years afterwards.
Still, the rains did not come.
Autumn came early that year, the trees calling it quits early and storing what little moisture thay had by forming their buds early and turning color three weeks ahead of schedule. Lotowners were shocked to see evidence of fall color on Labor Day weekend, with the vanguards of staghorn sumnac glowing bright red and quaking aspen just beginning to turn gold in the hollows high up on the ridge. It would prove to be a wise move, for in the dry air no moderation was to be found, and the freezes came early and and without snow froze the ground five feet down, killing many younger trees. The drought exasperbated the onslaught of Dutch Elm disease, and the American Elm had all but become an extinct species in a few short years. By spring the lake had dropped another five feet, for a total loss of eighteen feet in three years. With half the normal snowfall, snowmelt did little to replenished the cracked mud of the creekbeds, much less did anything to raise the water table and stop the astounding loss of volume from the lake, now half its original depth and dropping.
Yet all things must balance out in the end, and the spring of 1978 saw the rains come back with a vengence. By June the ground had reached its saturation point and on the Saturday night of the July Fourth weekend, a squall line 50 miles long stalled over the area overnight. With downpours over two inches an hour, the storm left ten inches of water behind by morning, raising the lake eight feet overnight. The lake had already risen five feet that June as the rains came and stayed, and the Baraboo River, already at flood stage, rose nine feet over her banks over the next week, flooding downtown LaValle and Reedsburg. While the lake never recovered the pre-drought water level naturally and had to be augmented by high-capacity deep well pumps to raise it to design level, the water table recovered, the streams and springs flowed as before, and nature recovered as she only knows how and undoubtedly has in the past.

Yes, the rains finally came.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • •

SEPtEMBER:
LABOR DAY

6:00 a.m. : The activity at both boat landings picks up as local fishermen launch their boats, in search of their quarry. Gear is double checked, those waiting park off to the side and trade the latest on conditions, the latest rumors of who caught what, and on which lures, patiently waiting their turn to back in and launch their boats. Paddling clear of the landing to allow the next in line to launch outboards roar to life and disperse to various coves, inlets and shorelines to ply the waters with their favorite lures. Thermoses of hot coffee take the edge off the slight chiill that quickly disappears along with the fog that lays suspended above the lake.

6:20 a.m. :
As the sun peeks over the distant horizon miles across the Baraboo River Valley, the campgrounds on the west ridge begin to stir. Smoldering embers are brought back to life for one last breakfast fire or water poured to be sure the coals are extinguished. Folding chairs, tables and other accessories are carefully packed into trailers. Some trudge up to the service house to shower off the smell of smoke from the cheery fires blazing the night before, and with themselves clean and the campsites picked up , they wait in line at the RV station to dump and rinse the holding tanks of blue water. Thus prepped for the long trip southward, they leave, promising to stay in touch, each mindful of the thousands of other campers heading south on the Interstate and wanting to beat the rush. One by one they leave, until by noon only a few are left.

12:30 p.m. :
Around the lake, homeowners are likewise packing up the toys of summer and storing them for another year, and head to the Clubhouse for a last lunch or a quick swim. Both the snack bar and the pool close early and by 5:00 p.m. the only activity is around the boat landings as they load boats onto trailers and tie down the canvas tops. Those that are year-round residents will tow their boats back to their homes to winterize in the coming days, while those having weekend and summer retreats take their boats with them and also head south for the winter. By six the lake is empty, and again the local fishermen gather to try to land a walleye, northern or largenouth bass.

7:10 p.m.:
With the advent of sunset, a stillness falls over the entire valley. A few deer venture out onto the now abandoned campground and shadows gather in the coulees and hollows. by morning the air will again will be chill and the fog over the lake will rise again through the trees, but few if any boats will gather at the boat landings. Another summer has come and gone, but the land does not yeild to the coming season easily, but will linger in the best season of all and in weeks the sumac will turn bright scarlet and the aspen will begin in the coming weeks to begin their transformation to a smokey gold.

October [missing]
Novrmber [missing]
• • • • • • • • • • • • • •

DECEMBER:
THE FULL MOON

You just don't know when the mood will come upon you to go out and commune with the other world outside your door. I know that December night, I was listening to the Rocky Mountain High album by John Denver (on real vinyl!), and while he sang about coming home to the mountains, I just happened to look out the window. A soft bluish glow lit the smow-covered landscape, even though it was late, past 11 p.m. A full moon. A world I had already come home to was being lit and waiting to be explored. What the heck, I told myself, it's really not that cold outside and unlike other nights without a moon, when the darkness is complete, the moonlight reflected off the snow made a glow of its own that brightened the landscape almost into day. The hills, trees, even the distant ridges were clearly visible. The night called, and I answered.

We had a lot of snow that month, the beginning of the end of a two-year drought, and while I contemplated cheating and exploring the trails by night with the snowmobile, I decided to meet the night on its own terms. So I would walk. Not even a seasoned woodsman is fool enough to go snowshoeing in the middle of the night, so I put on a warm pair of snowmobile boots, and walked the roads. Where we lived on Summit point drive the road loops around and meets itself at the top of the hill. I would go there.

Crunching along on the frozen gravel, I walked the half-mile of roadway to the top of the hill. And then I became still, to see and perhaps hear what the night might bring. In those days there were less than a half dozen year round residences- ourselves, the Robinsons, the C***s, all in our subdivision; and the Fassels over on Alpine Way off Black Forest Drive, but all were asleep. Not a light was seen burning anywhere in the valley. The solitude was complete. The only light was from the high full moon, casting that bluish white light that was reflected on the snow. The air was impossibly clear; the haze of the Milky Way stretched across overhead, the glowing band of billions of stars that in itself was worth a stop and long look. I looked until my neck ached, then looked some more.

Over in the hollow, I heard an owl call inquiringly into the night. I never really heard an owl hoot before, and I spent a few minutes tuning in to what sounded like a mourning dove cooing with a rolling scottish brogue. What a unique sound. Soon other noises joined the night. Off to the west, perhaps in the hollow below the campground, a family of coyotes- called 'brush wolves' in these parts- began serenading the moon. I heard the yapping of an adult joined in with the yaps and yips of at least four pups. I listened to the voices while wondering for the first time what possesses wolves and coyotes to bay at the moon. It almost seemed as if this was a teaching moment, the parent teaching their pups how to properly worship the full moon. It seemed a good idea at the time, so I did likewise. Rest assured I did so silently, without joining in song, just listening to them sing their praises to ol' Luna, and realized the owl had stopped asking his unanswered question, or just stopped to listen to the wolves. After a while their hymns died away and the night was silent again.

But, not for long. As I said, this would be a winter of heavy snow after a prolonged drought. With the creeks at a trickle and many springs dried up, the lake level was still dropping, I heard a new sound. One I had heard before but faintly within my bedroom at night, but out here in the cold silence heard it clearly. I'd say it's one of the weirdest noises to be heard in nature. As the water beneath the ice dropped to lay the ice tilting on the shoreline, the ice, heavy with snow would crack. But instead of a cracking sound on the surface, because of the heavy snow above and the water beneath the crack would send pressure wave vibrations through the water that would bounce back and forth along the crack through the water like the rippling of sheet metal. It's an indescribable sound, the sound bouncing back and forth beneath the ice across the lake, like sound bouncing back and forth in a canyon. But even that isn't quite it. It starts as a high 'TIU!" sound that would deepen in pitch as it spread out through the ice. In words, its closest written equivalent would be a rapid TYU-YUU-YUUUU-YUUUUUU-YUUUUUU... fading as the sound spread across the water beneath the ice in all directions. It is without doubt the creepiest sound in nature. It seems to run through my bones, the chill running up and down my spine . I hear it a few more times as I turn downhill and return to the house, and again the owl calls inquiringly into the night. And above it all, the full moon shines down in blank indifference.

• • • • • • • THE END. • • • • • •