Segment 1: Portage to CTH O

What follows are re-edited versions of columns by freelance nature writer David Horst that originally appeared in The Post-Crescent – the daily newspaper in Appleton, Wis. – during the spring and summer of 2010.

The Journey begins
Three paddle trips, three different faces of the Upper Fox River.
I’ve been involved with a group that planned a series of paddle trips covering most of the Fox, collectively called Fox River Heritage Paddle 2010. After three of the 12 segments, I can tell you, it’s not the Fox River we’re used to up in the Fox Cities.

Launch: Indian Agency House, Portage

Takeout: Landing at CTH O bridge

Distance: 10.7 miles
See larger map

Google map

For the first leg of our journey, we are to depart from Portage, the connecting point – almost – for the Fox and Wisconsin rivers. Forty-seven paddlers turn out to journey the 10.7 miles to the landing at Marquette County Highway O. 

Traveling from Hortonville, rain pelts the windshield of my truck. I’m convinced the forecast for storms and lightening will prove correct and I’m driving an hour and a half for nothing.

But the rains stop in advance of the launch and we see no more than an intermittent drizzle.

The paddlers – couples and older guys and strapping youngsters – unload canoes of Fiberglas and aluminum, plastic kayaks, skin kayaks, wooden kayaks and a stand-up “Yak.” They fill the 16-seat voyageur canoe that leads us throughout these 120 miles of rediscovery.

Up here (up river, though geographically to the south) the Fox River is not all industry and houses that make the Fox Cities tax assessors so happy. In this section, the Fox is a country stream, lined with farm fields and fishing shacks and rarely running more than a couple of feet deep. Crane music accompanies us much of the way.

Mark Hoffman photo

Some among us appoint themselves to trash detail, relieving the river of various bottles and buckets, a duck decoy and a television set, which a kayaker with a flair for the ridiculous bungies to the front of his boat.

At Governor’s Bend Park we face the entirety of the Fox River’s rapids – a little chute that wouldn’t warrant a rating but delivers a little rush of fun. While the lower Fox drops nearly the height of Niagara Falls from Lake Winnebago to Green Bay, its whitewater was harnessed by a system of locks and dams more than a century ago.

We pass under the County O bridge and beach on the muddy bank. From there we get our first presentation on the history that flows with the river – a reading of pioneering environmentalist John Muir’s boyhood remembrances at John Muir Park.

Segment 1 map

Intro: A Journey of Rediscovery

In the spring and summer of 2010, a group of advocates for public access to the Fox River organized a series of kayak and canoe paddling day trips intended to show people the beauty and diverse landscape of the Upper and Lower Fox River – a “Journey of Rediscovery” of the Fox.

Stretching 200 miles through central and northeast Wisconsin from Portage to Green Bay, the Fox flows south to north through wetlands and agricultural fields, past rural retreats and million-dollar homes, through historic villages and industrial cities. To make the paddles as accessible as possible for paddlers of all ages and skill levels, the organizers excluded areas of open water and tough portages. The result was 12 segments over nine weekends covering 120 miles of the Fox River.

People responded. An average of 63 paddlers participated per event with 424 different people taking part in at least one segment and three people completing all 12.

Many of the paddles were followed by presentations on local culture or history. One such program early on featured Ottawa medicine woman Jackie Red-Woman. She told of the power of her carving of a turtle. Placed upside-down, she said, the turtle would divert bad weather around us. Despite forecasts of rain or thundershowers for nearly every segment, none was canceled by weather. We wish you the protection of the turtle as you pursue your own Journey of Rediscovery on the Fox.

Sandhills mix it up for annual crane count

By David Horst  sandhill7@gmail.com

I talk to people on occasion – regular readers – who say they would like to come along on one of my outdoor “adventures.”

I like to think I take people along in writing about these opportunities to view nature that come my way, but there’s nothing like experiencing it for yourself. The experience does come with a cost.

For Dick Gosse, the cost was getting up early enough to be in a farm field outside of Hortonville at 5:30 a.m. last Saturday (April 17, 2010).

Gosse is an Outagamie County supervisor, a former Appleton alderman and a very recently retired dentist. More relevant to me, he and his wife, Karen, were the lead donors for the Environmental Stewardship Fund within the Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region, which I have the pleasure of staffing as part of my day job.

Dick and Karen are devoted environmentalists, from the solar panels on their home to their advocacy for recreation trails.

In short, Dick is the kind of guy you know would enjoy a good sunrise crane show.

Sandhills mix it up for annual crane count

I talk to people on occasion – regular readers – who say they would like to come along on one of my outdoor “adventures.”

I like to think I take people along in writing about these opportunities to view nature that come my way, but there’s nothing like experiencing it for yourself. The experience does come with a cost.

For Dick Gosse, the cost was getting up early enough to be in a farm field outside of Hortonville at 5:30 a.m. last Saturday (April 17).

Gosse is an Outagamie County supervisor, a former Appleton alderman and a very recently retired dentist. More relevant to me, he and his wife, Karen, were the lead donors for the Environmental Stewardship Fund within the Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region, which I have the pleasure of staffing as part of my day job.

Dick and Karen are devoted environmentalists, from the solar panels on their home to their advocacy for recreation trails.

In short, Dick is the kind of guy you know would enjoy a good sunrise crane show.

We set up behind an old barn near my place, overlooking the field where I have been counting cranes for a number of years. The usual routine is (1) I sip some steaming hot tea while listening to the crane music that marks their rousing in the swamp beyond the woods; (2) cranes emerge in ones or twos or threes and settle in the field; (3) the steady arrival of cranes has me swiveling the spotting scope in wide, sweeping circles to keep track of the arrivals.

We definitely had No. 1. There was a little of No. 2. But No. 3 never really happened.

I can say with great confidence that the explanation is not that the sandhill crane population is in decline. You see them everywhere – even in the remnant farm fields in and around Appleton.

There was a pretty good wind out of the northwest Saturday, and my thought is that kept the cranes in the woods. Another theory bandied around the check-in at Mosquito Hill Nature Center outside New London was that the early spring has the cranes sitting on nests early.

Whatever the cause, the cranes seemed to be on the move that morning. The usual hot spots ran cold.

“The numbers are all over the board,” Jess Miller, a naturalist at Mosquito Hill and the count coordinator for Outagamie County, said. “The cranes seem to have dispersed more into the fields.”

At her spot at the nature center, Miller counted less than half the normal crane visitors. Across the Wolf River, the number was higher than usual.

A good share of our count of nine birds came while they were in the air. We never has more than two on the ground at once, which means we never saw the best part of the crane show.

What we did see was a dozen deer and a flock of 20 turkeys, including two males with their tails spread in full display – like one of those Thanksgiving turkey candles, only with no discernable wick.

Dick had no complaints. He was content to watch turkeys, ponder the history of the rusting farm equipment in the old barn and commiserate with me about the State 15 bypass that will – when, we still don’t know – turn the crane habitat we were monitoring into four lanes of fast-moving traffic.

We build too many highways. We take too much farmland. We don’t treasure history enough. Those were the legislator’s pronouncements for the morning, and his faith in his ability to do something about it will never be shaken.

Next on Dick’s agenda was a grandchild’s birthday party. That’s a pretty blessed Saturday.