By David Horst sandhill7@gmail.com
There’s something magical about a snow day even when you haven’t had to go to school for more than 30 years.
It’s like bonus time — unplanned hours. Time to decorate the tree and order those last-minute gifts. It also gives us the outdoors reborn with a fresh coat of beauty.
The office for my day job shut down because of Thursday’s snow. I would have made it in OK, but eight hours of heavy snowfall and gusty winds would have kept me from getting back up the steep driveway that takes us up on the sandhill we call home.
I’ll take some of the bonus time to look back on random events from the year in nature.
• Wisconsin has 110 fewer wolves after the first hunt since reintroduction. Hunting wolves was always going to be a reality to stay within the goals set by some real smart guys at the DNR. My objection is that more than half of the “harvested” wolves had to endure leg-hold traps before being dispatched.
• We have one more eagle than we might have. When an adult bald eagle flew into the grille of Brian Baker’s pickup truck as he traveled down State 10 in Weyauwega last June, it seemed the bird had no chance. Baker called the sheriff’s department, which called DNR warden Ted Dremel, who gingerly pulled the eagle’s head from the plastic shards of the grille. New London bird rehabber Pat Fisher and vet Jim Ziegler nursed the eagle back to health and, a month later, I was able to watch it leave Ziegler’s gloved hands and fly back into nature. The story was picked up by CNN and a picture Baker snapped with his phone made the DNR’s top 10 list of wildlife photos for the year.
• Speaking of eagles, Shadow and Feather became video stars. The two eaglets being raised in a nest near Shiocton scored lots of friends and views thanks to a webcam installed by Gary Bunnell of Wolf River Cam.
• Drought here and floods elsewhere have people thinking we’re beyond stopping climate change and have to learn to adapt to it. At a conference of people from real big foundations that give out environmental grants, speakers said we have moved on from seeking sustainability to pursuing “resilience” — survival, basically.
• Year three of the Fox-Wisconsin Heritage Paddle series saw hundreds more kayakers and canoeists enjoy the natural beauty winding through our cities, marshes and farm fields. The 2013 schedule will be out soon. Improvements planned for the historic waterway famously traveled by Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet include handicapped-accessible kayak launches and maybe even creative reuse of those long-vacant locktender houses.
• Neenah got a new riverfront park and a former Appleton country club became an urban farm. Herb and Dolly Smith Park on the southwest shore of Little Lake Butte des Morts was largely a gift from 87-year-old Alice Jean Smith, who named the three-acre park for her parents. She was motivated by memories from her childhood of the family celebrating birthdays, or just a nice Sunday, at parks. People don’t go to parks enough these days, she lamented. Her park, also funded with state grants, includes a pavilion, an accessible canoe and kayak launch and a very attractive bridge over the Neenah Slough.
• Riverview Gardens is turning the former golf course off S. Oneida Street into vegetable gardens and hoop houses that will employ and feed residents of area homeless shelters. Trails on 40 acres of future prairie are expected to open to the public in spring.
• There’s a new view of a healthy cattail marsh available thanks to donors to the Northeast Wisconsin Land Trust and work done at cost by the Boldt Co. A boardwalk and viewing platform dedicated in October takes you to the edge of the Guckenberg-Sturm Preserve near Stroebe Island in the Town of Menasha. The normally inaccessible marsh offers great birdwatching. The 48-acre preserve was one of several riverside treasures acquired with payments assessed against paper companies in the PCB cleanup through some very diligent work by businessman Terry Gant. Others include the property where the native landscaping group Wild One’s national headquarters now sits and the property used to expand Fritse Park in the Town of Menasha.
Here’s wishing you a happy snow day and a new year filled with opportunities to get out and experience nature.
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