Thursday, August 7, 2014
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Park-to-Park portage
just a bump in the trail
By David Horst sandhill7@gmail.com
A helping attitude and a small strip of carpeting made all the difference.
July 4th weekend — two weeks before the Park-to-Park Paddle, the state’s largest day paddle event that has drawn as many as 350 kayaks and canoes — we read that a gate on the Menasha Lock was broken, then fixed, then broken again.
The Park-to-Park takes those hundreds of paddlers through the Menasha Lock. In fact, the iconic image of the P2P is hundreds of colorful boats packed into the lock.
Do we shift the launch to below the lock, or do we portage around the lock? As one of the organizers of the event, I initially favored sacrificing the length of the paddle to avoid what I expected to be the pandemonium of 200-plus paddlers trying to scale the rocky shores on the Menasha Lock basin.
But a few factors changed my mind.
 |
| See more photos |
July 4th weekend — two weeks before the Park-to-Park Paddle, the state’s largest day paddle event that has drawn as many as 350 kayaks and canoes — we read that a gate on the Menasha Lock was broken, then fixed, then broken again.
The Park-to-Park takes those hundreds of paddlers through the Menasha Lock. In fact, the iconic image of the P2P is hundreds of colorful boats packed into the lock.
Do we shift the launch to below the lock, or do we portage around the lock? As one of the organizers of the event, I initially favored sacrificing the length of the paddle to avoid what I expected to be the pandemonium of 200-plus paddlers trying to scale the rocky shores on the Menasha Lock basin.
But a few factors changed my mind.
Monday, July 7, 2014
History revealed in what the saw sees
By David Horst sandhill7@gmail.com
The great thing about history is it doesn't just live in books. Sometimes, history is just hanging there on the wall.
In
the best of the essays in his must-have classic work "A Sand County
Almanac," pioneer environmentalist Aldo Leopold tells the story of he
and wife Estella sawing through a large, old oak tree. He uses that
event to frame the natural history that was happening as the tree was
putting on the growth rings they are transecting with the two-man
crosscut saw.
As we paddled down the Wisconsin River on June 21 as part of the Fox-Wisconsin Heritage Paddle series, I was describing the essay to fellow paddler Daren Barrett in more detail than you would expect to be tolerated by someone who easily could accelerate away from me. Barrett was unfamiliar with Leopold and how his environmental legacy was tied so closely to Wisconsin history, but was genuinely inquisitive about it.
The great thing about history is it doesn't just live in books. Sometimes, history is just hanging there on the wall.
 |
| Setting out from Newport Park. See more photos. |
As we paddled down the Wisconsin River on June 21 as part of the Fox-Wisconsin Heritage Paddle series, I was describing the essay to fellow paddler Daren Barrett in more detail than you would expect to be tolerated by someone who easily could accelerate away from me. Barrett was unfamiliar with Leopold and how his environmental legacy was tied so closely to Wisconsin history, but was genuinely inquisitive about it.
Sunday, June 15, 2014
Downed trees slow progress
By David Horst sandhill7@gmail.com
We were facing one of our bigger challenges when we launched 36 boats one by one into the pool below the Germania Dam on the Mecan River north of Princeton.
The Mecan (pronounced MI-can) is a narrow trout stream through the wooded central Wisconsin countryside. It makes for beautiful scenery. But the erosion force of the river current, plus time, equals downed trees across the channel. In our case, that was true in quite a few places.
I was the first to arrive and had some time to commune with the Germania Marsh. The expansive 2,500-acre wetland is held in place by the simple, 55-year-old steel and concrete dam. An osprey joined me, hovering on fluttering wings, looking for breakfast.
 |
| See more photos |
The Mecan (pronounced MI-can) is a narrow trout stream through the wooded central Wisconsin countryside. It makes for beautiful scenery. But the erosion force of the river current, plus time, equals downed trees across the channel. In our case, that was true in quite a few places.
I was the first to arrive and had some time to commune with the Germania Marsh. The expansive 2,500-acre wetland is held in place by the simple, 55-year-old steel and concrete dam. An osprey joined me, hovering on fluttering wings, looking for breakfast.
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