Every Natural Fact - Amy Lou Jenkins

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the canvasback, they are especially tasty. As a result, their population plummeted during the first third of the twentieth century. They rebounded a bit when commercial market hunting of ducks was outlawed, but loss of habitat and pollution-induced changes in marsh vegetation have kept their numbers low.

      DJ thought the canvasbacks looked “tight.” Those of us who are too old to be tight might have used the word “cool” or “lovely.” He appreciated that the ducks always had this place to come to—a natural place. But Horicon hadn’t always been available to the wetland breeders who flourished here for over 15,000 years before European settlers took the land from the Sauk. Referring to a tourist newspaper and tapping my memory, I explained the history to DJ.

      Men fought bloody battles to take this land away from a tribe who came from an ancestry of people who lived as part of the ecosystem that flourished without any attempt to master or control the wetlands. Chief Black Hawk was the final Sauk leader to try to hold on the only life he knew by warring with the settlers. When he resigned himself to leaving his homeland in the 1830s, he said of the region, “Rock River was a beautiful county. I loved my towns, my cornfields, and the home of my people. I fought for it. It is now yours. Keep it as we did.”

      By 1846, the settlers had dammed the Rock River and turned the marsh into a fifty-square-mile lake, considered at the time to be the largest human-made lake in the world. Canvasbacks wouldn’t have nested here then; they need reeds like cattails to support their green eggs in a nest of flattened rushes. Farmers thought they could drain their marsh water into the lake, turning wetland to agricultural land. They found that the peat and moisture in the soil prohibited the growth of any root crops, and overall yields were low. Bass, pike, pickerel, bullhead, and musky were so prolific in the lake that farmers were said to dip baskets into the lake and pull up enough fish to feed their pigs. DJ snorted when I told him that the meat from these Horicon pigs wasn’t marketable; the pork tasted fishy. In 1869, hunters with little to shoot at, conservationists, and women’s groups all spoke up about the immorality of the losses in bird and duck populations. The dam came down. Horicon Marsh didn’t reappear as expected because the natural flooding systems, rivulets, land contours, and vegetation had been destroyed. Low water levels and exposed peat led to fires and more destruction. In 1930, after the legislature passed the Horicon Marsh Wildlife Refuge Bill, the State began to buy back more of the farmland and rebuild the Rock River Dam. They partially flooded the area to approximate the conditions existing before the meddling began. This natural marsh now requires constant vigilance, including managing water levels and burning the prairie in an attempt to mimic conditions that once came naturally to the water and land.

      Over the next two hours we inched across the half-mile-long boardwalk. DJ identified each bird species we saw: grebes, mergansers, great blue herons, and more. Above us, flocks flew in and out of our vision. We tried to count V-formations, but they converged and separated so we could only tell that there were more than twenty-two flocks in our sight at one time. Most were a series of dots, but some would fly close and land on the open water near us. While DJ counted Canada Geese, I did not have to remind myself that this male, my son, should not be held accountable for all the paternalistic power gone awry in the bygone years of Horicon, the world, or my life. And if he is innocent, I conjectured, there must be others.

      As soon as our feet crossed the threshold from boardwalk to trail, DJ announced, “I’m hungry.” Within a quarter mile he began the “Magic Toenail” song again, this time sharing that Alec from Scouts had taught him the song. When he approached the trunk of a large bur oak lying across the trail, he fell silent.

      “Over or around?” I asked, but he took a running start and leapt over it before I finished the question. I turned my back to the three-foot-wide trunk and sat down. “I can’t jump as high as you can. Let me think about what to do.”

      DJ handed me a bottle of water and unwrapped the first of two granola bars he held in his hand. He sat next to me, facing the way we would go, while I faced the way we’d come.

      Sitting with my hungry son reminded me of the day we missed our fish fry. It was during a vacation near Minocqua—a week of hiking, swimming, reading, and playing cards in a rustic cabin in the up-north Wisconsin woods. After about six days of togetherness, I was itchy to be alone and suggested I skip the Scheer’s Lumberjack Show to browse antique stores. The lumberjack aficionados agreed, recognizing they would miss the drudgery of going antiquing with me. After I dropped them at the Scheer’s grandstands, I drove out of town a few miles and back, just to enjoy my independence at the wheel. The touristy antique shops seemed too clean. Green paint on the handle of the potato ricer wasn’t original, and the amber Globe fruit jar’s clasp delivered a shine that could not have matched its age. Still, I enjoyed the search. By the second store, a shellacked log cabin that smelled of Pine Sol, a pattern emerged. Wives walked slowly, eyes intent on the shelves long after their husbands had tired of browsing remnants of country living and up-north tchotchkes.

      The men wore similar uniforms: polo shirts and pleated khaki shorts. Hands in pockets, they looked awkward, as if too big to stand comfortably among cranberry glass, porcelain dolls, spindly-legged tables, and tea cups in the stuffed shops that played loon calls on CD (available, of course, for purchase). By the third store, I was in love with the uncomfortable patience of these men. If Paul had come, he would also have simulated interest and then resolved himself to waiting while I finished shopping for unnecessaries. I picked up Paul and DJ from the show with only a few dollars’ worth of purchases but declared the shopping trip fun. The two-hour absence from my men and its revelations had sparked a renewed affection.

      We cleaned up for dinner and were looking forward to the fish fry. On the way, the air stilled, and the clouds in the west grew heavy. From the lobby of The Pines Restaurant, we stole lusty glances into the dining room at the plates of golden-fried lake perch and walleye while the sky darkened and the wind rushed around the shiny log building and through the stands of straining trees. Thunder began to crack in the distance, and we heard the clouds dropping lakes of water on the roof and against the windows. Just as we were seated, the lights went out. The waitress carried a candle in a lantern over to us and said they would not be serving. She invited us to go down to the basement shelter until the storm passed. We should have been worried about the storm and the wind, but we were thinking of food.

      The strong winds had diminished, but torrential rain drenched us as we hurried to the car by following a ray of light trembling from Paul’s flashlight keychain. We couldn’t find another restaurant. The storm had wiped out electricity everywhere. Lines of cars appeared at each road into the woods, and we didn’t understand the traffic jams on all the back roads. We joined a stalled procession of cars on the road to our cabin and waited while trucks and cars got in line behind us and confirmed our decision to stay in line. The cars didn’t move at all for about a half-hour, then we moved a quarter mile and stopped again. Men in khakis left their cars and walked ahead to check on the problem. Paul joined them. DJ and I stayed in the car and watched several ATVs roar by us on the shoulder of the road. We saw a pile of logs in a ditch and heard loud buzzing beyond our line of vision. Men with chainsaws hurried toward the action. DJ pressed his nose to the foggy car window and occasionally leaned back to wipe the condensation with his sleeve. Freshly drenched from the rain, Paul returned with dirty hands and clothes, explaining that trees were down all over the road. Many of the locals kept chainsaws in their trunks, so several men raced ahead to help clear logs, then hurried back to their cars to move ahead. They worked in warm, intermittently heavy rain. Paul brought news with each trip back to the car. “That one wasn’t bad—a clump birch. The hickory was so big it crossed the road, grazed a house, and took out a shed.”

      DJ ate the chocolate-covered craisins from my shopping bag and the Mentos mints from my purse. He asked several times to go out with his dad to cut and move the trees, but with all the rain, chainsaws, and men working, we held him back. Eventually, he fell asleep.

      I asked Paul If I should come out and help, but he said there were so many men at each felled tree that they had enough for an assembly line. “Stay here with DJ,” he said, “and keep dry.”

      At one of the barricades the road

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