Eighteenth Installment: The journey's end

I woke at 5 a.m., at the first sign of dawn, and switched on the small TV. The weather forecasts reported a major storm front lined up on the Minnesota/Wisconsin border, moving east rapidly. No forecast pinned down the exact time that the severe weather would arrive, but it sounded like it could reach Lake Butte des Morts by early afternoon. This final paddle of the trip would be about eleven miles, five of those miles on the very open water of that lake.

Lake Butte des Morts, named “Hill of the Dead” by the French for an nearby Indian burial mound¹, was large, about five miles long by three miles wide, or almost 14 square miles (36 square kilometers). Being shallow, the wind could quickly whip up large waves of short interval. One guide book was specific: “In windy or uncertain weather, Lake Butte des Morts is not safe for canoeing.”² It was imperative to start early so as to beat the worst weather. I did not have a “bomb proof” roll in case I got tipped – far from it, and I did not relish trying to right and reenter a loaded kayak on a storm tossed lake.

I had half packed the night before, and now, in the wan light of early dawn, I wolfed down the last of my power bars and quickly dressed. In a few minutes more the kayak was packed and I was wheeling it down to the boat launch. As the boat slid into the current, my watch said 6:10.

The last leg of my journey would end in Oshkosh, where the river entered Lake Winnebago. Winnebago, approximately 30 by 10 miles (48 by 16 km) is the largest lake in the United States contained entirely within a state. The lake is the terminus of the Upper Fox. The Lower Fox drains Lake Winnebago. Only 39 miles (63 km) long, the Lower Fox is a much larger, faster, and more developed river. It passes through half a dozen large cities and 17 locks while falling 164 feet (50 m) on its way to Green Bay, an arm of Lake Michigan.³

But here, on the last stretch of the Upper Fox, the river slowed and broadened as I went. By the second mile, marsh edged both sides, and roads, cottages, and homes disappeared. At about mile four, the Fox began to open into Lake Butte des Morts. Here the river skirted the 8,857 acre Nickels Marsh to the west. I paused and called my father on my cell phone. I told him to meet me in Oshkosh’s Rainbow Park in about two hours.

Dredging had formed a long breakwater along the east side of the Fox as it entered the lake. The channel and its wall continued for three quarters of a mile northeast into the lake. With each paddle stroke, the storm front built ever higher and darker behind me, sucking in a strong wind from the south east, the very point I needed to head into. So, I kept the break-wall close on the right. It provided some shelter from the wind.

Gulls covered the breakwater. As I passed each group, they broke into clamorous braying, announcing my progress as the channel slowly arched east. Roundeding the end of the wall, I found myself in the middle of the lake, the wind now blowing unimpeded across four miles of lake, which it was whipping into a short chop. The swells were running nearly two feet high, and the interval between waves was less than the length of my baidarka. The boat was most stable taking the wind and waves head on, but this meant constant, hard paddling for four miles right down the middle of the lake. The shores to the north and south were each a mile or more away. I felt awfully small and alone on a very big water.

The lashed framework of the hull rode and flexed over the waves like a living being. I made my profile low, leaned forward into each stroke, and kept in the rhythm of paddling. The blade work was constant as the wind was unrelenting. Spray from foaming wave tops soaked the deck and me. It took an hour and 40 minutes to cross the four miles of lake. I was spent by the time I passed under the Highway 41 Bridge and back into the river, heading just a mile further for Rainbow Park on the near-west side of Oshkosh. I arrived at 9:15.

I nosed the kayak onto the cement boat ramp. Hoisting myself out of the cockpit, I left the river for the last time this trip. One hundred miles traveled; eight warm June days behind me. The baidarka had proved that it belonged in the Fox, not hanging, beached high and dry, in my garage.

In his book from which my kayak was born, Wolfgang Brinck wrote: “Aleut kayaks of early construction had spirit … lines carved on the inside face of the gunwales. The spirit line is like the digestive tract, the circulatory system, and the nervous system of an animal all rolled into one. Since a kayak is a living thing, it needs a spirit line.”⁴ I too had carved a spirit line on my baidarka. And I had given it a journey. I hoped the journey had nourished it, allowed its spirit to taste life, to surge, arching joyfully, over every wave. The journey had nourished me too. When I was deep in the cockpit, the kayak riding low in the surface of the Fox, its gunwales barely breaking above the river’s skin, I felt the pulse of the river, felt the history, the time immemorial that it had flowed through the hearts and lives of the people along its banks.

In A River Runs through It, Norman Maclean wrote: “Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.”⁵ The Fox River, this river, had its own stories to tell. A few, those common and new, were shouted by the river. Most were whispered. I had to submerge myself in the waters to hear the murmurs. Sometimes the words were so soft that the tale was felt more than heard, like water sliding over the hull of my baidarka. Sometimes I had to look under the rocks for the words. But they were there - the words of the Fox, the stories of timeless, quiet beauty - and they haunted me.

I pulled my baidarka from the Fox. I draped my gear over the pavilion‘s tables, and waited for my father. He arrived at 10:30 a.m., cheerful and obviously full of questions about the trip. Always a welcome sight, he had come just in time, as the first drops of rain began to fall.


1. Kort, Ellen. The Fox Heritage: A History of Wisconsin’s Fox Cities, at page 25. Windsor Publishing, October 1984.

2. Svob, Mike, and Elizabeth McBride. Paddling Northern Wisconsin: 82 Great Trips by Canoe and Kayak, at page 16. Trails Books, 1998.

3. Wikipedia. Fox River (Wisconsin). Revised October 5, 2011. Accessed October 29, 2011. http://www.omro-wi.com/a-brief-history-of-omro.html.

4. Brinck, Wolfgang. The Aleutian Kayak: Origins, Construction, and Use of the Traditional Seagoing Baidarka, at page 61. Ragged Mountain Press, April 1, 1995.

5. Maclean, Norman. A River Runs Through It and Other Stories. University of Chicago Press, May 1976.

Seventeenth Installment: Omro rises from the pages

It was a sunny, sweltering 90 degrees. I had landed in the west end of Omro, at a wooden boat ramp. From there it was a half-mile hike through downtown and then uphill to the Ramble Inn Motel*. I trudged along, but an air-conditioned Subway restaurant in mid-downtown, wafting the smell of fresh-baked bread, drew me off course. I parked the baidarka and stepped into the cool air to order lunch.

Still, it was a beautiful day in a new town, and I had been in plenty of Subway restaurants before. So, I got my sandwich to go, and lots and lots of ice for my large lemonade, and headed for Scott Park, a shady refuge from the heat of downtown Omro.

Reached by a bridge from Main Street, Scott Park occupied a canoe-shaped island in the Fox. I took in the city as I ate. The downtown looked like it had had a facelift, and some businesses were new. The park was updated. Some vitality was on display. I decided to come back downtown after checking into the motel to learn more about this small city with an even smaller name.

The Ramble Inn, according to the sign out front on Highway 21, was under new management. The cluttered office was claustrophobically the size of a porch, which it had been in a former life, and the air conditioner was not holding its own. The décor was 70s - dark brown carpeting and trim, white counters and walls, and plastic plants. It was soon apparent that the new management had not yet ironed out all the wrinkles of running a first class establishment.

The owner ran my credit card repeatedly without success. As the minutes passed and the heat in the too-close office got unbearable, I asked if perhaps someone else was tying up the phone line. The hotelier’s eyes lit up. Muttering “John”, he dashed out to the row of small motel rooms facing the highway to get “John” off the phone. The single phone line cleared, the owner returned and finished checking me in. He said the only other guests were two men making a cross-country motorcycle trip, and a couple older men renting by the week. The long-term guests were sitting outside one of their rooms drinking beer, looking as worn out as the motel.

The room was recently posted as non-smoking, but prior years of smokers had permeated the walls, carpet and furniture with the stale odor of old cigarette smoke. The traffic areas of the carpet seemed clean, but the edges were frosted with dirt and dust. The bathroom and the TV were both small relics of another decade. But the air conditioner and shower worked, the bed was not too soft, and the sheets were clean. That was all I really cared about.

After unpacking and showering, I crossed Highway 21 to the Fat Cats Drive-in for a chocolate milk shake. (What could be better after a morning of paddling.) It was a 50s-style drive-in, with a walk-up window to order from. You could then eat in your car, or, like me, sit at a picnic bench. A large water park lay to the north down the slope, between the drive-in and the river. Having slurped up the last drop of the shake, I strolled downtown.

Omro was located on lands that, at the time of the first French explorers, belonged to the Ho-Chunk Indians. By the mid-1830’s, the Ho-Chunk had ceded their land to the United States government and were relocated west of the Mississippi.¹ They did not lose the land for lack of love, stewardship or need. They gave way reluctantly and for too small a price in the face of overwhelming technology, a much more numerous race, and that people’s greed for wealth. Louise Phelps Kellogg reports in her Early Narratives of the Northwest 1634-1699 an Indian saying: “For us this river was a path. For our white brethren, to whom we sold it, it is a power.”²

Down near the river, by Scott Park, was a small public library where I discovered a fat three-ring binder with over 300 type-written pages of local history compiled by Miriam J. Smith, a 96 year-old woman, between 1970 and 1976. Reading it was like sitting around a kitchen table with friends, swapping stories heard long ago from parents and grandparents. I read of two brothers from Ohio who traveled from Green Bay to nearby Oshkosh in 1836. They made their way on Indian paths along the Fox, following sketchy directions from the scattered traders, settlers and Indians they met along the way. I learned that Charles Omreau, a French fur trader and black smith, settled in what is now Omro, bequeathing his name, albeit Anglicized, to the city.

Omro was founded in 1842, became a village in 1849, and finally a city in 1944. By 1853 it had a population of 600. Located on the south bank of the Fox, it had 100 dwellings, five stores, two hotels and three mills. Being on the Fox, and at the junction of two important plank roads, it was a commercial center. The village had grown to 2,000 people, adding a glass factory and several carriage factories.³ Miriam wrote of steamboats that ran through Omro, and that by 1880 there was a rail stop. The county fair was held in Omro.

In 1896, the village built a hall and firehouse with a four-story tower. Made of a pale-pink brick in the Late Victorian style, it was the village’s crown. However, the nearby city of Oshkosh, with its thriving lumber business, began to dominate commercially, and eventually the mills and factories of Omro relocated or closed.⁴ The notes in the binder said that the steamboat passenger service ended in 1902. I had read in another source that in Cady’s Bayou, between Eureka and Omro, some fifty steamboats “met a humiliating end”, being broken up for firewood.⁵

But the city began a new growth spurt in the 1970s, expanding from its static population of around 2,000 to about 3,400 residents today.⁶ The city web site said that Omro started a revitalization program in 1986, and claimed: “Through projects such as the historic walking tour, the Scott Park pavilion project, and the designation of a historic downtown district, [the city] is paying homage to its past even as it builds for the future.”⁷ So, Omro was trying to be something other than bayous I passed in the morning - a backwater. Still, it seemed the glory days were gone, leaving only ghosts - an elegant village hall, an old woman’s memories, Indian stories.

Finished with reading and musing, I returned to Fat Cats for dinner, eating my meal at a picnic table shaded by the building from the still blazing sun. As I ate, I turned my thoughts to tomorrow, the last paddle on the journey. It would be eleven miles to Oshkosh, at least five of which would be through Lake Butte des Morts, the largest and most dangerous lake of the trip.

* The name of the motel has been changed.


1. Hoocak Waaziija Haci Language Division (a division of the Ho-Chunk Nation). The Ho-Chunk Nation - A Brief History. Accessed July 9, 2011. http://www.hocak.info/mysite/HTM%20All/Ho-Chunk%20history.html.

2. Kellogg, Louise Phelps. Early narratives of the Northwest, 1634-1699. C. Scribners's sons, 1917.

3. Wikipedia. Omro, Wisconsin. Revised September 29, 2011. Accessed November 3, 2011. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omro,_Wisconsin.

4. Id.

5. Svob, Mike, and Elizabeth McBride. Paddling Northern Wisconsin: 82 Great Trips by Canoe and Kayak, at page 15. Trails Books, 1998.

6. The City of Omro. A Brief History of Omro …. Accessed July 10, 2011. http://www.omro-wi.com/a-brief-history-of-omro.html.

7. Id.


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Sixteenth Installment: Meander from Berlin to Omro

I slept a sound seven hours in the motel, waking at 5:30 a.m. A continental breakfast was set out in the hotel lobby, which I ate while watching the weather, which would be hot again. Best to start early. So I retrieved the baidarka from the utility shed, repacked it, and wheeled it half a mile back to Badger Mineral. I was on the Fox by 7:11. Seven days' practice had made me efficient.

The river was now broad and sluggish. Leaving Berlin, I passed Riverside Park, peaceful and graceful, with grassy slopes and weeping willows hanging over the water. The river mirrored the trees and sky. The willows and stately cottonwoods lining the bank were reflected perfectly, their reflections spangled with thousands of cottonwood seed tufts floating on the surface. I love cottonwoods despite their blizzard of snow-like seeds. Tall, with thick straight trunks, they were intimately connected with the Lewis and Clark expedition to the Pacific Ocean, supplying tree trunks that the explorers fashioned into dugout canoes.¹

Cottages now dotted the river's shore, and for the first time on the trip there were year-round homes. The homes were placed further inland than the cottages, as if owners could not quite choose between the infrastructure of roads and utilities connecting them to the workaday world, and the isolation of the banks of the Fox. The homes all had neat, mown lawns running down to the shore. Dairy farms also appeared here and there, with their red, gambrel-roofed barns and tall concrete silos.

It was day seven, with a fifteen-mile trip to Omro, Wisconsin, and I was tired. My right elbow and shoulder had mild tendonitis. This I had to grin and bear. I had been taking Ibuprofen (Vitamin I, as Paul from the climbing gym calls it), but quit after it caused acid reflux. My lower back was sore from the constant paddling and irritated from rubbing the cockpit coaming. And each day my backside cramped up from the confined position in the lightly padded seat. (Too much padding in a kayak raises the center of gravity, making the boat easier to tip. A sore behind is better than a soaking.) A saving grace was the carbon-fiber Greenland-style paddle that I was using. Manufactured by Superior Kayaks, it was a beauty to behold, fit my hands well, was efficient, and was as light as a feather.

The route was west northwest toward Omro. Near the halfway point there was a portage around the Eureka Lock and Dam. The take-out point was obvious. The put-in spot downstream was not. Improvising, I rolled the kayak past the abandoned lockkeeper’s house and down a long drive following the river. After going an eigth of a mile, I found a gravel embankment low enough that I could lower the boat into the water and reenter while using a paddle-brace against the bank. While this portage took longer than planned, being out of the boat, stretching muscles and getting the blood flowing again was a great relief.

Several miles farther downstream were the small village of Eureka and the lift bridge for County Highway K. The bridge, steel girders painted a dull gray-blue, looked as if it had been pieced together out of some giant's child’s erector set, and had an odd, art nouveau, sculptural look. The pivot point was to my right, and the girders swept up there in a great arch to encompass the enormous counter weights. I stopped just beyond the bridge on a concrete pier to eat a power bar and trail mix.

Somewhere along this stretch of the Fox once stood a great palisaded city of several thousand Mascouten Indians, the city that Nathan Strong had heard about. An Algonquin-speaking tribe, in about 1600 it had been forced west into Wisconsin by other tribes. They were a small band, and for self-protection associated with the Fox and Kickapoo tribes along the Fox River.² The city was visited by French explorers, including Allouez and Joliet.³ The intertribal peace did not last long. By 1665, the Iroquois drove the Mascoutens out of the Fox River valley. They either resettled in Illinois and Michigan, or were absorbed into other tribes.⁴ Now, along the Fox only their story remains, their city’s site gone from maps and memory.

With the stronger current and no wind, I averaged three knots even though I paddled only in spurts, interspersed with pleasant periods of drifting and enjoying the sights and sounds of the river. Much of the landscape was the familiar sandy spoil banks overgrown with silver maple, cottonwood, willow and ash. The topography along this section of the Fox was flat, and the stream meandered. Every mile or so was a bayou formed from a former bend of the river, some nearly a mile in length.

A female mallard at the entry of one slough herded twenty tiny ducklings through the water. Three drakes floated nearby, not lifting a feather to help. In contrast, I later saw a pair of Canadian geese working together to lead their brood of goslings off the river and up the bank as I approached. I also came across a red-tailed hawk on the marshy edge of an embayment, splashing in the water rather than soaring overhead or perched on a tree. An agitated merganser hen was paddling back and forth nearby. The hawk may have just pounced on one of her brood. My last bird sighting was just outside of Omro where I spotted an osprey or eagle nest atop a telephone pole. The head of a fledgling could be seen, calling with all its might for its next meal.

I entered Omro at half past noon and landed at a wooden boat ramp upstream from downtown. From there it would be a half-mile walk in the 90 degree heat through downtown Omro to the Ramble Inn Motel.


1. Lloyd, Kathy. Black Cottonwood. Montana Native Plant Society. Lewis and Clark Plant Information - Species Specific Series. Accessed November 5, 2011. http://www.mtnativeplants.org/Lewis_%26_Clark_Plant_Information.

2. Sultzman, Lee. Mascouten History. Accessed July 9, 2011. http://www.dickshovel.com/mas.html.

3. Svob, Mike, and Elizabeth McBride. Paddling Northern Wisconsin: 82 Great Trips by Canoe and Kayak, at page 15. Trails Books, 1998.

4. Sultzman, Lee. Id.


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Fifteenth Install: Looking for jollification in Berlin, Wisconsin

I wheeled my kayak, as if it were Detroit’s finest sedan, into the entryway of Berlin’s Best Western Motel. At the front desk, Melissa was helpful and sympathetic, listening patiently to my tired babbling, and saying nothing about how I smelled after a hot day of paddling. When asked about the safe-keeping of my baidarka, Melissa helped me store the boat in the motel’s utility shed. She was amazed at how much stuff was jammed into the boat. Solicitously, she remarked that there was a hot tub for the guests. As I had no swimsuit, she produced a pair of “disposable” trunks from under the reception desk. They were six dollars, and one size fit all, which really meant that they were many sizes too big for me. Melissa was fascinated by the paper-like material, but I was skeptical about their opaqueness and politely declined the trunks and the hot tub.

After a long shower and washing out my paddling clothes, I crashed on the bed for an hour. Rousing myself at four, I walked downtown. Most shops were closing, but I was able to get an ice cream at La-Vern & Shirley’s Old Fashioned Ice Cream Parlor. Overhead were large globe lights and an old-style ceiling fan. Glass cases displayed the ice cream. Small, round-topped tables were supported by tubular, chrome legs. The floor was a checkerboard of large black and white tiles. With the addition of modern air-conditioning, it was an interesting respite from the very hot day.

Berlin has a shrinking population of about 5,000. The city began unofficially in June 1846. The previous winter Nathan Strong and three other men had explored this area of the Fox River, looking for a crossing point for the Fond du Lac to Stevens Point road being planned by territorial authorities. They knew there had been a large settlement of Mascouten Indians near this area of the river and suspected a possible crossing place in the otherwise marshy land. They found such a spot, and in June of 1846, Strong returned to start a ferry in what is now Berlin. He was soon joined by other settlers and the city was officially formed in 1847.¹ Originally known as Strong’s Landing, the first postmaster changed the name to Berlin, pronounced (since World War I) with the accent on the first syllable.² I could not confirm my guess that there was a connection between the name and the fact that 46% of the residents claim German ancestry.³

The mid- to late-1800’s were the heyday of steamboat traffic in Berlin. Following one memorable passenger excursion, the local newspaper reported: “One-half the passengers were drunk, three-quarters feeling good, nine-tenths brimming over with fun and frolic, and the whole so jam full of jollification and lager beer that they didn’t know which way they were looking ….”⁴ The city’s growth peaked in the late 1890s, with a population close to what it is today. Many of the city’s fine Victorian homes were built then. The city is still known for those homes, lovingly called “painted ladies“, and also for its fur and leather trade.⁵ But I found no “jollification”; only a sleepy city under a hot afternoon sun.

Wandering back toward the motel, I found a place to eat – Shepard’s Drive-In. My fellow diners were all people of significant girth. One, a young man in a dirty tee shirt that barely covered his beer belly, ordered his “usual” – a double burger and large fries. Two women placed a huge order, and every non-drink item they requested was fat-fried. The next person in line ordered a vanilla cone dipped in cherry topping. I ordered a hamburger - the Shepard’s-special, a small fries, and lemonade. I ate outside in the shade of a tree, and then played the miniature golf course behind the drive-in. I finished way over par.

Returning to the hotel, I boosted up the air conditioning, sprawled across the bed, and watched TV until bed time. Tomorrow, Tuesday, the seventh day of the trip, would be another long paddle, this time to the city of Omro.


1. Wisconsin Historical Society. Wisconsin Local History and Biography Articles: Berlin Journal - Early History of Our Town, May 12, 1921. http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/wlhba/searchresults.asp?adv=yes&np=Berlin+Journal.

2. Wikipedia. Berlin, Wisconsin. Revised October 22, 2011. Accessed November 5, 2011. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin,_Wisconsin.

3. Citydata.com. Berlin, Wisconsin. Revised 2011. Accessed June 2011. http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/wlhba/searchresults.asp?adv=yes&np=Berlin+Journal.

4. Svob, Mike, and Elizabeth McBride. Paddling Northern Wisconsin: 82 Great Trips by Canoe and Kayak, at page 15. Trails Books, 1998.

5. The City of Berlin, Wisconsin. About Berlin. Accessed June 15, 2011. http://www.cityofberlin.net/modules/web/index.php/id/1/Berlin%20Wisconsin.


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Fourteenth Installment: Seventeen miles to Berlin

I reached Princeton’s Hiestand Park by 8:20, headed for Berlin, Wisconsin. I had already paddled 55 miles, but now, at seventeen miles, this leg would be the longest paddle of the trip. A stronger current helped, but the wind was both friend and foe. Coming out of the northwest, it built all day until by noon it was whipping up small chop on the more exposed sections of the river. Occasionally, I had it to my back and it pushed me along, but five times the Fox meandered to the northwest and I had to paddle into the teeth of the wind. Most of the time the wind quartered the kayak, catching the bow, forcing it to starboard and necessitating correction strokes on that side to stay on course. It was hot, too – in the 80s. As the morning wore on, storm clouds built with the heat. I kept to a steady pace of 3 knots.

I landed the kayak three times during the seventeen miles to stretch and rest: first at the park-like White River Lock and Dam, constructed in the 1850s; next, at noon for lunch on a sandy river bank beyond the Puchyan River junction; and finally at the Berlin Lock and Dam, just a mile above Berlin itself.

There were no people at my first two stops, nor were there many on the river, so I had the Fox pretty much to myself. Along the way, I saw a great blue heron perched on an old snag. An eagle soared overhead just before my noon stop. And shortly after my lunch break, I came upon a doe. She looked up from drinking in the river as I drifted down on her. Staying as still as possible, I got within 35 feet before she gave a nimble, twisting leap over the bank and was gone. Later, I surprised two sand hill cranes along the shore.

I heard the cranes long before I saw them, their prehistoric cacophony epitomizing for me the power and mystery of nature. Aldo Leopold wrote that cranes are “wildness incarnate”.¹ Another native Wisconsin naturalist, Ron Sauey, co-founded the International Crane Foundation in 1973. Located on his parents’ horse farm just north of Baraboo, the Foundation hosts all 15 of the world’s cranes species, and has been instrumental in protecting and reviving natural populations throughout the globe.²

The river’s isolated banks, almost pure sand in this stretch, were inviting to wildlife such as the cranes and deer. The silver maples along the banks had shallow, spreading root systems, easily eroded by undercutting of the shore. Where exposed, they formed intricately woven root-baskets fifteen feet or more across. The land bordering the river was marshy, and to the west, along the Fox’s confluence with the White River, lay the extensive White River Wildlife Area. Later, at about mile eight, the Puchyan River entered from the east. It drained Green Lake, the deepest lake in Wisconsin, plunging to an astounding depth of 239 feet.³ A vast marsh surrounding the Puchyan stretched out to the east of the Fox. No roads could approach the Fox for the next three miles, and there were no more boat landings until near Berlin.

I had paddled this section of the Fox before in my baidarka accompanied by Linda, her husband, a friend and their dog, all crowded into one canoe. We had also started at Hiestand Park, but planned to take out at the point where Huckleberry Road came closest to the river – just before the long, empty stretch below the Puchyan River. According to both maps we were using, there was a takeout there. We had no back-up plan, as it was seven more miles to the next boat landing, and Linda and her husband were exhausted from paddling the overloaded canoe.

However, upon arrival we had found barbed wire stretched across the landing, festooned with "No trespassing" signs every five feet. We could see a man in the yard across the road from the landing. I politely called to him for permission to land our two little boats, but he barked back that we had better not set one foot on his land. There was no arguing with him. So we drifted down to his neighbor’s property, the last home for the next three miles. We could see the man, but not be seen ourselves, or so we thought. When he went indoors, we got out on the spongy bank at the property line, carefully walked our boats out along the line, met our ride on the road, and drove back to Princeton for lunch. Linda’s husband announced over coffee that he was pretty sure the landowner had followed us back to town in his pickup truck. We had a long discussion about how strange the whole incident had been.

The next night a deputy sheriff called me. Using our ride’s license plate to identify us, the landowner had reported us as trespassers. From the deputy, I learned that several years earlier the man had discovered that he owned the thin slice of land between the river and the highway. He had been to court four times to establish his right to shut down the long-running boat landing there, zealously enforcing his rights. I confessed to the deputy, explaining that we had no good alternative to the “trespassing”. The sympathetic deputy had been fielding complaints from the property owner for years and said he would drop the whole matter if we would pledge to never get out there again. I assured him that getting out there again was the farthest thing from our minds.

As I passed this second time, the "No trespassing" signs were still hanging from the barbed wire, flapping back and forth in the wind, waving me past and on toward Berlin.

At the Berlin Lock and Dam, a motorcycle policeman rode in. (Law enforcement officers seem to be closely associated with my travels of this stretch of the Fox.) I asked if he would mind taking a picture of me paddling the baidarka. The officer was happy to do so, and as I showed him the camera, a man joined us from a minivan that had been parked alongside the boat launch. He turned out to be a friend of the officer as well as the president of the 1st National Bank of Berlin. I explained my trip to both of them, and then took the boat out into the river for the picture.

After sculling up to the landing to retrieve my camera, I asked where I should get out in Berlin so as to be closest to the Best Western Motel that I would stay at that night. The officer and the bank president had a long discussion and concluded that I should not paddle all the way into Berlin. My motel was on the south end of the city, and it would be over a mile from the park that I had planned to get out at. Instead, they suggested the Badger Mineral property just south of the city limits. It had a boat launch and would be less than half a mile from there to the motel. Soon I found the landing, off a little slough. It was 2 p.m.


1. Van Horn, Kent. “Wilderness Incarnate: Sandhill Cranes are a Conservation Success“. Wisconsin Natural Resources Magazine, October 2011.

2. The International Crane Foundation. The International Crane Foundation: The History. Accessed October 31, 2011. .

3. Wikipedia. Green Lake (Wisconsin). Revised March 3, 2011. Accessed October 21, 2011. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Lake_(Wisconsin).


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Thirteenth Installment: Match Making in Princeton

I walked the kayak down the broad, mown ditch of Highway 23 to Marsh’s Landing, about ¼ mile from the lodge. The landing nestled in a break in the bluff along the Fox River. As I coasted along the day before, I had noticed the quiet, grassy inlet. That afternoon, Leanne Harvey mentioned the inlet as one of the places they launched canoes, and she obtained permission for me to start my Sunday paddle from there. I was not the only Sunday user, as I had to compete with a two foot-long water snake for the launch site.

The river was a little narrower now, and the current a bit stronger. At a leisurely pace, the first two and a half miles passed in an hour, taking me to what was marked on my map as a large, marshy, hairpin loop of the river. Only after paddling to a dead end did I realize that since the making of the map, the river had cut through the loop at its base and filled in the far outlet with the eroded soil. I had to retrace my route, but it was graced with waterlilies floating like white candles on the limpid gray-green water.

Half a mile farther downstream was the long portage at the Princeton Lock and Dam, the half-way point for my six-mile Sunday paddle. I examined the kayak while making the portage. It was holding up well. Before the trip, I found a split rib and had splinted it with a spare oak dowel, lashing them together and then wrapping them with duct tape. The repair had held. Many other ribs in the mid-section had shifted - up to an inch - in their lashings, responding to the pressure points of where I sat or moved. The baidarka was designed to adjust just that way. The canvas skin was scraped and nicked, but there were no leaks, an equally apt descrition of my own state on the fifth day of paddling.

Besides being narrower, the Fox was now often dominated on one side by a high, sandy bluff, the opposite shore being the low spoil bank from years of dredging, beyond which stretched marshes. Silver maples predominated, joined by locust, ash or cottonwood. One cottonwood had snapped during the storm, collapsing at an angle into the river, necessitating a wide swing around it. Here and there willows grew. An especially large willow at one of the infrequent cottages wept a curtain of branches into the river.

As I neared Princeton, Sunday morning church bells rang out. In the further distance rifle shots resounded from a shooting range. Religion and guns - how American.

I arrived in Princeton at 11:30, sweeping through the backside of the downtown and getting out at Hiestand Park, just below the Highway 23 Bridge. I had read that on May 20th, fifteen fifth graders from Neshkoro Elementary School had sampled the life of a voyageur. Recreating a 1762 trip by the Northwest Fur Company, they boarded a 28 foot-long wooden voyageur canoe at Hiestand Park for a three-mile maiden voyage down the Fox River.¹ Had fur-trading voyageurs stopped at the park site 250 years ago?

Princeton was settled in the mid-1800s by pioneers drawn to the Pleasant Valley township, and grew during the free-wheeling days of the steamboat. My favorite tale from then was of Captain Robert Booth, determined to reach the city in his Lone Star steamer despite darkness and high water. Sensing that the boat had left the channel, Booth cut the engine only to hear a farmer shouting angrily: “What do you think you’re doing in my pasture?” to which Booth yelled back: “Why in hell didn’t you keep your gate shut?” Then, changing his tone, he persuaded the farmer to guide the Lone Star back to the Fox, and the steamboat reached Princeton safely.²

The city was still vibrant with 1,500 residents and specialty shops, fine restaurants, antiques stores, and riverside terraces. I wheeled the kayak through downtown toward Emmy's Lord Byron Bed and Breakfast on Maple Street*, my home for the night. It was near noon and I had not had any breakfast. One of the first places I came to on Water Street, the main street through downtown, was the Once in a Blue Moon Café. I parked the baidarka on the sidewalk below the restaurant’s windows and flower boxes, and went in for a lunch of Thai chicken wrap, with fresh strawberry pie for dessert. The kayak attracted curious passersby. Two old men gave it a real going over until their wives dragged them off for shopping.

I continued on to the bed and breakfast, a lovely, little Victorian house with two cement lions guarding the front walk, and turned-wood spindles framing the porch. Just as at the lodge, I was the only guest. There were four bedrooms upstairs, each with a private bath. I chose the light-green room - the least frilly of the four. Emmy was the enthusiastic and inquisitive proprietress. Before I knew it, we were talking about my legal work, including divorce law. Emmy eventually pried out of me that I, myself, was recently divorced.

After showering, I headed back downtown. I went first to Strong’s Landing, an antique shop. Items were organized by theme, era and style into rooms and settings, mostly expensive Victorian pieces. However, I found a Japanese print of irises and ducks, matted in silk with a gold frame. The whole affect was simple but elegant. A reproduction rather than an antique, it was only $45, so I bought it. The shop owner promised to deliver it to my office, as it certainly would have looked odd strapped to the back of my baidarka. Among the other shops I stopped at was the N Gallery. I spoke to Nick, the owner, whose path to opening the N Gallery was long and circular. He had left Princeton as a young man to study at the New York American Culinary Institute. That training took him to a job in Seattle, where, through a friend, he became interested in glass art, which lead to the making of fine jewelry. Family and available funding brought him back to Princeton to open his shop. I bought a simple but unique necklace.

Dinner was at JJ’s Supper Club around the corner from the bed and breakfast. The diners were families and senior citizens, including Harry. In his 70’s, Harry sailed through the dining room with a rolling gait. He tacked from table to table, zigzagging across the room, loudly hailing everyone he knew, which was almost the whole crowd. After working the dining room, he jibed off into the bar where he sang a lusty, off-key Happy Birthday to a red-faced woman.

After a good night’s sleep, I went down for a hearty breakfast. As Emmy served me she took a telephone call, slipping into the kitchen with the phone. When she returned, she seemed a little flustered, but tried to make conversation. She remarked that I had been out all Sunday afternoon, and wanted to hear what I had been up to. So, I ran through Sunday’s exploration of Princeton, including the shopping. Emmy asked if the necklace was for a daughter. I answered: “No. It is for a woman that I have begun to see.“ There was a long silence. Then Emmy sat down in a chair and became confessional. “I don’t know why I am telling your this. You will think that I am wacky.” And then she proceeded to tell me.

After talking to me on Sunday, Emmy was so sure that I was a perfect match for her ex-sister-in-law Marcia that she called her. She talked Marcia into letting her give me her e-mail address. The next door neighbor, Elsie, had been recruited into the match-making scheme too. The telephone call was Elsie asking if Emmy had told me about Marcia yet. The attempt to fix me up with Marcia was sweet, and I was sure that Marcia was nice, but I had to disappoint Emmy and politely decline.

Having escaped potential matrimony, and with a very nice English-style breakfast in my stomach, I wheeled my baidarka back through downtown Princeton to Hiestand Park. My next destination was Berlin, Wisconsin, about 17 miles further down the Fox.

* Certain names of people and places have been changed to respect the privacy of individuals.


1. See Fox of the River Voyager Canoe LLC, .

2. Svob, Mike, and Elizabeth McBride. Paddling Northern Wisconsin: 82 Great Trips by Canoe and Kayak, at page 13. Trails Books, 1998.


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Twelth Installment: The Mecan Lodge

The Mecan River Lodge van plucked me from the rain-muddied bank of the Mecan River and whisked me off to the lodge and restaurant. The complex was built in 1994 by Paul and Leanne Harvey and their family. The lodge was laid up from nearly 300 logs of hand-peeled red and white pine that the Harveys cut from their own land. A 35 foot-tall fieldstone fireplace dominated the great room, a restaurant opened off one side, and a bar and store off the other. Five suites for lodgers filled the upstairs. The Harveys also offered canoe and kayak rental out of an out building.

The first order of business was cleanup. I washed all the river muck off the kayak and stored it for the night on a boat rack behind the lodge. I sorted out my gear and dragged most of it up to my room. I washed out what I could, including my damp, foul paddling clothes. The gear was soon hung from every available hook and peg in the room. By the time I finished, the log-walled room looked like an old trapper’s cabin.

I was the only guest that night. It was early in the season. I did not lack for attention, and the Harveys made me feel at home. Paul and Leanne ran the lodge with help from two daughters and their son Mike. Mike was about 24 and his oldest sister, Michelle, was 32. I did not get the name or age of the other daughter, who was off taking care of her newborn. Paul and Leanne’s kids had already given them six grandchildren, including the most recent three – all born within two months of each other that spring.

Sitting out on the veranda, I also met Gray Cat. (The Harveys were straightforward in naming their animals.) She checked me out, and I was soon her newest rubbing post. She couldn’t get enough rubbing, petting, and scratching behind the ears and batted with her right paw whenever I ignored her too long. Her brother, Black Cat, was not as social. He stayed away, slinking through the yard after birds.

Later Leanne and Michelle joined me on the veranda. They told me the tale of the near demise of the springs feeding the Mecan River. It was a tale of a close encounter with an international water-bottling corporation that I will call Pure Flow.

The Mecan, thanks in part to the springs, was a first-rate trout stream, and a joy to canoe or kayak. The State of Wisconsin owned the land upon which its springs arose, and during Governor Thompson’s administration, the state entered into negotiations to sell the land to Pure Flow, which planned to drill into the springs’ aquifer and aggressively pump out 270,000 gallons a day. They would ship the water out by the tanker-full.

None of this was public knowledge until a state worker leaked news of the deal to a former Department of Natural Resources employee who recognized the enormity of the environmental consequences. He went public, and soon a grass roots organization of farmers, environmentalists, fishermen, outdoor enthusiasts, and other citizens, including the Harveys, rose up in opposition.

This organization, Waterkeepers of Wisconsin, weighed in against the sale, held successful referenda against the well in affected communities, and raised enough money to hire a hydrologist. It also brought in a rabid Pure Flow opponent from Florida who funished aerial pictures from every Pure Flow site in the country showing graphically the negative environmental impacts of pumping. The Harvey’s said that she was such a thorn in Pure Flow’s side that they tried to have her thrown out of every public hearing. Between the hydrologist’s research and the Florida woman’s files, the group soon had credible proof of the potential harm and enough questions on Pure Flow to get local and national news coverage. Soon the sale was politically untenable, and Pure Flow slunk off to suck someone else’s water.

The implication that Governor Thompson would destroy an environmental system for the sake of a private economic interest contrasted sharply with one of his predecessors – Governor Gaylord Nelson. Another Wisconsin-born environmentalist, Gaylord Nelson was a principal founder of Earth Day in 1970.¹ He rejected the suggestion that economic development should take precedence over environmental protection: “The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not the other way around.”² The whole story put in mind what Mahatma Gandhi once said: “[The earth offers] enough for everybody’s need, but not enough for anybody's greed.”³

With the tale done, the draining of my bottle of beer, and the setting of the sun, I retired to my room and was soon asleep, but not for long. Early Sunday morning, about 1:30 a.m., a thunderstorm rolled in, waking me with a brilliant lightning flash and nearly simultaneous thunderclap. Rain beat on the windows and the wind roared through the pines. It did not last long, as it raced across central Wisconsin, and by the time I woke again, at 6 a.m., the sky was clear.

I found that I was the only one in the still dark, locked lodge. My room key opened the main door and I let myself out. It was an hour and a half until the complimentary breakfast, so I spent my time packing the kayak and watching birds in the garden. A male ruby-throated hummingbird perched on the top-most leader of a little pine. As it turned, its breast caught the early morning sun, and its red throat patch flashed like a brake light. To reside in the environs of the lodge he must have been very wily, for Black Cat was a reputedly relentless and unrepentant bird-stalker.

At 7:55, just as I was sitting down to breakfast, the storm played one last trick. The lights flickered, and we lost all power. It must have been a storm-stressed limb finally crashing through a power line, or a delayed chain reaction in the power grid after a night of power surges and blown transformers. Slowly all the Harveys and the kitchen help gathered in the window-lit bar. Luanne called a lineman friend to confirm that the power company was repairing the outage. But that work would be too late for me. No power meant no breakfast. Michelle gave me a Coke, and Paul adjusted down my bill before I left.

I could reach the Fox River via a short walk down Highway 23, and then the little city of Princeton via the Fox, so I set off rolling my kayak along.



1. Nelson, Gaylord. Beyond Earth Day: Fulfilling the Promise. Wisconsin Press, November 2002.

2. Id.

3. Nilsson, Hans. Leonardo Energy website: “There is enough for everybody’s need, but not enough for anybody’s greed”. April 4, 2008. Accessed November 5, 2011. .


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