Sixth Installment: In the environs of Endeavor

Now, a mile west of Packwaukee Islandthe, I followed the Fox as it looped into Buffalo Lake, which is ten miles long and very narrow. It looks uncannily like the large intestine. But those ten miles would be tomorrow’s paddle. The Village of Endeavor was my goal today.

Endeavor lies at the upper end of the lake. If I can continue with the anatomy lesson, the upper end of the lake looked like a stomach, with the Fox entering as the esophagus in the upper right corner of the stomach. Endeavor sat a quarter mile away, at the base of the stomach. The river channel has shifted away from Endeavor over the years, and now the village is guarded by shallow water and thick lines of lake weeds and water lilies. I swung far to the west to flank these defenses and reach the muddy boat landing. It was 3 p.m. I had covered 15 miles from Portage in about six hours, with two stops.

Known originally as Merritt’s Landing, the village was renamed Endeavor on August 7, 1890, in honor of the Methodist youth group of that name. Methodists had conducted an enthusiastic tent revival in the village that year, so successful that they immediately founded a Christian academy on the hill overlooking the village and Buffalo Lake. The Academy flourished for a number of decades, and then diminished until it closed in 1925. In 1931, the building passed to the community and became the local high school. Now, shorn of its gabled third floor, it houses the village hall and library. Even without its gables it could be seen from the lake for miles.

Susan*, a lovely woman from the village, had agreed to put me up overnight. When I had checked out Endeavor in the spring, I found a sleepy community of about 150 households, but no lodging for visitors. I located Susan by calling the only realtor in the village, who put me in touch with the Village President, Ken, who recruited Susan, an artist of an independent and Bohemian bent, who had once run a bed and breakfast. Susan called me in May with an invitation to stay overnight in her partially finished basement.

Address in hand, and rolling my baidarka along on its strapped-on front wheels, I found my way to her cream-colored house. A note on the back deck said that I should let myself in and feel free to use the shower. I unloaded the kayak and hung out my gear to dry in Susan’s garage. I parked the baidarka in her backyard, which was full of flower beds and paths mulched with pine needles. Susan’s neighbor, Dolores, told me that Susan was working up at the library, so after a shower and fresh clothes, I strolled there and found Susan behind the desk. Deciding I was safe enough, she agreed to dinner. In the meantime, I looked through the corner of the library dedicated to Endeavor’s history.

At five, we walked back to Susan’s. It is one of the few new homes in the village and is a work in progress. It was on the site of what had been one of the oldest log cabins in Endeavor. The cabin had started its life as a Civil War veteran’s hunting shack. And it was the cabin that Susan bought in 2001, as a home base when she was not on the road painting mural commissions around North America. Then one morning, as she stepped out of the shower, the cabin’s lights flickered and went out. A burnt electric smell hung on the air. Assuming a fuse had blown, Susan slipped into her pink bathrobe and went to investigate. She was brought up short in the living room by a glowing-red ceiling. A fire had been smoldering for hours in the attic, slowly burning its way through layer upon layer of old ceiling, until what was left throbbed red like a poker too long in the hearth.

Susan dashed out into the snow, saving only herself and her bathrobe. The volunteer firemen were quickly on the scene, but could not save the cabin. They were inside only long enough to toss some of Susan’s personal possessions out the windows and into the deep snow of the yard, things which slowly reappeared as the snow melted, including her art portfolio, which she and Delores dried and cleaned. We spent an hour looking through it and talking about her mural commissions around the country.

Susan had always been an artist, but opted instead for jobs with regular paychecks. However, after painting murals and using handmade stencils throughout a friend’s beach house, paying commissions started coming in. Soon, Susan was painting murals and stencils full-time. The murals varied in style, but the larger, commercial ones were of outdoor scenes painted across all the walls of rooms in trompe-l’oeil style, including huge murals of Tuscan countryside surrounding an Olympic-size pool in Vancouver. For more than five years that is all that Susan did – travel from place to place painting.

Susan was attracted to Endeavor by its quietness, quaintness, and to the cabin by its uniqueness. Now she was endowing her new house with her own artistic character. (The kitchen included skylights and concrete counter tops that she poured herself.) The village, however, was in decline. It had been dying since Highway 51 bypassed Endeavor in the 1960s. Only one tavern, the post office, a real-estate office and a little church remained open among the small homes. On the main street, building after building sat empty, their windows filled with fading "For Sale" signs. The library up on the hill seemed to be the village’s center of gravity during the day. At night, the single focal point was Gramp’s Swamp Inn, where Susan and I had eaten dinner.

When we finished discussing Susan's murals, I asked her to wake me early, and headed down into the unfinished basement. My space was defined by stud walls covered in places with cardboard. The joists above me creaked with Susan‘s passage. But the bed, with an antique headboard, was firm and the flannel sheets warm. The day’s hard exercise made for a good night’s sleep, and I did not stir until 5 a.m., when Susan’s footsteps on the kitchen floor woke me.

Breakfast included rhubarb pie baked by Susan’s friend George. Susan said she did not usually eat pie for breakfast, but she always made an exception for George’s pie. It was a delicious exception to the rule. While we ate, we spoke about village politics. From Susan’s perspective, past administrations had played fast and loose with Endeavor’s borrowing, and now the Village had to pay back $317,000 to the state for improperly-used development funds. Susan earned the nickname “Loan Ranger” after spending countless hours tracking Village loans. She and several other recent residents of Endeavor then led a revolt that unseated the prior administration. The losers still appeared at village board meetings to rail at the usurping “foreigners”.

After clearing the breakfast dishes, I thanked Susan and wheeled the baidarka down the main street. I turned left to the boat launch. A northeast wind had filled the water by the ramp with duck weed. I spent ten minutes sweeping it clear with a long, fallen tree limb, slid the boat in, and got underway. It was 8:10 a.m. I headed northeast down Lake Buffalo.

*From hereon, I have changed some names and details to preserve the privacy of those I met along the way.


_____________________________________________

Fifth Installment: On to Endeavor

It was Wednesday morning, June 1st. The sun was shining, the air still, and the temperature nearing 70. I had just entered the slow current of the river to begin my 8-day paddle of the Upper Fox, anticipating a great day.

There were many downed cottonwoods and other deadfalls along the shore. None completely blocked the river, which ran clear and some 60 feet across a sandy bottom. The banks were mounded to the height of four or more feet with dredge spoils, blocking most views inland. Cottonwoods and silver maples predominated along the higher ground. Cattails filled the marshy land.

It was fish that I first saw. In the clear water, two carp swam along the edge of the sandy, deeper channel until the passing of my baidarka spooked them. They shilly-shallied into the weed beds. A long-snouted pike swam under the boat. Later, in the silty, reedy shallows, carp twisted and snapped sending up splashes that I could hear far up river. They writhed together until I was almost upon them. Then, in an explosion of water, they would scatter in every direction. Later, in the afternoon, a walleye leaped twice.

Birds were plentiful. There were three foot-tall great blue herons. With the approach of the kayak, each solitary heron flew downstream, but not far. In four or five minutes I would catch up, disturb its solitude, and we would repeat the process. Lots of kingbirds, looking very black, darted out over the river after insects. There were others - a red-tailed hawk and several kingfishers. Kingfishers have comically enormous heads and sit on bare branches above the river’s edge. I love the kingfisher’s rattle-like call as it swoops from one perch to another.

Sandhill cranes were trumpeting in adjoining fields, and at mid-morning I surprised a pair with their chick. They were drinking from the river along the sandy edge of a spoil-bank. The adults fled up the bank, but the chick, neither fledged nor wise to the world, stayed. It was a ball of brown fuzz on stilt-like legs, with a head snorkeling up on a long, thin neck. The adults stalked the bank-top calling excitedly, but the chick remained disobediently below as I passed.

Robins and red-winged blackbirds were everywhere along the Fox. At Packwaukee Island, black terns hovered before diving headlong into the river. Tree swallows were common, and bank swallows swooped near every highway bridge I paddled under. Heard, but not seen, black-capped chickadees called their alarm warning of my approach.

The only reptile I saw was a painted turtle basking on a deadfall. There were mammals. Muskrats swam in the Fox, and I could paddle very close before they altered course. A deer came down to the river to drink. But, so far I had met no other humans on that warm, still Wednesday morning.

At mile four, I portaged around the low dam and lock of Government Bend. Before carting the kayak from the take-out to the put-in, I rested on the island between the dam and lock. Sitting at a picnic table, which was half sunk in the soil, I snacked on an orange and a power bar. A man with an impressive beer-belly was fishing from the island’s shore. His little girl kept looking at my strange kayak. I caught her eye, and she gave me a shy, little wave.

By half past noon I had reached the County Trunk Highway O Bridge, about nine miles downstream from the Indian Agency House. I stopped, stretched and ate a lunch of trail mix and another power bar, washing it down with pink lemonade from the Nalgene. The trail mix was my own concoction, featuring my favorite nut, the almond, with a fair mix of M&Ms, cashews and peanuts in a base of sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds and dried soy beans. I already regretted not including more M&Ms and fewer soy beans. The mix was dry and joyless, and I had seven more of these lunches to look forward to.

Under the afternoon sun, the day continued to warm. By 2 p.m., my arms were a little fatigued and my bottom cramped from sitting. Except for going aground once, all had gone well. As I approached Packwaukee Island and the diving terns, I ignored my guidebook’s suggestion to take the north channel around the island. It looked more sluggish than the south channel. So I swung south, but the channel broadened more and more, while getting shallower and shallower. Halfway around the island the boat ran aground. I didn’t have to get out to rescue the situation, but it took six minutes of poling with my paddle before I was able to extradite the kayak from the shallows.

Passing the island, I now had only a few miles to go before my destination – Endeavor, Wisconsin.


_____________________________________________

Fourth Installment: Final Preparations

A remnent of the canal that once connected the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers, still flows into the Fox. It begins near the restored 1832 Indian Agency House, established in the aftermath of an 1827 uprising of the Ho-Chunk Nation.¹ This agency and Fort Winnebago were minor elements of a major governmental reaction to this small uprising. In December 1828, President John Quincy Adams announced that the U.S. would now pursue an Indian removal policy, initiating decades of tragedy for the Ho-Chunk and most indigenous people.²

The historical site’s current caretaker was Scott. A friendly, garrulous, bearded, bear of a man, he gave me permission to leave the Jeep in the parking lot until Mark and my father picked it up. From the parking lot, a gravel road led to a turn-around at the canal. I stopped there, unstrapped the kayak, and slid it off the roof racks. Hoisting it onto my right shoulder, I walked down a grassy slope to the canal. I carried the gear down too, drove the Jeep over to the parking lot, and returned to pack. It was after 7 a.m., already 60 degrees and warming.

I never packed this much gear for my day-trips. There is an art to packing a kayak. Most of the gear needs to be stuffed inside, ballasting and balancing the boat, leaving those items needed during the day nearest the cockpit or on deck, so items needed the least have to be prodded into the farthest, narrowest confines of bow and stern. That is not an easy trick in a kayak with no hatches, seventeen feet long and only 21 inches wide.

Everything was bundled in waterproof bags. These included a long, tapered bow-bag for spare clothes and a large sealed bag for food. There was a bag near the cockpit for medical and other emergencies, and one for baidarka repair (duct tape included). Another small, easily accessible bag contained toilet paper and a trowel(just in case). There was a bag with trip information, maps, and reading and writing material and another that held my toilet kit. My camera and cell phone had their own little bags that would remain on my person.

A compass was strapped across the front deck with elastic cords. Each day’s map was laminated and clipped to the compass lines so that I could see it while paddling. A waterproof bag of rain gear was strapped on the deck behind the cockpit. That bag also held a mid-day meal, paddling gloves, sun screen, and other small items I might want during the day. On the back deck were my throwing line and paddle float. Two Nalgene bottles held drink. I kept one strapped to the fore deck next to the pump, and one inside the boat. A spare paddle was slipped under the rigging on the front deck. I wore a brimmed hat and a yellow and black PDF(personal flotation device/life vest).

You would have thought I was crossing the Bering Strait rather than paddling the gentle Fox; but it was my first trip, so if I had a piece of gear and it fit, I took it. After surveying the gear laid out on the lawn, I commenced with jamming and cramming, strapping and clipping. The food, clothes, paper material, and emergency bag went forward.

Behind the cockpit I squeezed in a two-wheeled cart for portaging at the dams and locks, an ancient golf bag cart with removable wheels for packing. With the wheels on, the frame padded with foam and fitted with elastic cords, the cart could be strapped to the bottom of the baidarka’s bow. This allowed me to lift the stern and wheel the kayak like a very long wheelbarrow without unpacking. My baidarka weighed 47 pounds empty, which was fine for carrying, but at nearly 70 pounds loaded it was too heavy and awkward to hoist on my shoulder. So at each of the many portages along the way, the little cart would save unpacking, double portaging first the gear and then the kayak, and repacking.

I wiggled my way into the cockpit at 8:35 a.m., pushed off from the shore, and headed north through the canal. The baidarka felt good. The gear ballasted it nicely. Fully loaded and riding lower in the water, the kayak’s predilection to tip was reduced, but not its speed. A couple dozen strokes brought me to the river and I entered the steady, slow current of the Fox.


1. Historic Indian Agency House. Home Page. Accessed October 15, 2011. .

2. Annual Report of the Board of Indian Commissioners, Vol. 32, p. 35. Government Printing Office, 1901.


_____________________________________________

Third Installment: Off to Portage

Tuesday, May 31st, found me loading my father’s old, white Jeep. The roof was edged with narrow rain gutters, to which my homemade roof-rack was clamped. My baidarka was strapped to the rack. Rain gutters have disappeared, for looks or aerodynamics, I don’t know which, from new cars, including the one I owned at the time. So I borrowed the Jeep. My father and brother Mark would retrieve it during my trip, and my father would meet me with it in Oshkosh at the finish of my paddle.

I started for Portage after supper. I had schemed to avoid biting river insects, but had forgotten about their gentler lake relatives. On the Highway 41 Bridge over Lake Butte des Morts, I was reminded of the biting insects’ littoral kith and kin. Swarms of lake flies writhed over the road, so thick that at first I mistook them for smoke. As I plowed through the first swarm, my windshield went pale green in bug massacre. It was as if I had driven through a green cloud burst. I quickly exhausted all my windshield washer fluid. That night I needed an ice scraper to reveal glass and chrome, Jeep body and kayak, from beneath the green carnage.

Other than the insect miasma, the trip was without incident, and I arrived at the Super 8 Motel in Portage at 10:30 p.m. I would launch the next morning on the Fox, at the northern takeout point of the old portage. I slept well enough, knowing that the weather, finally warming, would allow an early start from the portage.

The Ho-Chunk Indian Nation had been established at the old portage long before Europeans began exploring the Upper Fox. It was not until 1673 that Louis Joliet and Father Jacques Marquette portaged between the rivers. Later, a succession of traders built posts at the portage, beginning with Laurant Barth in 1792, and ending with Francois LeRoi.¹ LeRoi built a home near the Fox River take-out in 1819 to headquarter his portage business.² By 1828, U.S. soldiers had arrived to erect Fort Winnebago (Winnebago being the English name for the Ho-Chunk), and bought LeRoi’s cabin.³

Jefferson Davis, destined for the presidency of the Confederacy, was stationed at Fort Winnebago and later, in 1831, at Fort Crawford, Wisconsin. His assignment in Wisconsin involved him in the aftermath of the 1832 Black Hawk War. However, he did not cross paths with young Abraham Lincoln, who led an Illinois militia company into Wisconsin during the war.⁴ Fort Winnebago was garrisoned until 1845, by which time the need of a military post had faded with the advancing settlement of whites.⁵ The fort was soon followed by town. The city of Portage, established in 1854, is the third oldest non-Native American settlement in Wisconsin.⁶

I would put in half a mile downstream from Fort Winnebago, at a point where the remnant of the Portage Canal enters the Fox. This canal between the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers opened in 1856, and paralleled the 2,700-pace Wauon Trail. The canal ended 10,000 years of canoe carrying and began an era of steamboats. Between the 1850s and the early 1900s, steamboats carried passengers and freight up and down the Fox. In all, about 250 steamboats plied the river. Their top speed barely exceded ten miles per hour⁷, which would be several times the speed that I would paddle my baidarka.

When the railroads arrived in 1857, the canal and river were quickly eclipsed in economic importance.⁸ The last steamer burned in 1922.⁹ The canal was closed by the government in 1951 for lack of commercial use, and was mostly filled in.¹⁰ All that remained was a stub running north from the canal’s first lock to the Fox River. Downstream on the Fox, as the river falls gently on its way to Oshkosh and Lake Winnebago, were a series of decommissioned locks along with low dams. That would be my course.


1. City of Portage, Wisconsin. History. Accessed November 6, 2011. http://www.ci.portage.wi.us/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC={779D162D-6887-4486-80CE-AB9F9C199419}.

2. Columbia County Tourism Committee. Surgeon’s Quarters. Accessed November 6, 2011. http://www.valuworld.com/usa/wi/supermall/County/Columbia/columbiatourism/trips_tours/antiques/link2_surgeons.htm.

3. City of Portage, Wisconsin. Id.

4. Wisconsin Historical Society. Historic Diaries: Black Hawk War Documents - Preface. Accessed October 23, 2011. .

5. Explore Wisconsin.com. Columbia County Attractions. Accessed November 6, 2011. http://www1.explorewisconsin.com/countypages/Columbia.asp.

6. Explore Wisconsin.Com. Portage, WI: Where the North Begins. Accessed November 6, 2011. http://www1.explorewisconsin.com/communitypages/portage.asp>.

7. Svob, Mike, and Elizabeth McBride. Paddling Northern Wisconsin: 82 Great Trips by Canoe and Kayak, at page 11. Trails Books, 1998.

8. Explore Wisconsin.com. Columbia County Attractions. Id.

9. Svob, Mike. Id.

10. Explore Wisconsin.com. Columbia County Attractions. Id.


_____________________________________________