This week I went on my first camping getaway of the year when I visited Wyalusing State Park, near Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. Wyalusing is located on the bluffs overlooking the spot where the Wisconsin and Mississippi Rivers come together.
Even though Spring is just days away, we’re still getting snow in Wisconsin. I woke up this morning to see everything wearing a beautiful coat of snow. Here’s a picture I took at work today of the snow covered woods behind the library. As proof that beauty is fleeting, the trees were bare again in just a few hours.
What a pleasure it was to see the sun shining in Madison after about a week or so of cloudy, overcast (and sometimes snowy) weather. It’s during this time of the year when I can understand how people can become depressed and suffer from things like seasonal affective disorder. During these months (late February, early March) I always feel like my batteries are in serious need of recharging. On days like today I genuinely get an emotional lift from the sun shine.
Forty years ago this past Friday, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Wilderness Act establishing the National Wilderness Preservation System to “…secure for the American people of present and future generations the benefits of an enduring resource of wilderness.”
Last week I went to my favorite place to camp in Wisconsin, the Northern Highland American Legion State Forest. For me, there is nothing like getting away from it all and camping in the north woods. There you’ve got fresh air, beautiful scenery and wildlife (like bald eagles and loons). Below is my favorite picture from this camping trip. It was taken at a lagoon along one of the best nature trails in the forest, the Star Lake Nature trail. This spot is one of my favorite scenic places in the State of Wisconsin. Can’t you just smell the fresh, pine scented air?
Yesterday I got an email from someone who enjoys the wilderness as much as I do. After reading some of the things I have here, he thought I might be interested in the web sites of Sigurd Olson (a nature writer and conservationist) and the Listening Point Foundation which strives to promote Sigurd’s philosophy and build upon his wilderness education legacy.
Those sites are definitely worth a visit if the wilderness and conservation are as important to you as they are to me.
My thought for Earth Day comes from an old proverb:
“We don’t inherit the Earth from our ancestors,
we borrow it from our children.”
