Adapted from a talk at the annual Earth Day celebration sponsored by the Great Waters Group of the Sierra Club. When I decided in 1999 to name my book Urban Wilderness, I had never heard the term. I thought I’d found a new, wonderfully paradoxical metaphor for the powerful experiences I’d had in Milwaukee. I found out later that someone else had a book so named back in the 1980s about New York City’s parks, but the term certainly was not in common usage. Today, it’s a different story. Google alerts me whenever someone in cyberspace uses the term, and it happens a couple times a week. I think …

March can be disheartening. A walk through the woods feels like walking through nature's corpse. In the aftermath of winter, the parkway can seem like a great, serpentine skeleton. Natural areas along the river are revealed for their fragility within the confines of the city. Barren trees stand like bones stripped of flesh and everywhere through them the proximity of the city imposes itself. Unconcealed debris awaits cleansing spring floods and blossoming foliage. Saturday, I walked along the river north of Capitol Drive. The west side of the river here is one of my favorite Wild Wauwatosa …

“There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot. "Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them. Now we face the question whether a still higher 'standard of living' is worth its cost in things natural, wild, and free. For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television, and the chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inalienable as free speech.” The world has changed since Aldo Leopold wrote these opening lines to…

If you haven’t been to Ronald McDonald House it’s probably because you haven’t needed its services. Officially called Ronald McDonald House Charities of Eastern Wisconsin Inc., the organization provides a place to stay as well as outreach programs for families of children who are patients in Children’s Hospital. So successful has it been in that worthy cause, the organization wants to more than double the size of its facility and is now ready to pursue that plan. Perched on a lovely hilltop across Watertown Plank Road from the hospital and surrounded by acres of meadow and woodlands, it is …

Monday evening, the preservation group Historic Milwaukee Inc. held an annual event called “Remarkable Milwaukee.” The main purpose was to honor a Milwaukee organization, business or corporation that “exemplifies Milwaukee’s spirit, has a strong history in our community, and has made important contributions to our city’s heritage.” This year the honoree was the Pabst Theater Foundation, along with its director and founder. Congratulations! Well deserved. The Pabst Theater set the scene for the evening with an onstage “experiment in civic dialogue” in the form of a “conversation” called “…

I went out this morning feeling very fortunate to be able to walk in the snow – and not have to drive in it! One of the best times to escape the turmoil of our hurried lives in urban society is immediately after a snowfall – or even while the storm swirls all around. When the world is covered in white, everything slows down. Sharp edges are layered in softness; colors are muted. I love to go out, when I have the chance, before the plows have begun their noisy scraping and clearing of streets; before the snow blowers start to rev up. I am drawn, as always, to the parks, to nature. But, for …

On New Year’s Eve a tepid prediction made it seem possible that I’d finally get to wake up to a blanket of fresh powder. But I woke up on New Year’s morning to another snowless day. Last year, I celebrated the dawn of the New Year by going out to see the actual dawn break, but this year the sun did not rise. Nothing apocalyptic about it, just deep overcast that dripped sullenly and refused to snow. So, I’m still waiting for Wild Wauwatosa to turn into a winter wonderland. In the meantime, in a time-honored tradition, I thought I’d take a look back at the top stories of 2011. I’ve divided them…

Maybe this happened to you, too: Saturday morning, after long anticipation, I was surprised when I woke up to find snow covering the yard and street outside my windows. Suddenly the holiday season felt real. Finally! I hurried outside, only to find that the “season” was barely an inch deep. It wasn’t enough to visibly affect the “wilderness,” but pent up enthusiasm kept me going, across Hoyt Park and the Menomonee River, into the wide-open spaces of the County Grounds. I had an ulterior motive. I’m working on a book of photographs about the fragile beauty that I see on the County Grounds, and…

On a gloomy, December day, when “the sky won’t snow and the sun won’t shine,” it’s tempting to stay curled up somewhere warm, inside, by a fire. Or to busy myself with the million things I have to do before the holidays. It’s easy to find excuses not to take a walk in the woods when it’s cold, wet and dreary. But those are often the days when I need it most, when the ordinary world is wearisome and business becomes busyness. I bundle up and go. I’m rarely sorry once I get outside, and I am immediately glad I made the effort. On the muddy path along the Menomonee River I feel youthful and …

Wauwatosa has the great fortune to be a city full of parks and parkways. Wherever you live in Wauwatosa you are always near open green space. That the city government values its parkways was made clear last June when it was announced that a new marketing plan would brand Wauwatosa as “Innovation Parkway.” And a walk in the park is all it takes to see that the citizens value their beneficence. The problem for Wauwatosa is that most of its parklands belong to Milwaukee County. The parks are infested with buckthorn and other invasive species. Trees that fall into park lawns used to be cut up and…

I am up to my knees in a still pool of the Menomonee River. Calm surrounds me. Calm eludes me. My senses swell with bursts of autumn. Autumn on the river is much more than a picture show. True, my eyes are steeped in the brilliant glow of foliage. Incandescent yellow and radiant red-orange intermingle with remnants of green. But there’s more: My skin tingles with chill rising off the water. My feet curl over slippery stones under its surface. The sounds of unseen birds chitter from the luminous forest while all around I hear the constant murmur of spent leaves gently settling, like the …

High overhead branches toss wildly about, auguring another storm. The forest is still damp from yesterday’s deluge and dark with a thickly overcast sky. But despite the moaning and twisting in the canopy, down at ground level it is calm. The foliage rustles softly around me. The forest feels protective. I make my way through a particularly dense patch of undergrowth, most of which is invasive buckthorn. I understand the need for management. Farther along the trail, the forest opens up, clear of most undergrowth. Last year’s leaves carpet the earth. A few bright yellow and red maple leaves, …

“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary-wise; what it is it wouldn't be, and what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?”   – Alice in Wonderland Believing in urban wilderness makes about as much sense to most people as the wonderland Alice discovers when she throws caution to the wind and follows the white rabbit down the rabbit hole. As any regular reader of Wild Wauwatosa knows, however, I am a great believer in that paradoxical experience. The Menomonee River Parkway right here in Wauwatosa …

“I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness….” – Henry David Thoreau Like Thoreau, I would like to speak a word for nature. Although the “freedom and wildness” that our parks provide us here in Wauwatosa can hardly be called “absolute,” that doesn’t make them less valuable or less deserving of protection. So, let me speak a word for relative freedom and wildness. Once upon a time Underwood Creek was as free and wild as any other stream in Wisconsin. Then houses were built near it and the Menomonee River, into which it flows. Eventually, flooding occurred. What …

The microcosm of atomic structures – the myriad particles that orbit the nucleus of an atom – mirror the macrocosm of the universe – solar systems, galaxies and space. Likewise, the forms that make up the physical places around us reflect the structure of our imagination. In other words, the way we live in the world depends on how we think about nature. I like to imagine a world where I can see the great blue heron fly, where water runs clean and clear in the rivers, where a woodland path provides cool shade in the middle of a city. In his classic book, The Practice of the Wild, poet and …

The annual monarch butterfly migration season is just getting under way. Thanks to the efforts of the Friends of the Monarch Trail, the Milwaukee County Grounds has become ground zero for butterfly enthusiasts. As they have for several years now, the Friends organized a Migration Launch Party, which took place Saturday evening. The Monarch Trail was established in 2006 in response to the loss of critical habitat areas due to developments that were taking place on the County Grounds. Friends founder “Butterfly Barb" Agnew, along with a team of volunteers, created the trail to raise public …

I was out walking in the County Grounds the other day, one of my usual haunts. I took the gravel path east around the detention basin from Tosa Pool. When I reached what has been a wide gravel access road, I was surprised to find a pristine expanse of newly laid asphalt stretching as far as I could see in both directions. My first reaction was, who needs asphalt here where gravel would suffice? I am often dismayed when parkland is covered with concrete or asphalt. When I’d had a moment to reflect on the smooth surface further, though, I got angry instead. Why has this dead end road that bears…

Damselflies flutter in the warm sun. They flit nervously, alight momentarily here and then there among the grasses. Their black wings and iridescent bodies lend them a regal preciousness. They are as splendid as jewels, as silent as emeralds, but seldom still for very long. One lands amongst the criss-crossing stalks of grass. I practice stillness, hoping it will think I am a tree. It appears caged from my perspective, and I manage a clear shot, though I can’t get very close. The damselfly is native to Wisconsin. The reed canary grass that seems to imprison it is not. Reed canary grass is …

Water, the stuff of life. Ubiquitous, indispensable, powerful – and controversial. This week Wauwatosa becomes the focal point for issues surrounding the use, conveyance and distribution of our water, as well as whether it ends up in Lake Michigan, underground aquifers or someone’s basement. On Wednesday, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) will hold a public hearing at Hart Park in Wauwatosa beginning at 5:30 pm. The purpose of this hearing is to inform the public about its pending application to divert water from Lake Michigan for use in Waukesha County. If approved, the …

For the last month, before the temperatures began to soar, I have enjoyed my walks around the flood detention basins on the County Grounds. The flowers have been beautiful. The accompanying photos are my bouquet, selections from the lovely scenery. When I showed some of the photos to others, however, I learned that most of them are exotic and some are invasive. Exotics are species that are not native to the region; invasives are aggressive species that compete with and often overrun other species thereby reducing biodiversity and the health of the wildlife community. The flood basins had been…