KVR’s West deserves praise for creating a gem of a property

 

By KAREN PARKER

County Line Publisher Emeritus

Why is it when you are a kid life drags on forever? You’ll never get out of grade school and then high school. All of the older kids have fun while you are stuck in some pesky, dull purgatory. 

And then all of a sudden you go from middle age to old to ancient in a nanosecond. Time slips away so quickly that milestones are overlooked and forgotten.

It wasn’t until today that it dawned on my feeble mind that a few weeks ago, we marked 45 years since we had moved to the area. Not just to the area but to what I once called Burdock Acres. The burdock are mostly gone now, replaced by even more obnoxious invaders like garlic mustard and wild parsnip.

I have never quite determined if we love it here or simply suffer from a severe case of inertia. While some change locations and homes as fast as folks change their socks, I guess I don’t mind knowing what time the sun hits my flower bed or where I can find the sweetest blackberries. I recently discovered that my maternal side of the family stayed on the same farm in Green County for four generations. Perhaps being stuck in place is something you inherit like hair color or freckles.

Like everyone in my age group, I ask where the time went and why I know more people under the sod than above it. I’ve grown accustomed to those musings and the bitter recognition I am starting to sound like my mother. Did I just compare notes on what drug I take for what ailment? Eek!

And then things come along that rock you more than others. Such was the case when I looked though the email last week to find the announcement of the departure of Marcy West as the Kickapoo Valley Reserve executive director.

I suspect the young woman/new mom I first met nearly 25 years ago could write a book on what it is to wrap yourself around over 8,000 acres and create a functioning public space out of utter chaos.

That acreage was an emotional minefield. Many who had been unceremoniously shoveled off their farms to make way for a dam that never happened were still angry, especially if they had believed their sacrifice was to the benefit of the community. Not everyone was a saint. Some scooped up the money and ran, while others remained bruised and broken for the rest of their lives.

Away went the fences, the barns, the silo, the machine shed and the hut where the kids awaited the school bus. Away went the kids, the farmers, their wives and nearly everything but the lilac bush that stood in the yard.

That might have been fine. Who shouldn’t love a restored wilderness? But a wilderness needs protection, and having created one, the federal government doffed its cap, packed up the wagon and rolled on back to Washington or St. Paul or wherever the Army Corps of Engineers hangs out.

Meanwhile, the private battles continued for another 20 years. Lake? No lake? No lake was what it appeared to be. No lake, no motorboats, no real estate wealth, no bait shops, and no bars or bike shops.

We didn’t get any of that amazing American capital commerce. But we did get schmucks. Lots of them. With the same careless abandon that causes folks to hurl their garbage out the car window, they hauled bags and truckloads of garbage to the “government land.” They dumped in the creeks, filled in the ditches, and left their rotting, rusting messes behind.

They four-wheeled across the soggy acres, throwing up mud and leaving deep ditches like canyons that funneled the eroded soil into the valley and into the Kickapoo.

The guns came out and the wildlife went down with little regard for season or respect. The Rainbow Family people gathered to smoke (gasp) pot and give Sheriff Geoff Banta a nervous breakdown.

It was a grand mess. But then something happened that would likely never happen today. Democrats and Republicans as well as then Gov. Tommy Thompson put their hands on the plow and pushed the ownership out of the hands of the federal government and back into the state.

Even after that, the quarrels continued. Everyone had their own agenda: give it back to the owners, turn it into campgrounds and parks, use it for bike trails and dog trials and maybe even raccoon romps. You name it, everyone had an idea, and no one liked anyone else’s idea, and then entered the Ho-Chunk, who thought maybe we ought to live up to the terms of an old treaty, and that started another whole round of controversy.

Now, mostly, the grumbling has died away. Things that seemed a bit odd worked out. The memorandum of understanding with the Ho-Chunk has probably provided more protection for the property than the white folks might have done themselves.

The idea of a local management board was new to Wisconsin, where we seem to prefer an overarching agency like the DNR to manage public lands. It’s a system that leaves little room for local input and preferences.

At the time, I thought, why are we reinventing the wheel? Just make it a state park. But I was wrong. This system really does create a unique property and invite a sense of ownership by locals that we seldom see with other state recreational property.

I am sorry to see Marcy West go. I think the work she along with dedicated volunteers and some wide-awake management board members have taken a disastrous mess and created a jewel of a public property that will be cherished for generations to come.

But I understand how 25 years can be time to move on. It is never easy to let go of something you have spent most of your life doing, especially when you were there from the beginning. Winding down, stepping back and getting out of the way is something I am familiar with. Marcy, who won’t move from the area, told me she wonders what it will be like to be near but no longer in charge.

It will be a new and unnerving experience; I guarantee that.

But you will get over it. I think.

 

 

 

 

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