Beyond Beaches & Buildings

It’s always worth the reminder; Devil’s Lake State Park is more than multi-million dollar building plans, crowded beaches, parking problems, and sticker sales. It’s even more than a couple of famous rock formations on busy blacktop trails.

Beyond the summer crowds and inevitable budgetary concerns, Devil’s Lake State Park is nature. It’s forest and wetlands. Devil’s Lake State Park is prairie and glades. It’s waterfalls and mountain streams. It’s butterflies and walking sticks. It’s deer and coyote. It’s an occasional black bear or even a wolf. It’s home to great blue heron and turkey vultures, both soon to return. It’s bald eagles stealing fish from ospreys. Uniquely, it’s peregrine falcons raising chicks on a rocky ledge. It’s an otter, it’s muskrats, rarely a fisher and maybe a mink. And of course, it’s rattlesnakes! Devil’s Lake was a natural wonder and a home to a diverse community of plants and wildlife long before it was Wisconsin’s busiest state park.

I was reminded of this as I snowshoed out into the “wilds” of Devil’s Lake State Park yesterday. (I find you have to regularly wander off the beaten path to stay grounded.)

As I walked and hoped for spring, I was reminded of when I first took a visitor information job at the park many years ago. We were expected to hike most of the trails within the park as soon into our first season as possible. Sometimes we were even sent out to hike during slow days. We also had to do a ride-along with a park ranger so we could better understand their jobs and better understand the realities of such a busy place. We also did radio dispatch and traffic control in the parking lots. We were regularly visited by the park naturalist (Ken Lange at the time.) who would keep us up to date the happenings in nature around the park. All told, this meant that we could not only answer questions when asked but also had a sense of why things were the way they were. We learned to appreciate the people and the park beyond the parking lots. It also gave us the foundation and perspective we needed to survive those busy holiday weekends! For some of us, this hands-on mentoring influenced the rest of our lives. It was certainly the right approach.

Here are a few more photos from yesterday out in the Roznos Meadow area of Devil’s Lake State Park. It’s supposed to warm up this week. Think spring!

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