My Place: Connection
My earliest sense of place predates language. Under a hot summer sun, my eighteen-month-old self, being held skyward, sees Lake Michigan’s sparkling waters and hears breaking waves roll glacial stones on the beach. Pure joy and happiness. And, later, my teenage self is captivated by full-moon rises, reflections reaching across the water from the horizon to my perch on the lake’s red-clay bluffs, sometimes sharing that space with elusive red foxes. My touchstone. Primal. My earliest sense of place.

My Place: Foundation
Nearly every Sunday was spent at my grandparents’ home in rural Cedarburg where I was turned loose to play, explore, and observe life in the wooded hills above the Milwaukee River. My grandfather taught me ways to build things and how to tend the apple orchard and gardens. We cleaned the martin houses each spring and burned bonfires each fall. With my grandmother, a naturalist and artist, I discovered great-horned owls, red-headed woodpeckers, chickadees, and spring ephemerals like yellow lady’s slipper orchids, wild ginger, and native columbine. She fed my imagination as we searched for woodland fairy dwellers at the base of hollow tree trunks. She taught me the art of seeing beauty everywhere. The time I had to learn, to dream, and to imagine on the land is one of the greatest gifts my parents and grandparents gave me.

My Place: Ancestry
Wisconsin’s boreal forest—primeval—is where I loved to hike in search of Indian pipe, bunchberry,  and lichen, especially reindeer moss. Sometimes I’d veer off a particular trail to reach my small secret pond, the scent of ferns and Labrador tea rising with each footstep from the floating sphagnum bog. There, I hoped to see the playful otter family, continuously turning and twisting, their fur matching the tannin-stained water. And, there, I discovered the wonder of carnivorous pitcher plants! I swam in the cold, clear glacial lakes at eye level with loons, hoping the muskies weren’t lured by my toes. Bald eagles and osprey soared overhead. Through the pines, firs, and birches, a million stars would shine at night. My place for renewal.

My Place: Exploration
The beauty of Madison’s chain of glacial lakes captured my heart. In every season, walking along the Lakeshore path behind UW-Madison’s Memorial Union is a delight. Hugging the shores of Lake Mendota, wondering about ancient Indigenous settlements, I walk in dreamtime on the same land as the effigy-mound builders. I pause at the sacred springs of Lake Wingra while hiking in the UW’s Arboretum, which Aldo Leopold helped to establish. Working on Madison’s Isthmus, my place is interior: Wisconsin’s beautiful State Capitol building sits atop a glacial drumlin and is constructed from marble, granite, limestone, and other rocks from around the world. Further west, the swift, hard-working Wisconsin River, with its ever-shifting sandy islands and beaches, carved wide valleys on its journey to the Upper Mississippi River. Surprisingly, atop the steep rocky bluffs are native prickly pear cactus. Hilltop goat prairies blaze with shooting stars and spiderwort. And, of course, there are the memories of canoeing the river to Aldo Leopold’s Shack near Baraboo.

My Place: Home
Wisconsin’s Driftless Area is a region that improbably escaped glaciation as the Green Bay Lobe of the continental ice sheet began its final retreat about 12,000 years ago. Every day I walk on 450-million-year-old fossil-laden limestone bedrock formed in ancient shallow seas. The Driftless Area, characterized by steep-sided hills, springs, snug valleys, oak savannas, and mixed central hardwood trees provides a variety of habitats for diverse bird, mammal, insect, reptile, and amphibian species. Spring-fed creeks form the headwaters for cold-water trout streams. Their runs and riffles glint in the sun as they form tributaries of the bigger waters downstream. Our farm, with several springs and creeks, shows its own history of earlier inhabitants drawn to this same place. Like those before us, gardens and fruit trees keep us well fed all winter long. The Milky Way dusts the night sky. Peaceful. Quiet. My kind of place.

These Wisconsin landscapes and waterways have deeply shaped my life, stirred my curiosity, enlivened my imagination, and stimulated my pursuit of knowledge about history and the natural world. These places have informed my inner life and given me a sense of place in the world.

Copyright © 2024 Nancy Nye Hunt. All rights reserved.