Honey Creek Wildlife Area: A Winter Wilderness Revealed
February 24, 2025 | Topics: Places, Stories
By Eddee Daniel
“Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit.” ~ Edward Abbey
The sun breaks through the overcast sky just as I arrive. I take it as a good omen. Which is always welcome when I am about to embark on a possibly risky exploration of new territory.
I’d been to this section of Honey Creek Wildlife Area before (the Wildlife Area encompasses four unconnected sections in the vicinity of Burlington in western Racine County). However, since it is primarily wetland, I hadn’t been able to get too far into it in warmer seasons. I’m hoping winter has solved that problem. The below zero temps we’ve been experiencing lately should have frozen it all quite solid.
It isn’t every day that I get to explore a new place, or new parts of a familiar place. And it’s especially rare to be able to explore the closest thing to true wilderness that we have in southeast Wisconsin. The parking area itself is already fairly remote, a few miles west of Rochester, the nearest small town, and surrounded by agriculture. But once I leave the lot I see before me what seems like boundless wilderness stretching to the horizon. As I set out I note with growing excitement that the cloudy overcast is quickly thinning. Patches of blue sky appear.
A well-used snowmobile trail begins at the parking lot. However, except for my own car, the lot is empty. The thin snow cover is worn to dirt along most of its path as far as I can see down a long field to the east. I cross the trail and head north. I am surprised to discover footprints in the snow. Clearly, someone has ventured this way since the last snowfall two days ago.
The footprints lead me down what appears to be a road or very broad path—until I reach a spot that I recognize as having been open water the last time I was here. Winter has turned it into a causeway through the cattails that leads to a large island in the marsh (photo at top). I stroll casually across, still stepping in my predecessor’s tracks.
The island, when I reach it, is ringed by a bulwark of buckthorn and other dense shrubbery. Peering through into the interior I see that the snow, which has finally blanketed the land, is not clinging picturesquely to the tree limbs and branches. Two reasons to skirt around the outside for a while longer. The “road” I’ve been on leads me around to the right. When it divides I pause to consider which way to proceed. The right fork heads straight out along the edge of a field. The left continues around the island. I go left.
Before long the path spills out into a large open field. Before me lies a multitude of tall spiky plants, like legions in a vast, forbidding army. Suspecting an unfamiliar invasive species, I turn to the Seek app on my cell phone, which identifies it as rough cocklebur (Xanthium strumarium). Turns out it is native but pretty nasty and aggressive nevertheless. I find it fascinating, however, and spend some time photographing it from different angles.
When the cocklebur legions finally peter out I find myself between the island and a cornfield. Corn stubble pokes up through the snow across the vast level plain. I pick up the trail of my erstwhile predecessor, which continues along the edge of the field. I wonder (not for the first time) at their motivation. Is it the thrill of adventure, like me? Or was there another, more utilitarian reason for being out here in the wild? It’s not hunting season, unless they’re after rabbits or squirrels, which seems unlikely—a lot of effort for such a miniscule payoff.
Abruptly, the footprints veer off into the wooded island. Why here? The mystery deepens. I proceed along the tree line towards the northern end of the field, which appears from here to also be the end of the island. My new goal is to see what lies beyond.
When I arrive, I discover a large open wetland punctuated by a single rather large birch tree. The ground is lumpy with bent clumps of grass, but not difficult to negotiate. Instead of forging straight on into the stark landscape ahead, however, I turn again to follow the edge of the island around to the left. Before long I meet up with footprints again. These emerge from the island and head out more or less straight across the open area towards another woodland. Presumably these belong to the same person I had been following. I do not follow this time, leaving enigmatic their destination.
The question of why another person would be out here begs another: Why am I here? I have gone beyond the end of the trail, blazing my way across untracked wilderness. If it wasn’t frozen, I would be standing in water. There isn’t even a “scenic view” in the classic sense, although I have to say I find it all beautiful.
I stand, slowly turning around. Having left the farm field well behind me, there is no longer any visible sign of human occupation or enterprise in any direction. With no appreciable breezes and plenty of sunshine, it is peaceful and quiet. Edward Abbey, that irascible avatar of wild and free nature, claims that wilderness is not merely good for the human spirit, but vital to it. Standing here in the middle of a frozen wetland I recognize that this isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. But, as an occasional spice of life, it works for me.
To be clear, Abbey did not want the precious few remnants of wilderness to be overrun by an adoring public. Wilderness areas, whether large like those in his beloved Utah or small like this one in an urbanized corner of Wisconsin, remain wild and free precisely because people seldom visit them. And he believed, as I do, their vitality to the human spirit adheres to the knowledge of their presence in the landscape even when we don’t actually spend time in them.
By my imperfect calculations, I am likely equidistant from my starting point in either direction around this island in the marsh. Revising my goal again, I decide to go for the unknown and attempt a circumnavigation of the entire island. There are no human footprints to guide my return this way. But there are deer tracks! And indeed, they prove to be a saving grace. For while the terrain remains flat and the marsh frozen, it is increasingly difficult to navigate through the denser vegetation in this direction. A solid wall of cattails has replaced the hummocks of grass, except—as I learn by following the example of the deer—right along the ecotone, or transition, between woodland and marsh.
Even with the cervine trail to help me it is not easy going. Red osier dogwood and other impenetrable shrubs have taken the place of cattails. But with a bit of ducking and weaving my spirit guides prove their worth, always leading me on with a passable trail. It’s a longer slog, but I make it back around to the “causeway” I came in on, having worked up a sweat despite the cold. So concludes my adventure. It is one of those that I am glad to have made, but will feel no compulsion to repeat, happy in the knowledge that a wilderness is present in such close proximity to my home—and well over a million other people in our region of the state.
(On the other hand, I might just return when things begin to green up and bloom and wade out to explore the island itself!)
“The love of wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyond reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth, the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only paradise we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need, if only we had the eyes to see.” ~ Edward Abbey, from Desert Solitaire
For more information about Honey Creek Wildlife Area go to our Find-a-Park page.
Related stories:
Jackson Marsh Wildlife Area: Degrees of Wilderness … and Solitude
Island of Nature: Exploring a Blank Spot on the Map of Milwaukee
A Walk in the Wilderness of Cedarburg Bog!
Eddee Daniel is a board member of Preserve Our Parks.
Lovely winter photos. Love all the colors you are bringing out in the clouds. Thanks. I also, enjoyed your recent post on how to be sensitive to animals when attempting “wildlife” photography. As always, you have a knack for capturing the “wildness” of our wildlife. Again, thanks.