The Wilderness of Wirth

January 24, 2024  |  Topics: Places, Stories

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By Eddee Daniel

Silence. When I stop moving, the soft crunching of the deep snow ceases, producing a heavy, clinging, thrilling silence. There is nothing quite so silent as a cold, windless morning after a heavy snowfall. As long as you can escape the roar of snow blowers!

In order to do so I have come here to Wirth Park in Brookfield, which is not too far from home—though as for that the plows have been making it reasonably safe to drive. For those of us who delight in the occasional taste and feel of wilderness the past week here in SE Wisconsin has been a treat. No need to go far from home when a blizzard brings the wilderness right to our doorsteps!

I have a regular route on my occasional visits to Wirth Park. I drive through the carefully tended portions of the park, past the numerous playing fields of all stripes, along with the “aquatic center,” and park way at the back where a picnic area snuggles up against a woodland. That’s where I pick up the trailhead leading into the wilderness. I head into it with the words of Thoreau on my mind: “Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it. We need the tonic of wildness.”

Normally, the wide, mulched trail through this small woodlot is a short, easy stroll; clearly well explored and tame. But not today. The deep snow is expected, but right away I also encounter a huge tree fallen across the trail. I stomp my way through untracked, knee-deep snow to get around it. After a while the woodlot narrows, hemmed in by a railroad on one side and a wetland on the other. There is a little loop at the end for those who wish to turn around and return the way they came. For the more adventurous, however, another trail leads into the wetland—the closest thing to true wilderness that remains in a suburban enclave like this.

The deep snow makes for slow going, although the trail is actually more difficult sometimes when it isn’t frozen. Being a wetland, after all. I’ve been turned back more than once by standing water deeper than I’m prepared to wade through. It isn’t the kind of trail you expect in a suburban park. Which is why I love it! It never ceases to surprise me that there is a trail here at all.

I wouldn’t call it picturesque. I’m no wetland expert, but it appears to be a mish mash of swamp and marsh (the former being a wetland full of trees and the latter dominated by grasses such as the cattails seen here). Even in summer, many of the short, truncated, widely dispersed trees look dead, which is how they all appear now.

Surprisingly, I’ve been preceded this morning. A single set of boot prints makes it easier to follow the meandering trail, but stepping in them can be tricky if that person’s pace isn’t the same as mine, which I soon discover. Eventually, the trail leads back towards “civilization” where a boardwalk makes it easier for visitors to experience the edge of the wetland without venturing into its wildness.

The boardwalk leads to a lovely little rustic footbridge over Underwood Creek. Beyond that a paved path opens out into a very large meadow. No pavement to be seen today, of course. Woodland, wetland, meadowland, and a creek running through it: Wirth packs it all in. Approximately a third of the park’s 135 acres is left in these various natural states. The rest are decidedly developed for active (civilized) recreational pursuits. My thoughts shift from Thoreau’s Transcendental idealism to Wendell Berry’s more modern pragmatism:

“The awareness that we are slowly growing into now is that the earthly wildness that we are so complexly dependent upon is at our mercy. It has become, in a sense, our artifact because it can only survive by a human understanding and forbearance that we now must make. The only thing we have to preserve nature with is culture; the only thing we have to preserve wildness with is domesticity [aka civilization].”

I skirt the edge of the meadow, skipping the snow-covered but easily discernible—because straight—line of the path, to follow the ragged line of the creek, which provides me with several picturesque photo opportunities. At its far end the meadow tapers down to nothing as the creek, wetland, and another woodland all converge. An unnatural geography of triangles. At its apex winter has robbed the tree-lined boundary of the park of its ability to screen the blank wall of a self-storage facility on the other side. The wilderness ends here.

But the trail continues, turning and leading me into the depths of a larger woodland than the first. Here there be giants. Mature trees, in other words. Periodically, a breeze stirs the canopy, showering the woods—and me—with snow dislodged from the towering branches. I pause again … savoring the silence. For the moment at least, it is possible to believe in peace on earth. Reason enough to brave the cold and the snow.

I seek the wilderness, relatively speaking, not simply for physical fitness, but also, as Wisconsin author and environmentalist Sigurd Olson has said, for a psychological holiday, which is essential to a health mind. Such an endeavor goes beyond a simple walk in a park. It involves being attuned to my surroundings with heightened awareness—and is best achieved, I’ve found, in solitude.

I emerge from the woodland, out into the open meadow. Crossing it I find again that I am following in another’s footsteps. But what is most curious now are not the footprints themselves but what I discover inside them. Tiny life forms. They gather in dark masses within—not just one, but one footprint after another—all the way across the vast meadow. Looking more closely at the snow all around I see that this minute creatures are everywhere on the snow, as if someone has come by with a pepper grinder sprinkling pepper everywhere. There must be millions of them!

I’ve since learned that these are called snow fleas, despite not being actual fleas. They are “hexapods” and, unlike fleas, they are no danger to humans or animals. Their ecological role is to aid in decomposing organic material. Like fleas, they can leap prodigious distances for their size, hence they are also called “springtails.”

Crossing the creek one more time, my journey ends at the park road. After two solitary hours in the wilderness, I finally meet a couple of people—and their dog, who leaps eagerly around in the snow. I watch them pass the trailhead sign and disappear into the woodland, wondering how wild they perceive it to be.

For more information about Wirth Park go to our Find-a-Park page. But there’s no need to go out of your way for this kind of experience. There is “a wealth of nature” all around SE Wisconsin. Check it out on our Find-a-Park map.

Related stories:
The Lincoln Park Wilderness
Jackson Marsh Wildlife Area: Degrees of Wilderness … and Solitude
A Walk in the Wilderness of Cedarburg Bog!
Searching for snow and serenity: Bristol County Park

Eddee Daniel is a board member of Preserve Our Parks.

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