Branching Out

An interview and essay from Vicki Ramsay, Branching Out KVR Camp Instructor

Tell us about yourself. Is there anything special you want campers and families to know about you and your life?
I live in the small town of Viroqua with my 2 boys, but I really appreciate how much wild land is available for us all to explore, for us to feel a part of: the KVR land, Wildcat Mountain and other State Parks, public fishing spots that you can find by Cook Creek, and county or private park lands like Sidie Hollow, Duck Egg and Earthology Parks. We love to go canoeing and kayaking together, mostly down the Kickapoo, but we're venturing out more this summer to find new rivers and streams.

What do you love about being a camp instructor?
Being a camp instructor has allowed me a window into my own love of exploring and playing in nature. I love the camp experience of discovering new things together. Whether it's learning a new game, spotting a small toad, or discovering a technique for building shelters outside, when we all come together to learn, what we learn is so much more fun! When kids bring in their own unique finds from nature to share with all of us, the joy we share in each others' discoveries is a unique part of camp.

What ideas or tips do you have for campers who may be missing camp this summer?
If you can get to the KVR this summer, do it! Bring your family to the Valley of the Elves or for a walk to the covered bridge. Show them the pond where we see northern water snakes basking in the sun or the forest where you built shelters. Teach them how to play Fire in the Forest! If you're someone who is new to camp, call up the KVR and ask them about how to find a couple of these spots. You could go early in the morning and check out the bird blind. Weister Creek has a lot of great swimming spots. Anyone can do fun camp things even in your own back yard. Shelters are cool to build and use for a camp out or picnic lunch.

What other key lessons or wisdom would you like to share?
The COVID-19 quarantine has created a time out of time. While it may seem some things we love have been taken away, there have been other aspects that offer unique opportunities. One gift is that this circumstance allows us more time to spend outside in nature, exploring and observing. For example, besides gardening and finding new trails to explore while I'm jogging, I've spotted birds I've never seen before in this area: a loon, a yellow warbler, and a ruddy turnstone!

Do you have a favorite spot or activity on the KVR that you'd love to remind campers and their families to visit when they can?
Our family loves canoeing and kayaking. My boys have been doing it since they were little and now they're older, they love the freedom of being in their own kayaks. We took a canoe/kayak trip through KVR land recently and were able to see glimpses of places we frequented during camp from a whole different vantage point. Going UNDER the covered bridge! In some camps we've often explored a little stream from its roots to under Billy Goats' Gruff bridge almost to where it empties into the Kickapoo. Kids love to swim and play in the deep holes of water and swirling mud. As we canoed past, we saw this favorite camp play spot in the creek right before it empties into the river. And we spotted one of our favorite places to visit on short hikes to the tiny "almostacave." Just seeing some of the places where we had been for camp brought back a lot of great memories.

What are some of your favorite nature books?
Earth, Water, Fire and Air by Walter Kraul
The Land Remembers by Ben Logan
Catkin by Antonia Barber

A Birthday River Trip

by Vicki Ramsay

There are lots of trips, shorter and longer, that you can take by canoe or kayak down the Kickapoo River, but one that was new to me and that we took on my birthday in June this year began at Bridge 14 on County P and ended at Bridge 20 in La Farge.  This trip was glorious! The sun shone brightly but the weather wasn't too hot. A lovely breeze blew through the trees and grasses; red-winged blackbirds chirred loudly from the edges of fields, the leaves of shaggy old maples leaning over the river flashed green and silver. Where the upper regions of the Kickapoo pass through lots of farmland and Wildcat Mountain State Park, this part of the river is almost entirely on KVR land. If you drove down Hwy 131 from LaFarge to County P, you would see undulating hills, prairie, red clusters of sumac lining the edge of the road and deciduous forests dark with mystery. But traveling on the river you pass through grasslands dotted with trees, lulled into dreamland by the ringing songs of toads, and then suddenly you round a bend and encounter humongous cliffs rising high above with small ledges of limestone holding tiny microcosms of life: small ferns, tiny wildflowers, a masterful tunnel built out of spider web, with a spider hiding deep inside, and the sweet sound of fresh water drip, drip, dripping into the river below.

The cliffs are adorned with forests of gigantic white pine and Eastern hemlock trees, often towering up to the sky, but also leaning out at odd angles, still firmly rooted into the rock. We saw an immature bald eagle swooping out from the branches of one of these trees, its head feathers clearly changing from speckled brown to white. On its way further downstream it startled a Canada goose and her baby, and one of our friends remarked that the eagle might have wanted a snack! We saw two more goose parents paddling with their little gaggle of babies running over the top of the water, flapping tiny fuzzy wings to escape the canoes coming towards them.

Mayflies, damselflies and dragonflies zoomed past our heads and around our paddles. There was one insect that none of us could identify, distinctively white and fuzzy with 2 tails. It was very graceful and there were lots of them; maybe you can be the first to let me know what it was!

And then there was the dragon. I've been known to joke about the Kickapoo Crocodile at times but this creature took us all by surprise. It descended down the hillside with the bony plates on its back distinctively rising up in ridges. “What is that?!” my youngest son exclaimed. “It looks like a dragon!” someone replied. We kept staring and then as the river turned a bit and us with it, we saw its bony ridges were made up of small rectangular cages that were stuck side by side together, but tipped over, zig-zagging down the hillside. “Oh!” I said. “Mink cages.” And then we all went into our stories about the local history of mink farming.

When we came to Bridge 18, the covered bridge to which our summer camp kids and school groups often hike, it was wild to see it from the perspective of the river. “Aho!” yelled a voice from the shore, and we waved at a young father, mother and small child picking their way among the rip rap and wildflowers. We went under the bridge and then started looking for landmarks of places we love to go during summer camp. We saw the place where the small stream that runs under Billy Goats' Gruff bridge empties into the Kickapoo and reminisced about our times playing there. We saw the tiny “almostacave,” near the water's edge and then kept traveling, down past the cliffs along Wintergreen trail. We stopped there, on a wet sandbar in the dappled sunlight to eat dinner and chocolate beet cake with magenta frosting. (Ask me for the recipe, it's pretty awesome.) Prints of raccoon, burrowing insects, Great Blue Heron, and other small birds dotted the mud next to the water, each with its own unique relationship to this ancient, winding river. 

Our last leg of the journey eventually brought us past the Dam tower and out of KVR land. We started seeing signs of civilization: high power lines, small structures built near the river, then a few homes. Signs of Highway 82 were visible but on the Kickapoo, it's easy to be fooled. How many more bends might the river take between there and here? Lots, I tell you. And then, oh! One more giant surprise cliff before the end, as long as a city block! The take-out spot was deep and muddy, each one of us emerging with our boats from the tall grasses, bearing mud up to our shins that looked like cowboy boots. There were some mud fights as we waited for our friends to bring the other car. Fireflies started to come out in distant places.

Like the grass that adorns the top of the limestone bluffs, rich with layers of history of this place when it was a shallow sea, or a giant plateau impervious to the marauding glaciers that roared past it over the last million years, we too, are but a small piece of a much bigger story.