Morgan Freeman Led Us to Our Christmas Tree

If you think that’s click bait, I could have said closer to the truth that Morgan Freeman—as the voice of a pre-historic spearhead—led us through the visitor’s center for a marsh before we bought our Christmas tree, but where would be the fun of that?

Snowy Day Trip

Last week, Tracy planned for us a trip out of Madison for the day, a bit like old times except that we needed to get the whole day done before more snow was scheduled in around dark. Back when I lived around occasional snow I used to be able to keep track of it, but now it’s either just snowed or snowing or about to snow, so the status matters only if the roads are going to be icy. Must’ve been about to get icy? I’m not even sure if that is a time placeholder anymore.

We did drive northeast of Madison, and I may have dozed in the truck when I wanted to be on the lookout for turkeys. I saw them once.

Horicon

This is the name of the town Tracy’s family moved to when he was in first grade. They’d been living in Cedar Falls, Iowa, where his dad was an engineer at the John Deere plant, but then he got transferred/promoted/something to the Wisconsin John Deere factory in Horicon.

They were there only a couple of years, I think, before they moved to Mexico where his dad helped start a John Deere factory. Quite a cultural shift, eh?

Tracy had been back to Horicon once when he was in grad school in Madison, so this was a cool way for him to check on the house he lived in then and point out to me where he used to go as a kid, etc. We drove around the little town, had lunch at a tavern, and generally felt like we were ready to get on with business.

Largest Freshwater Marsh in the U.S.

This was Business Part 1.

We’d arrived at the southernmost tip of a 15-mile long freshwater marsh, with the bottom part managed by the state of Wisconsin and the top part a national wildlife area. The top part is 33,000 acres.

It’s the largest freshwater marsh is the U.S. and has quite a history, which we learned later. Right now we were getting the basics (which I’m sure Tracy already knew), that it’s a critical stop for migrating ducks and geese, and as such is a Wetland of International Importance, It’s also a part of the Ice Age Scientific Reserve. I don’t know what either of those means but I’m sure I’l learn.

We stopped at one of the state’s wildlife viewing platforms, with a charming sculpture garden outside and a viewing and picnic area between the road and a view of the marsh looking north.

Park personnel had been there before us to check on things, but otherwise we tramped through the snow on our own, looking out through the grey day. Not much of a view compared to what it must look like other days of the year,

State Wildlife Visitors Center

A short drive away was a larger building with a bunch of cars parked outside, but turned out they must’ve all been State employees because we were the only tourists we saw all day, despite signs for bus parking and rv parking and all manner of people we’d avoided.

Outside we were greeted by a wooly mammoth made from individual pieces of rebar. So impressive, so clever. A sign of things to come.

Mostly, I think this area is known as a stopover for Canada Geese. From 100,000 to 200,000 geese stop here each fall.

From pictures on display, there are so many geese it’s hard for the eye to make sense of them.

For some reason I ended up standing beside this giant guy in a small tank. He’s a snapping turtle bigger than Banjo who must’ve been rescued and rehabilitated and placed in a children’s area of this visitor’s center.

He’s grown out of his tank, though, and there’s a funds drive for a new tank for him, so maybe that’s how I ended up near him and enthralled. He’s muscular and lithe. He’s swim-my and sharp. He’s intelligent.

He’s an amazing beast. We gave money.

The Marsh’s History

Turns out we gave money to enter the exhibit downstairs, and seeing as how we were the only people there, someone had to go down and turn on the lights and start up the machines. As soon as they came back up though, they told us to look for a manakin, see where she was looking, and then follow that through the exhibit, as that would be our guide.

Without anyone else to provide context or clues, we kind of stumbled around on our own for a bit, but finally we figured out that the manakin at the front had been looking down in grass at a spearhead.

And this spearhead would light up in various environments throughout the exhibit and talk to us, in none other than Morgan Freeman’s voice. That was so strange and unexpected that it took us a while to become less discombobulated and figure out what was on display.

We began in an ice age exhibit and learned about the early geology of the area, then the first people here.

The disembodied voice of Morgan Freeman described how he was natural rock that was chipped into a spearhead by early man and used lovingly yadda yadda passed down from father to son until he was lodged in the side of an animal and lost to man.

We followed the exhibit as it portrayed the history of this area from being a rich wetland used for hunting and gathering to when white men arrived and almost ruined it all. The spearhead told us about early over-hunting that almost wiped out the Canada Goose and did wipe out many species of migrating birds and native fish to the area. Fail.

Then people tried to build a big dam (the spearhead got caught in that nonsense). Fail. Then we tried to farm the marshy land. Fail.

It wasn’t until one guy applied the new concept that nature wasn’t an inexhaustible source of amusement and began conservation there that some of the non-extinct animals and plants started coming back.

Amid all these exhibits, you can sit in an airboat simulator and watch video of the marsh in front of you and feel vibrations under you and wind at you.

You can learn a hell of a lot more about the land than we did, but we still needed to get to Business Part 2 of the day.

Our First Tree in a While

We’d already driven up, driven around Tracy’s old stomping grounds, stomped around outside in the snow, and followed Morgan Freeman around inside. Now was the real business we had to attend to: getting a Christmas tree.

Six years ago we bought a tree together for Tracy’s house in Maryland. I don’t really remember it because we’d already decided to hit the road right after Christmas, so everything right then was a whirlwind. This time we were starting from scratch, without a saw (I think Tracy has one, but it’s in the storage unit here maybe?), without ornaments (we’d left them all behind) and even without a house. We’re not sure a live tree is even allowed in the apartment complex, but we’re going for it.

Up near Horicon, we found a farm that had cut a tree just the day before, and we paid for it in a barn where a bunch of knitted socks and hats were on display, and as I was feeling them, one became a black kitten in my hands. Shoo! said the lady taking our money. Not even her cat, she said.

And that’s the story of our first Christmas tree in six years. And why we’re going back to Horicon when the weather gets a bit better.