Fall is my favorite time of year. Yes, the days do get shorter, yet the fall color and cooler weather make a body feel alive. And there’s no better place to feel the invigorating change of seasons than Driftless Wisconsin.
The fall colors beg to be painted, photographed, and framed for keepsake, yet it’s the more subtle signs that foretell the unfolding of a season. The cool night air stealing through an open window tells us summer is over; the smell of fallen leaves tell us fall has begun, and the cloud of chaff rising above the corn pickers says harvest time is upon us.
My father grew up on a tobacco farm near Westby, I married a farm gal, and my daughter married a farm guy. While I did not grow up with a pitchfork in my hand, it’s safe to say the love of farming (and farmers) weaves through our family.
And so it is with Driftless Wisconsin, where farming weaves its way into our life and blankets our landscape with a living tapestry. The rugged Driftless topography seems almost tamed, wrapped with golden ribbons of corn, speckled with dairy cattle, and punctuated with farm silos.
Knowing that a long winter awaits, farmers rush to harvest their feed corn while apple growers rush their bushels to market. All of this provides a bit of late-season suspense as the harvest bumps up against the limits of what weather allows. But an apple, as crisp and tart as the weather, makes it all worthwhile.
I was recently out canoeing on the Kickapoo River, surveying the location of deadfalls since our last river cleanup. The Kickapoo winds footloose through the heart of Driftless Wisconsin, stitching the land together in a jagged seam. The fall scenery from the bow of a canoe unwinds like a movie in slow motion. It’s easy to be lazy, letting the river be the navigator; until the next obstacle sends you into a frenzy of paddling, steering, and laughing.
Fall is also the beginning of the hunt, when family and friends gather to sit in duck blinds on the river and comb the woods for whitetail deer; but mostly to gather around the kitchen table at night to tell stories about the big one that got away.
Which for me is the rule rather than the exception. Hunting is an excuse to get into the woods with my son. And now my grandson, who sits by my side in the deer blind, fidgeting from the cold, and whispering loud enough for every deer in the county to hear. He drew a picture for school of us hunting, describing that, “On Sunday we saw two 2 bucks,” and then seamlessly, “I beat my grandpa in a game of pool.”
Fall shows us time unwinding into seasons, like the quarter-hour marks on a clock. It’s a time of harvesting corn from the fields and memories from the summer. It’s a time for families – for you – to gather and witness the changing of seasons in Driftless Wisconsin.