(upbeat music)
- Hello everyone, welcome to our summer season
of In Wisconsin.
We're joining you on a blustery autumn-like day
from Blue Mount State Park in Iowa County.
This week, meet some folks from Lodi
who pay literary tribute to a man
who celebrated Wisconsin's natural areas.
Travel to a remote island in Lake Superior
and find out what it takes for this woman
to keep the lights on.
And here from a Wisconsin veteran of World War II
who had a front row seat for a history-making event.
All that plus will take you to the forests
of Bayfield County in search of a hidden waterfall
in Wisconsin.
- Major funding for In Wisconsin is provided by the
people of a lion's energy who brings safe, reliable, and
environmentally friendly energy to keep homes, neighborhoods,
and life in Wisconsin running smoothly,
a lion's energy, offering energy-saving
ideas on the web.
And by the University of Wisconsin Comprehensive
Cancer Center, providing cancer research,
education, and treatment, UW Comprehensive Cancer Center,
comprehensive as designated by the National Cancer Institute,
information available on the web.
- We travel to Columbia County for our first story this week.
That's where citizens of Lodi read author Aldo Leopold,
a San County Almanac.
The twist is, rather than reading alone,
they gather together to read the entire book
out loud over three days at the public library.
- It's the first weekend in March.
- You bring a drill?
- Yeah.
- Three eighths in?
- And in a large barn in Lodi, these people are
building benches.
- No, if you just kind of make it as level as you can.
- Not just any old bench.
- Oh, beautiful.
This is a Leopold bench.
Such as you might find at this place, the shack.
Humble and ram shackle.
It's one of the most revered sites in Wisconsin.
Revered because the shack and the surrounding landscape
in Sauc County served as the inspiration for this man,
Aldo Leopold, who wrote this book,
a San County Almanac.
It's a classic in conservation, a classic in
American literature, and it served as an
inspiration for this man, Tom Heberlain of Lodi,
who has created a classic event in Lodi around Leopold.
Every year on the first weekend in March,
they read Leopold.
I'm reading September, the Coral Cops.
By September, the day breaks with little help from birds.
A song spare, I'll make you a single half-hearted song.
Every year, the words of this Wisconsin author,
find voice as the city of Lodi reads all of Leopold's
a San County Almanac.
But one may hear the chorus of the quail.
Those lyrical words that recall the sounds and shapes
of Wisconsin's landscapes.
Every year, Lodi reads the book out loud
over three days at the public library.
They read the book to each other, a special way
to savor those lovely words and the landscapes they conjure.
So smokey gold.
There are two kinds of hunting, ordinary hunting,
and rough grills hunting.
There are two places to hunt grills,
ordinary places, and Adams County.
And there are two times the hunting Adams, ordinary times.
One of the Tamarats are smokey gold.
This is a kind of book you ought to read once a year.
It is one of the most influential books in my life
is a young man when I went to the University of Chicago.
I found myself in the south side of Chicago
looking out of my dorm window at a brick wall.
I was so homesick for these marshes and oaks of anas.
And somebody sent me this book.
I grew up in Portage, and Leopold
is writing about the marshes and the geese.
And I'm convinced that's the thing that got me
through my first year of college.
This is written for those luckless ones who have never
stood, gone empty, and mouthed gave.
To watch the gold needles come sifting down.
So what was the path?
From one man's love of Leopold to hundreds in Lodai,
reading and listening to Leopold.
Well, five years ago, Heberline had an idea.
Wouldn't it be nice if somebody would read this book to me?
How can I con people into reading this book to me?
And so the first year, we got 40, 40 some readers.
The idea and the audiences have grown,
all the result of Heberline's motto,
his manifesto, spread the word, spread the word,
any way you can, no matter how small.
CJ Carter will start his howl with two early.
Two early.
Getting up two early is a vice-habitatual and horned
owls, stars, geese, and freight trains.
Getting up two early is a vice-habitatual or habitual,
in horned owls, stars, geese, and freight trains.
CJ Carter will remember these words written by Leopold
over 50 years ago.
They still resonate.
They still find an audience, one that Heberline is determined
to grow.
That's one of the reasons we have kids reading.
Bringing in the grammas, the rampas, the aunts and uncles,
people that have no idea who all the Leopold is,
give them a book, have their kid read it,
and the child starts to talk about Leopold,
and then we start to expand the vision.
To expand the vision, at present, a banner for the rotary
smelt fry, rain, supreme, over Main Street in Lodai.
The Leopold banner is off of Main Street
and much more modest.
But that may change, not just in Lodai, but across Wisconsin.
First weekend of March should be a weekend to celebrate
all the Leopold.
That's not just a good idea.
It's the law.
Yes, Heberline took it to the state.
It's official.
As of year 2004, there is an official Leopold
weekend in Wisconsin.
Leopold and his family purchased his property in 1935.
They were avid hunters and had been up hunting in this area
and fell in love with the landscape.
Reading his books is not the only way to
tell Leopold's story.
Sarah Lloyd of the Aldo Leopold Foundation
used a nature hike and a tour of the shack.
It has the means to spread the word, to tell the story
of Leopold's contribution to the concept of wildlife ecology,
another way to use the weekend.
We find that it's at the Aldo Leopold Foundation
that it's really a wonderful, kind of rallying point
for people to take some time, to think about their relationship
with the land.
Spread the word.
Another major sponsor is Fesins Forever.
It gave us $1,000 worth of San County hominacs,
almost over 350.
Please thank them for their support for Lodi,
Rees Leopold, and these books are now
like the Gideon Bibles in some of our hotels and motels.
And they asked in the motel, they said,
well, what if people steal them?
They said, that's great.
[APPLAUSE]
There are countless ways to celebrate,
to spread the word.
Consider the benchmaker, Gary Labe.
Once you see the true bench made,
you just automatically hook it up to Leopold.
And I think more and more people should realize
who this Leopold guy really is.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
, you know?
[MUSIC PLAYING]
We switch gears now and travel back to 1945,
to the end of World War II.
There were more than 300,000 Wisconsin soldiers
serving during that war.
This is the story of one sailor who
had an historic opportunity to witness a world-changing event.
This is private first class, Elbushard.
I have a great honor of introducing our commander
to the chief, the president of the United States.
I think I know the American soldier and sailor.
He does not want gratitude or sympathy.
He had a job to do.
He did not like it, but he did it.
And how he did it.
Now he wants to come back home and start
again the life he loves.
For some of you, I'm sorry to say,
military service must continue for a time.
We must keep an occupation force in the Pacific.
We are all waiting for the day when you will be home with us
again. Good luck, and God bless you.
We were supposed to watch the Army disarm.
You know, we're supposed to bring in our armament
and throw it on the ground, stuff like that.
They took their ship's company and made them
marching with the Marines.
They would take you and say, OK, here's the gun.
Roll it with them.
And everybody had a Thompson submachine gun.
Everybody, I mean sailors and some of those sailors.
They didn't even know how to use them in here.
You say you don't have to use them, just hold them.
I was expert rifleman.
My uncle George used to say, well, he'd go hunting.
Here's a bullet that's all you need.
Because we don't want a more game than you can
shoot with this one bullet.
When we first landed, it was raining or misting.
And we got on a beach.
And there was this Japanese fisherman bringing in their nets
and we were all full of shrimp, little bitty shrimp.
And they were bringing them in.
And as they were hauling them in, they'd get a handful
and then just throw them in their mouth.
And we could say, you have to eat those things.
They're still alive.
The people were real nice.
They understood that the war was over.
Then we got to Japan and the earth would
went into Nagasaki.
You couldn't believe it.
This is the everything.
Just, boom, just flattened.
About two foot rubble, most of it.
And it's the most beautiful harbory you'll
ever see in this world.
It's just awesome, really.
And that's where your submarine pens were in touch.
They missed most of that stuff.
So they really did not go out there and industrial stuff.
But it just happened to hit in a residential area
with the hospital and all the doctors.
And that was a tragic thing.
I saw the people that were burnt.
It was horrible.
And a lot of their faces were disfigured.
And they were walking around some of them.
But it was terrible.
Because they cleaned out-- all the hospital was completely
blown up with about 80% of their doctors.
So they didn't have really the medical stuff was ruined.
But all the rich homes and back in the mountains never touched.
Rill retracts, they had planes and all those mountains.
They had big artillery stuff.
And you could have pounded that all day with the 16-inch guns.
Bombs, you wouldn't have touched the miniature land
if they were to just come out and they would have blew us
right out of the water.
That's why when someone said they were against
the atomic bomb, I took issue on that.
I said, listen, if that wouldn't have happened,
I don't think I'd be here today.
Because they were waiting for us.
When we were ashore, we were having Japanese army
coming in late on, or arms.
They had guns that lay them down, their pistols
that lay them down.
But when they were coming towards us,
it was about six wide.
And as far as you could see, it was just thousands of them.
And then some of these officers had these big Samari swords,
big lungs, and they didn't want to lay those down.
It was, they said they would belong to the family.
But we had an officer that was pretty good.
And he would take their names and put them on those swords.
So afterwards, they got them back.
But a lot of the officers took those swords, took them home.
That wasn't good for the relationship
between the peoples.
Attention, the peoples of the way.
World War II was about to come to its official closing.
We're on the Pacific Fleet Flagship, US Azizuri,
in Tokyo Bay, for the signing of the surrender of Japan.
We were 1,500 feet in the muslim watch,
and on the fan tail, that's the back end
of the main deck of our ship, the Wisconsin.
And they were signing the peace treaty
and the back end of the battleship
was the ring which was tied up to the dock.
A 19-year-old audio thinking makes it a big up and field.
But look at what's sticking to place.
The world event taking place in the U.S.
only 1,500 feet away from watching him
with the Arthur signing that peace treaty.
And with the jaffles.
How many can say that?
The issues involving divergent ideals and ideologies
have been determined on the battlefields of the world.
And hence, or not for our discussion or debate,
if my honest hope and indeed the hope of all mankind,
but from this solemn occasion, a better world,
shall emerge, shall the blood incarnate of the path.
A world pounded upon faith and understanding.
A world dedicated to the dignity of man
and the fulfillment of his most cherished wish,
the freedom, tolerance, and justice.
Simbolically during the latter part of the signing
of the document by the representatives
of these allied nations, the sun, which had
been behind the clouds here at Tokyo Bay, it
to almost the very end of the signing came
through the clouds and we had sunshides.
And it shone down on the assembles
mightily fast, alive fleet here in its broad set of waters.
You see that?
It makes an impression on an 19-year-old.
That story was an excerpt from a new hour
of long documentary called Wisconsin World War II Stories,
Legacy. You can watch the entire program
on Wednesday, August 31st, at 8 p.m.
on Wisconsin Public Television.
You can also find more information on our website at
www.wrg/inwisconsin.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Some of the more popular features of the Apostle Islands
are the many lighthouses.
Back in the 1800s, lighthouses served an essential function,
keeping ships and their crews safe from rocky island shores.
Today, lighthouses remain popular tourist destinations,
and a few are even manned by volunteers during the summer
months. This week's Wisconsin
Retro selection from 1987 features one of
those volunteers who embraces the solitary
experience of shining a light down a chapter of history.
When was the last time you saw the sun peak over the horizon?
It's a simple act as old as time, yet one few of us notice.
Being able to see the sun rise, the sunset, and the moon
come up all in the same day.
It's not very often when we live in the city that we experience
that. Here, it's very common fare.
Common fare to outer island, part of the Apostle Islands
National Lakes Shore, home to a million trees, a lighthouse,
and annamarie luxe.
Welcome to life in the slow lane.
This is my own thorough experience.
I don't have a cabin in the woods that I have a lighthouse.
I'm not living in New England, hence that I have all
of the island.
And Lake Superior becomes Walden North.
Here, annamarie luxe spends her summer
inhabiting the island, tending the lighthouse.
She gave up her job as a newspaper reporter
in Jane'sville, as well as indoor
plumbing and electricity, to become a national
park service VIP.
VIP is short for volunteers in the parks.
Luxe is part of a small yet dedicated group that
donates their time to the National Park Service.
For this, they get a place to sleep $2.50 a day,
and all the wilderness they can absorb.
I came out here because it's very seldom,
I believe, that any of us get a chance to be by ourselves
on a very remote, very wild island,
and can stand on that island and be
fairly certain that we're the only human being
in that place at that time.
That's a very unique feeling.
The island lies 27 miles off the Bayfield Peninsula
beyond the lighthouse is nothing, but 10% of
the world's fresh water.
Our island is the furthest from land of all the islands
in the National Lakeshore.
And because of that, it receives the furthest visitors.
And therefore, I will go days maybe even a week or so
without anybody coming here.
The only human prints in the sand are put there
by Anna Marie Luxe.
I look around at things with a great childlike wonderment,
and sometimes I feel like I'm 10 years old.
Sometimes I can be Robinson Crusam.
But Anna Marie Luxe has responsibilities
quite unlike characters from Daniel Defoe's books.
In this chapter, it's time to break the law.
My time is spent mostly maintaining the grounds
and maintaining trails.
In addition to some lighthouse keeping,
which is not to be confused with lighthouse keeping,
Luxe each morning reports weather information
to the park surface.
I check by weather station, I find out what the high and low
was yesterday.
Find out what the temperature is right now.
I get the flag, I put the flag up.
That's usually a pretty good indicator of wind direction.
Each morning at eight, Luxe goes to the top of the tower
where radio reception is best.
Human contact via the wireless.
[INAUDIBLE]
Outer Island, Asia.
Outer Island, 722 reporting.
Sunny skies, 62 degrees.
Southwest wind less than 5 knots.
Waves less than a foot at the dock break.
But in the summer, the days on Outer Island
are far from packed with park service responsibilities.
There is still plenty of time to watch the
butterflies in the hawk wheat, plenty of time to
listen to balloons in the bay.
In the midst of 8,000 acres of pristine wilderness,
in the most remote section of Wisconsin, surprisingly,
once doesn't feel lonely.
You can be alone, totally alone, on an island like this,
and not be lonely.
When you're surrounded by all of the animals and the bird
life, especially on Outer Island, you cannot feel alone.
You cannot feel lonely.
Luxe is a writer by profession.
She records each day's events in a journal.
Here are impressions from her first day on Outer Island.
The first thing you notice is the quiet,
not the absence of noise but the complete lack
of all that civilized.
Traffic, engines, conversation, sirens, the
sounds of people, gone.
Replaced instead with a steady rhythmic lap
of waves on the shore, the sound of water and
stone, water and sand, water and driftwood.
The only hint of civilization is the light tower in a joining
house. It is the single feature of the
island engineered by human hand.
This light is still actively working and still guiding
sailors safely to shore just as it did when it was first
built in 1874.
It may be an old light, but it still holds court
daily for the boats the past by.
Old traditions maintained by new methods.
It's an automatic light that runs off of
solar-powered batteries.
The light is smart enough to go on and off without help from
Anna Marie Luxe.
Yet while the inner mechanics have modernized,
some things have remained constant since 1874.
The view at 130 feet is still magnificent.
When I get to the top of the tower, I can
see a good portion of the island to the south.
I can see the trees and the wilderness.
Some of the trees are estimated to be more than 300 years old.
When I look to the north, I can see the great expanse of lakes
superior. Oftentimes I can see orboats
passing by on their way to the south.
You can still imagine yesterday's sailors
seeing the light and recalling the words to
that old American hymn.
I once was lost, but now I'm found.
And more often than not, it was a woman manning
the tower trying to guide the tempest
tossed to safe harbor.
Just in terms of being lighthouse keepers,
women have been doing that for centuries.
And they've kept the fires burning.
They've kept the lights lit during storms, during the fog.
They were up there and they were doing it.
There's nothing unique about the fact that I'm a woman.
But today the historic lighthouse still stands and
Annamarie Lux is the link to those who have
lived here before.
Consider the poem by Edgar Guest.
The light I've tended for 40 years is now
to be run by a set of gears, but will ever that
automatic thing plant marigolds in the spring.
We don't know if marigolds bloom every summer since 1874 on
Outer Island, but thanks to Annamarie Lux, they
did bloom this summer.
I hope that in some small way I've been able to carry on this
romantic tradition.
The view of the sunset from here lives up to
the namesake of the lake, superior.
If there is a message in Annamarie summer on
Outer Island, it is this.
The sun rises and sets every day.
Take a few minutes and watch it.
You may not make a living at it, but it will
definitely leave you richer.
Outer Island where Annamarie Lux worked may not have a
volunteer assigned to its lighthouse this summer
because of an ongoing bank stabilization project.
There are volunteers stationed at three other
island lighthouses though, on sand, devils and
Michigan islands.
They've been staffed since mid-June.
That's our program this week.
Thanks for joining us from Blue Mount, State
Park and Iowa County.
We leave you now with a trip to Lost Creek
Falls in Bayfield County.
For In Wisconsin, I'm Patty Low.
See you next time.
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