Move some of that junk out of the
way maybe.
We need onions.
Here, Josh.
Here's your seeds.
Are you two rowing or what?
I'll let grandpa tell you what to do.
Yeah, we're gonna we're
going to yeah don't mess with the
lettuce yet. We've got to do onions
see there Start with that
each take a handful
And you're gonna Natasha
has made a
trench for you
All right, so why don't one
of you go down one row
I'll plant them a little closer
together than those I plant them
about like that.
That's so good.
Yeah. Do you want to go in that row
Ben over there?
There you go.
Now, you plant them, let me show you
something else, Josh.
You plant them so that the growing
end points up.
Yep.
The Chinese don't eat our onions,
if they would grow that far.
So is that good spacing though?
Yeah, that's about right, that about
right.
Okay
And it's very tedious and
back-breaking.
But just think of how good those
onions are going to taste.
Can you hear the grains?
There's a grub worm.
Just throw him out of there.
That's a Grub Worm.
Save him for fishing.
He won't save.
Throw him away.
See this is the fresh, this is a new
area that we just plowed so
that's why we're planting those
ones.
And there's another whole sack of
them, so we're going to have about
four rows, I suppose, of onions, or
more than that.
You have all different kinds, or are
they?
No, they're all white onions and
they'll get to be about this
big around.
Yeah, they'll really do well.
Alright, here's another bag.
That's a bunch.
That's working well.
It's a real back breaker.
I can't hardly do it anymore.
That's what we're here for.
Ha ha ha ha!
Hey, there's an onion over here.
What? There's an Onion over there.
Onion got into the potatoes,
now they go well with potatoes.
This is grandma plant onions dad.
What we need
next is we're going to start
planting potatoes.
How are you spacing them?
Thank you very much.
We're going deeper, or here?
This one done? Hold on.
It's got to be that deep.
I'm not going to do it like that at
all.
You've got to make a hole right
there.
That'll do it.
That good? Yep.
Now about a foot or so.
A foot? 12, 14 inches.
There you go. OK.
Another one.
And then you just repeat
that again
and again.
Out of here.
For the end of the summary of Old
Bayside.
Don't you think you'll have a lot of
grass growing?
Not a bit seriously
Steve's got the rotor tiller under
control
You guys get to run
the hole, that'll take care of it.
How deep you want them?
About, not too deep, about like
that, about 2 inches,
3 maybe,
don't do them too deep.
Well, there's sort of a ditch,
but it's got to be that 8 by 10
gallon.
You're going to have to take it.
Yeah, well, I don't know if it's
worth it.
See you.
I'll know.
They're coming!
Yeah,
that's nice.
So it's pretty, uh,
that's the plan also.
Oh, yeah.
The other one
Well this um
these two ponds at one time ran
together.
Really? Do you see this right here?
I can see yeah and and
and if you look over here look
over here man you see it
would have come see you can just
about see where it came right
through here.
Through here. With that little hump
from them.
Well, I think that's just a
dead tree that fell over, yeah.
But just think now how high
the ponds would have been for
them to come, for those two to run
together.
And coming right to this.
And did I tell you guys that
at one time,
when this was Menominee Indian
Country, and then shortly
after when the Fersellers came in,
the Menominees were trapped
in Adams County, Thanks for the
watch. Let's hold that.
Right over there last time
We'll go over there.
It takes direction around, doesn't
it?
We'll go where the...
Okay, are we ready?
Yeah, okay anytime
It is a nice thing.
It's a very nice day.
Fawn's looking good.
One of the things that's interesting
is the pond is up more
this year and I
expect that to be a lot of snow, but
it really is nice.
So when do you think everything's
gonna start?
Well, it's really late.
I'll bet we're two weeks late
because ordinarily
you begin to see some
budding.
You see a little on the maple right
there, see that?
Yeah, that maple tree has some
flowers and the maples usually
flower earlier than the
oaks. What's interesting about the
oak, and this is an
old thing that my dad taught me,
when the oak leaf is the size
of a squirrel's
the other side of the squirrel's
ear.
Then it's time to plant your corn.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, so you check,
first off, you have to know the size
of a squirrel's ears.
That's if you don't know that.
That must have been pretty small. If you
don't know that, you're lost.
But you check the
old tree, and when it's about that
big around, that's the time to
plan your corn, yeah.
And that's really kind of
interesting because my dad never
paid any attention to the calendar.
He was...
It's always based off that, huh?
Yeah, it's a natural kind of thing.
So, what do you think?
Is it time?
Well, we're a long ways from seeing
an oak leaf.
See, there's a white oak tree right
in front of us, right there.
And you see any anything except
an odd leaf left over from
last fall.
There's nothing there.
But OK, you guys, this is a quiz
now.
Right behind you.
What does that look like?
That, uh, oak?
No.
It's a black cherry.
Oh, the black bear over there.
You'd know him for you.
We could just tell by looking at it.
What about that one over there,
Josh? Right there.
God, that's so exciting.
I see a white oak and
a black oak, it looks right straight
ahead, right on there, see that tree
right there?
What do you think that is?
Right there.
I'm talking about the big one.
Another one right there.
Is that an oak
as well? Yeah, it's a white oaks,
see? See, there are two
main categories of oaks.
There are the white oakes and the
black oaks and they have,
the black oak family has
pointed leaves.
And the round oak.
The white oak family has rounded
leaves.
So in the white
oak family you have white oak and
burro. We have natural here in the
farm.
And in the black oak family, you
have black oak and red oak.
So now you know.
How can you tell the difference
without any leaves though?
Well, it's tricky.
It really is, but after you've done
it for well, you can,
you pretty much can.
And then one of the things that I
like to do,
we don't, a lot of the stuff we don
t do anything with.
You see that tree right out there?
It looks like it's falling down,
big rotten hole in it.
Well, that's an example
of a tree where
a raccoon may find itself a
home.
That's more likely.
Birds mating? Yeah, all kinds of
stuff. Woodcutters love that kind of
a tree. People want to...
A lot of people want to clear cut
everything, keep all the trash down,
get all the dead wood, and
I don't do that.
We do cut wood for firewood,
but we leave a lot of it here, and
it just naturally decays
and new stuff comes up, and that's
kind of interesting to see the
progression of it all.
It's very interesting.
But I wanted to tell you the story
about this very location where
we are, right here.
You guys want to change angles at
all?
Is that the round oak?
Is that what the tables are made
from?
That is correct.
We had a round oak heater.
Cool.
That's right.
Yeah, yeah.
You guys ready?
Farm that we're standing on
this very patch of ground
is 10,000 years old.
How do I know that?
That's when the last glacier
retreated and
we happen to be standing where
the terminal marine
the end of the glacier.
That's why it's so hilly and there
are a lot of stones here and the
ponds interestingly enough the
pons were big chunks
of ice left
over from the glacier And
when the ice melted, it
dropped down, and that formed
the ponds.
And in the eastern part of the
state, they're called kettle ponds,
we just call them ponds
or water table ponds and
the pons are an indicator
of the water table because
if you want to know what the water
table is, that's it, up and down.
Well, the history of this place now.
10,000 years ago, there was nothing
here.
Glacier. It's crept everything.
There are no trees, nothing except
ice.
When the ice began melting
and formed Glacial Lake Wisconsin
just to the west of here,
this land was left behind hilly
and stony and with these ponds
and slowly
the vegetation came back.
And then I don't know how 20,000s of
years ago, but some
number, the Native Americans
came into
this country.
By many, many years
later, 1848, for
example, this was still Menominee
Indian country.
And that's when the last treaty with
the Menominees was signed.
What was interesting, this
very place where we're standing,
the Menomonies traveled
from their trapping grounds
in Adams County through
this very land, right here,
to Berlin, which is on the Fox
River, where there was a trading
post.
And they camped, I suspect,
right up in here.
We need to do some digging to find
arrowheads.
How many have you found?
Well, I haven't found any.
See arrowheads don't respond to
a metal detector because they're not
metal, but the
person who was here before had
a whole pail full that they found
of arrowheads.
Now one of the stories that I
learned,
the person who owned this place
ahead of us, the Combses,
Mrs. Combs was in her 80s when I
was probably 16,
and I would come down here,
her son worked for us as a hired
man. I would bring him home and she
would tell me stories about
how the Monomonies would travel
through here and would come up
to the house and
trade, want to trade,
maple syrup and maple
sugar for salt
because they were always short of
salt.
And I thought she was just telling
me a story, I really did.
And then when I did some historical
digging on this property and
looked at the first survey record.
I found on that first survey
map, which was drawn
in 1851,
a squiggly little line and the
surveyor had written, Indian
Trail.
Right through here.
Yeah, I mean, it's unbelievable
how that she
was not spoofing me at
all. She was telling me exactly what
she remembered
as a little girl.
So there are lots of stories.
One of the interesting things is
every piece of land has
a story to tell.
You just got to know how to look for
it.
And the story is in the trees,
the story in the land, The
story is in the when we're looking
at where these two ponds
maybe went together.
And it's such fun to stand and
wonder, now what's
this land trying to tell me?
And sometimes you come up with
exactly the wrong answer, but
it gives you a starting
place.
And that's why it's kind of fun
to be walking around in the woods
and looking at the land and trying
to find out what's
it trying to me?
And it has a great story to tell.
We've got to learn how to listen.
We don't know how to to listen to
the land.
Sounds a little corny, but that's
what we have to do.
Just don't pretend to do anything.
I don't know what to do with my hands,
Ricky Bobby.
Just have it come natural.
How's my hair look, Josh?
Oh, it's flowing in the wind.
Haha
Just think this way man,
nobody under 40 looks at these
things anyway.
Alright, here we go,
alright you guys go ahead,
I'll stop you and we'll talk about
some stuff.
Big tree right here.
Yeah I think this is a I think
that's what this is I think this is
where a tree fell over and
it made this home.
But you can see you can see clearly
where they're right here there had
to be a stream coming out where the
where the water must have run and
I need to see some of the see the
stones that are left over from
the glacier.
Oh yeah.
That kind of interesting.
Up in the field there's some really
big ones.
You said they call it a kettle pond
in the eastern part?
Is that why they got the name kettle
moraine? Is that what that's?
That's exactly right, that's exactly
So now here, see that's a cherry
tree, see the black cherry
tree. And the way that you can tell
in comparison
with an oak tree, just look at the
difference now in the
bark, you see this?
Yeah, it looks more flaky.
Well, yeah, and it is.
And black cherries, really, is a
nice tree.
And we've got them just growing all
over the place down here, naturally.
And see that big old black oak right
there?
And another one on the other side.
Oh, these stones. And see here, here
are the examples of when the
westerly wind comes through and
knocks over these trees.
Really? When does that?
Yeah, it sure does.
Lightning or something?
No, it doesn't even need lightning.
Let's just close them over.
So what caused that tree over there
to break in half?
Well, I think it just got old.
Sold in general.
And well maybe more than that you
see the top blew off oh yeah
which killed it and that was a huge
huge tree but just just
look at size of some of these oaks
look at the size of that black oak
and look up in the top see the
wind took the top out of that tree
too
That one's got, so that
tree has those little
berries on them.
But what you're seeing now is,
see this is a maple right here.
See this one right here?
So those are the buds, right?
Yeah, you're seeing, yeah, they all
look like the same thing. And see, those are
m-
The flowers come out early, so those
are the flowers in the maple tree.
Let's go further down here.
Here's your badge roll.
Yeah, well now you see
this is kind of interesting because
though see though.
This is really fascinating because
you see the tree is blown over
Yeah, but it's still growing.
Still growing.
And this is a different part.
See that?
And these are its roots.
It's just really interesting.
It's hanging in there.
And it does.
It's a maple, you see?
And so that part of it's pretty much
dead, but there's another part of
growing there.
So here we've got this tree and that
tree, and they both came from
the original tree, which is a dead
tree.
Hey, I got a question for you.
Yes.
Would a black oak tree,
would their roots combine with a
different type of tree?
You mean in, in, like
intertwined?
Yeah, well they do, but I don't
think there's any, any change of
genetics if that's what you're
asking. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think
so. But the, this kind of stuff,
the story behind this would be
really interesting because a big
windstorm would have come through
here, tipped that tree over,
but didn't quite tear out the roots.
Still kept going? And so this kept
going. And that's a pretty good
sized tree now.
Yeah.
And people say, well, there's this
tree and that tree.
It's the same tree, it's the tree,
so is this one.
So that kind of stuff is interesting
to me.
Alright, now we're coming down by
the pond and we'll see
what we can see here.
I think this pond has
a pair of
geese nesting
on it.
In fact, there was a nest right over
here at one time, but it may have
flooded out when the
water came up.
Do geese just pair?
Are they just pairs when they come
and nest? Or do they have like lots
of?
You know what's interesting about
Canada geese,
that a lot of people don't understand,
they pair for life.
Really?
They're monogamous.
They're really interesting in that
respect, different from ducks.
Now you see some of the big stones
left over from the glacier laying
all over the place here?
There's a big one.
And there's a, that's
a volunteer Scotch pine.
Yeah, which is kind of invasive
because that's not native here.
Scotch pines were brought into the
area as for Christmas trees
and then they
escaped.
I was trying to see
There was a right off in there some
places where the.
Canada goose nest was, and I think
it may have flooded out.
You see the maples,
see the red on the maple?
It's really cool.
Well, this is a side.
These are side questions behind
the scenes. These are questions
beyond the.
I can redo it.
Yeah, Cosmos,
near the grass side.
Okay, you guys ready?
We're talking about the Canada
geese that nest
here and right
over that way is where
the female goose was
on the nest and the male was
in the pond.
The reason we knew there was a nest
is the male wouldn't fly up,
he just stayed there.
What do they do to build the nest?
Oh, they use grass and twigs.
So they gather it.
You know what we're looking at right
now? That's where a beaver works.
See that right there?
That little pile of brush.
Oh yeah. A couple of years ago,
and you think beavers are really
smart.
They're not so bright, I feel.
Because they were gonna build a dam
across this pond for whatever reason
I have. Really?
I have, I do not know.
So multiple beavers or just one?
Well they're a whole bunch of them.
They damn the whole thing?
Well, it only got that far and then
they decided that this was a lost
hope and they went on to
some other pond.
So it would be the point of damming
this pond.
Well, they thought it was running
water, you see.
And if you dam it, then the water
would come up higher and all would
be well.
And I could just hear the discussion
that they said, you know, Dad,
I think you screwed up.
This is not the place to be.
Let's try the other pond.
So they went over there and cut down
a bunch of my trees.
They tried to build a dam.
And then they left the country.
I don't know where they went.
They left.
They left, they left.
Okay, let me ask you a question,
guys. Do you see what looks like a
kind of a strange thing in
the water? What do you think that
is?
A log?
Looks like a log, doesn't it?
It's not a log.
Looks really strange.
It's a pond lily.
Oh, really?
Yeah, those are the roots of a pond
lilly.
The roots? Yeah, and they're
strange looking, but it's all kind
of scaly,
but that's what it is.
Yeah, like additional logs.
So is that extending that into the
water? Oh, sure.
Oh sure, oh sure.
Yeah, and by July,
August there'll be all kinds of
flowers and great big leaves
on the pond valley.
So what else do we see around here?
Well you can see where
the pond a few years ago, you can
see where it was.
Mm-hmm.
I don't want to be looking at your
face.
Well, then we're going to start
looking this way. Yeah, we can just,
we really are ready to look this
way!
You guys are always a step behind
here. What's going on?
We want to capture the,
I don't know how you want to film it
if you do, but those maples
now are in early spring bloom,
that's the red that you see.
Which is kind of interesting.
And you asked before, why on
the top?
Well, that's where it gets more
sunlight. Yeah.
And then it works its way down.
And the maple, that that's
really a flower.
The maple flower comes out first.
And then the leaves will follow.
And by the, in a normal
season, it probably will be late
this year, by the middle of
this month, May, usually the leaves
are coming out.
But the flower.
Absorb any light, right?
That's just...
Well, if you look at them up close,
it's the flower,
and it's where the
maple seed is.
So do the maples, they stop right
there or?
It looks that way, doesn't it?
No, they go around the corner a
little bit. But that side hill is
not.
Apparently, well, there's one over
there. There's two, three over
there, but that
side hills mostly oak.
Well, we have in here such a
collection of white
oak, we've cherry,
black oak, aspen,
birch,
many different species.
I wish that I knew where the...
Sandhill crane was nesting because
they they nest on this pond as well,
but we're probably talking too long
Do they nest in pairs like the
geese?
They do, and a question that
I've not been able to answer,
and I think it's true that
the pair of Sandhills will come
back to the same spot where
they were the previous year.
They just know where to come.
And they winter way down
in Texas.
How do they know?
You want to study that, you say
that?
Do they migrate in a group or in
pairs?
They migrate in groups.
The Sandhills in
the fall, you can
sometimes drive by a field and there
will be a hundred of them.
And they're all getting together
and preparing to migrate.
But your earlier question,
which of those Sandhils
decides that this is the
day that we're going to
fly?
Nobody knows that.
And that is a fascinating question.
Because there is a
sand hill in charge.
Well, I don't know if you'd call it
that, but it's true, and you don't
know who it is.
Same thing with the Canada's.
And they all know how to come back
and meet with each other too.
Well, in fact,
we were we were camping one time in
the marsh south of Wautoma.
My son, your uncle, Jeff and
I, and we spent the night
in the Marsh in October when
the Sandhills were migrating.
I mean, it was like a family
reunion.
We couldn't sleep.
They were talking all night.
How's your summer, Mabel?
Pretty good. How about yours,
John?
I mean that's what I think there is.
How are the young ones?
Hottie did pretty well.
Yeah, and here they
all are going through,
they're just making, they've got to
be saying something to each other.
Yeah, they're, yeah.
Like, I wonder how the chips going
to be this year.
It's getting cold.
What we did last year.
Well, and the Canada's are the same
way. Yeah, do they all?
Do they all have a meeting spot
together?
And then why is
it? How do they know?
When there's a pair nesting here,
there's a pair of nesting over
there, how do they in October,
November? It's time to
get together and even
more, to form a V
to fly
south.
And one of the things that I still
enjoy very much is
the geese coming and going.
I know everything is right with the
world.
When the geese are flying in the
spring, flying south in
the fall. When they quit flying,
they're like the canary in the mine,
I think.
If we don't see the gees flying
north and south, that's something
that's wrong with the
environment.
Something else has changed along
the way.
Almost all of the Canada geese
flew over this area further
north into Canada.
And now there's a goodly number that
nest.
They don't work in Madison or a lot
of places.
They're in their past,
golf courses and that sort of thing.
Out here, I tell you, I really
enjoy them because sometimes you
come down here on this pond
and just sit for an hour
and you hear them
talking to each other,
the pair.
I don't know what they talk about.
I suspect they're worried about
the eggs are gonna hatch and all
that sort thing, but they do and
you'll hear them honking
when they're flying.
But when they're on the
water, they're like chickens.
They're just talking to each other,
just kind of cackling.
That's kind of interesting.
That's all I know right now about
this topic.
Okay.
It's
Don't worry, we're
going to
have to bring my stand.
These interviews are only a couple
hours, so are you ready?
No, these aren't things.
We won't even get a whole tank going
here.
So,
tell me about Whispers and Shadows
and walk in with your
dad.
One of the interesting things that I
experienced as a kid
was my father was one
who was curious about
a lot of things,
especially was he curious about the
out of doors.
And his way of
showing me the out of
doors was not to hand me
a book and say read this,
but his style was to
come along with me and we're
going to take a walk today.
And these walks happen generally
on Sunday afternoons,
because we were farm people,
and there was farm work to do all
week long.
So on Sunday afternoon,
almost every Sunday afternoon from
April clear on through
November, in fact we would do
some of this even when there was
snow on the ground, we would walk.
But the summer walks and
the fall walks were the ones
of most interest to me, and
the ones that I remember most
vividly.
We would, our farm was 160
acres.
That's two miles around,
quarter mile on a side.
And we would start
by looking at the farm crops.
And we'd check the old crop and the
corn crop and the hay crop
and pasture.
And we check as to whether or not
the cows had enough to eat for the
next while in the pasture.
And we walk along the fence
rows.
And in those days the fences were
all divided.
Into 20-acres or 10-acre
spots.
And the fence rows where the
wire fence was is where we stacked
the stones, because
our farm was
a stony, hilly,
sandy farm.
And in those stone piles,
in those fence rows,
we would walk slowly,
and we would keep our mouths shut.
My dad was a stickler
for walking slowly.
And quietly.
And in those stone piles
we would see, we call them gophers,
thirteen-striped ground
squirrels to be more official.
That's where they lived.
The rabbits lived there.
There were jack rabbits in those
days and we would find jack rabbits.
There were foxes that lived in the
fence. There were bluebirds in
the hollow fence posts.
And there were bobble links
singing.
And we saw all that.
And we walked along.
My dad would say, do you know what
that is?
I said, I don't know what it is.
That's a gopher.
Sometimes we'd carry a rifle when
we were doing this.
My dad hated gophers.
They got into the corn and
they rooted up the corn and
they killed the corn plant.
And sometimes this does not
sound very polite.
We were out to shoot the gophars.
That was some of my first experience
with a .22 rifle.
Going after the Gophers.
Finish our walk around
the property, looking at the crops,
and then my dad would say, we should
take another walk.
Sometimes we would walk as far as
two miles in one direction.
Where we're sitting right here,
right now, we would have walked as
far.
Because my dad knew about these
ponds.
And whenever there's a pond, there's
something special.
And we would come down to one of
these ponds, right where we are
right now.
And we would sit down,
lean against a tree,
and my dad again would
admonish me to say nothing,
just to sit quietly.
And sometimes it would take a half
an hour of sitting quietly
before the squirrels would come out,
sometimes a rabbit, sometimes
a crow, and at
the pond, a can of the goose, maybe.
Or a wood duck, or a mallard
duck.
And he might whisper to me, do you
know what that is?
Oh, it's a mallar duck.
Oh, really, got a nest on there.
One of the things that he said that
I've never forgotten,
he said, what you need to do,
if you really want to understand
nature,
is not pay so much attention
to what everybody else pays
attention to, to
loud noises and the stuff that's
easily seen.
He said, learn how to
listen for the whispers.
Listen for what is not
ordinarily heard.
Listen carefully,
because you will hear a
part of nature that
is profoundly different from the
loud noises, nothing wrong with the
loud noise that nature makes,
but to have the complete picture,
you need to hear the quiet
whispers, and sometimes those quiet
whispers have far more
to say to you
than the loud voices.
And the second thing he said
Don't just look where the bright
light shines.
Learn to look in the shadows.
Because it's in the shadow that
there's a whole other world.
It's in these shadows that
things occur that most of us don't
even think about.
Learn to look in the shadows
and listen for the whispers
because the extent to which you do
that is the extent
to which you will come.
To know nature,
know far more
important than simply
becoming acquainted with.
Further, the extent
he would say to me, the extent
to which you know something
and know it deeply
is the extent of which you
will take care of it.
I've never forgotten that.
Whether it's an old barn, a field of
corn, or an
oak woods, the
extend to which you know it
is the extend of which
you will care of that.
That's a powerful message and
I've never forgotten it.
Why was it important for him to
know nature?
That my dad's
knowledge of nature was
something I think that was just a
part of him.
I could never, I've never been able
to figure out really
why he had this interest other than
he was a farmer,
he had limited formal education,
fifth grade.
Something else he always said, just
because you have a lot of education
doesn't mean you know anything.
He told me that often.
It told me all.
As the years went along, he kept
telling me that.
But why it was that he
became so
interested in knowing,
as I described it before, knowing
nature, I think has something to do
with the fact that he was a farmer.
And he depended on the land,
and he knew that nature was of the
land.
He wouldn't talk about it.
He wouldn't say it. These are not
his words.
You had to watch him.
And you had to see him
in what he did.
That to me was,
well, I can't, I don't know
why.
Other than he just did.
He grew up, of course, under
very primitive circumstances.
Went to a log cabin school and
lived on a, my
grandfather was a cook in
the logging camps and
he was a terrible farmer.
But my, so my dad had to do a lot of
the farm work as soon as he was
able to.
But he had this appreciation.
And there's another dimension to it
too, I think.
It sounds a little strange.
Elder Leopold knew this.
He was also a hunter.
He hunted not because it
was a recreational thing to do.
The gophers were a pest.
You got rid of them because they
were a problem.
But we hunted squirrels and
rabbits and
rough groves.
We called them partridges and
pheasants and deer.
And we ate them.
It was part of our diet.
So he knew nature as
something, well, if you're
going to hunt a squirrel, you better
know something about.
The characteristics of a squirrel.
And if you're gonna hunt rabbits,
you better know something about
that.
And so part of it was you
just needed to know the
background of these creatures
in order to
hunt successfully.
He also appreciated so much
trees.
Oh, he was a great lover of trees.
Some of that was practical.
We heated our farmhouse with wood
stoves.
And I learned about when I was three
years old, I knew the difference
between a white oak and a black
oak and a white pine and a red pine
and a birch tree, because each one
of them has a very
different characteristic when you
put it in a wood stove.
And of course, my job as a kid was
carrying wood into the house, always
for the wood box.
And he would say, now look, we've
got to have the oak in this pile and
the pine wood goes in a different
pile because that's kindling wood.
And what's kindle wood?
Well, it burns faster than odd.
So he knew trees from a
practical perspective,
but he also,
indeed, these are not his words.
He just loved to sit under,
as we're sitting here today, to sit
underneath a tree and listen,
and listen to it, as I was
explaining earlier.
Listen to it talk to you
because every tree,
just like the land has a message,
it sounds corny, the land as
a message that it wants you to hear.
A tree talks to you
in a language of the tree,
but it's speaking.
It's speaking, and listen
carefully, because its
message is
a very fascinating one.
And the red pine and the white pine
and the aspen each speak
differently.
The aspen is all excited
and the leaves flutter.
And the white pine has a
soothing, quiet
message.
I learned all this from my father,
way back, before I even started
school.
These are the sorts of lessons that
he taught.
He didn't call them lessons.
He didn't say I want you to learn
this as an educational experience.
That was not his vocabulary.
He didn't know any of that stuff.
He just wanted me to know,
he wanted, let's say it differently,
he wanted to share what he knew.
And his way of sharing was to
show me.
And he would quiz me all the time.
What kind of tree is that?
I just told you last week,
that is a black oak.
Remember this, that's a black Oak.
And what's a Black Oak good for?
I don't know about it.
It's good for firewood.
It's Good for lumber.
Oh, really? And we did
that again and again.
Well, after about the 50th time,
slow learners like me catch on.
And we said, that the Black Oak.
Yeah, that right. Now what about
that one? And we go to the next
tree.
What's that good?
Yeah, really.
So it's like it was all
a harvest, but it was reciprocal.
I mean, you lived off of these
things, but you also had to do
your part to sustain
it.
There really was a
very much give and take back
and forth.
As strange as it sounds,
we respected everything
that was a practical part of
our life. We respected the squirrels
and the rabbits and the black
oak and the white oak.
And we nourished them when we took
care of them and all of the rest of
it. And at the same time, we also
harvested them.
So it was a back and for.
It sounds a little strange, but it
was.
I come back to it this way, we have
always, my dad never said this, but
he knew, and he helped me know that
we're all a part of nature.
We're all apart of what's going on
here. We're not apart from it.
It's not all out there to serve us
without us helping it back.
We are all in it together.
Is that tripod in your shot?
I'll see you in a little bit, yes,
yes.
Yeah, it is.
Hey, Butch!
But, I'm
gonna have to move the tripod,
thank you.
And I would never be able to do this
over again in a hundred years.
Nice. Great.
Ha, ha, ha.
What else did I tell you we were
going to talk about?
I don't have my crib nose right
here.
I do.
In fact, I was going out.
I didn't have time to even look at
it. No, I don't t.
I was gonna share it with those
guys. I don t have mine.
We talked about listening
to your dad,
we talked about listening,
which we talked to them about.
Yeah, I think you probably have done
it.
You know the whispers and shadows
part is
I'm very intrigued with that idea
because it's a metaphor for so
much of what goes on today, oh my
gosh.
And I don't know how to subtly do to
build that into such a program as
this but it goes way beyond
association with nature.
Well, yeah, I
understand what
you call it, the land or
the mother earth.
And the idea of
being able to listen to the
land and listen
to a tree and all
of that is as practical
today as it ever was.
Alright, I need help up, obviously.
Yeah, I'm ready.
If we don't know who you are,
why don't you tell me?
Who I am.
Your name and your relationship
to Jerry.
My name is Josh Horman.
I am the grandson of Jerry
Yaps, and I am
currently a junior undergraduate
student at the University of
Wisconsin.
And what are you studying?
I'm studying sociology and
geography with environmental
studies.
So three things all fit into one.
Does that have anything to do with
walking with your granddad?
Yes it does.
I remember being out here when I was
a little boy and doing
similar types of walks that
my grandpa Jerry had when he was
little as well. So I think that his
experience influenced my
decision making and doing
environmental studies and being a
part of nature.
I like being out there.
It kind of gets you free from
the city environment and you get
a...
As he says, listen to the earth
speak, listen to land speak.
And it is, I like it, I enjoy
being out here.
It gets me like, I'm
free from my
schoolwork, my just
worries that I had at home.
So it's very, very
peaceful.
Do you think it was different for
you growing
up in the city and
then coming out here as to
him growing up on the farm
and taking the work.
Yeah, as he would describe, I'm a
city kid, so I didn't have to go
through the labor, the hard work,
I guess, at some points.
I mean, I not always getting down
and dirty planting crops.
I'm not doing that.
I have everything readily available
for me living in the city, but so
coming out here, it's
a different experience where I
get to appreciate it, I guess more
from being
like living in this city.
And do you see any difference in
you and your peers?
Either.
Yeah, I
think I appreciate nature more
and I'm big at
keeping it clean and
keeping it preserved and I don't
think a lot of people appreciate
that because they don't ever get the
experience to come out and be
a part of nature and get to see
everything around us.
So I don t think that appreciation
is there and that's why sometimes
it worries me that
nature can be threatened in the
future with threats of.
Climate change or pollution or
stuff like that.
So how many times do you think he'll
have to ask you what kind of tree
that is before?
Uh, you know, it'll take me a while.
I'm not so good at the trees.
Besides, I know only
birch is the one I can tell.
But, besides that, it's pretty hard
for me to do that.
But, yeah, that's good.
I like the quizzes.
It keeps me on my toes.
This is not fair.
It's really not.
It's not at all.
You know, a lot of times people just
think that trees are all the same,
but you know, really they are.
They have a purpose.
You know they have their own
characteristics and it's
good to know.
So what's your favorite part about,
I mean, is there a favorite?
Is it the wildlife or the flowers
or the trees or the
birds?
Or what do you find yourself
attracted to?
You know, I think
my favorite part is
usually like the pond area.
I mean, I always remember coming
down to the ponds because that's
where all the wildlife gathers.
That's where everything comes
together.
And I think I enjoy just kind of
sitting near the pond and listening
to you have birds meet
there. You have little frogs.
You have, you know, every once in a
while you can see the fish swimming
through.
So I think being close to
water, I like that part of
nature.
When's your birthday?
My birthday is September
19th, I was born
in 1992.
Oh yeah,
I'm a Virgo, so I
don't really know.
That's a question for my grandma,
she reads the horoscopes every day.
So what would you like to do
as a career?
You know, I can see myself working
for a government organization
or even just kind of
like a non-profit.
I'm actually considering doing even
like law to be
a part of protecting the existing
policies that we have to keep nature
preserved.
I hope that it can be like this
for my kids and my grandkids because
this is
who we are.
This is how we survive.
Everything is involved and
intertwined with nature.
I think it's not as high
as a priority as it should be,
and I think that's important.
So tell me about in
school when Jerry talks about.
You know, his dad didn't
have him a book and say look at that
nature.
Do you find that it's
a different kind of learning, taking
walks and watching?
Yeah.
I think, well, the biggest thing now
is, like, with my age and my
group, I mean, if we want to know
something, we can just, you know,
Google it. And so I think a lot of
times we have all this information,
yet we don't really use it.
We don't get out into, like actually
being a part, like we'll search
nature on Google, but people
don't go out there and actually go
see nature. And I think that's
important. And I we know
a lot, but we don t do a lot with
that knowledge.
So I think it's important to get
out there, see what it's really
like, rather than just on a computer
screen.
Yeah, good way in nature,
isn't quite as helpful.
As picking up the leaves, getting
the feel, the touch,
it's all right there and
you know it's just not the same.
You don't get the smells, you don't
get the noises.
I mean you can hear bird noises on
the computer but it's not the the
same as being out here with
all the trees and getting to hear
the sounds of the water, the sounds
of the leaves crackling, the sound
of the wind. You do not get that
when you're just at home in front
of your computer, in front of the
TV.
So it's more fulfilling
to be out with, uh...
Cool.
I think these gusts
have just been coming through,
so I think if we're patient and
just listen, it
may take half an hour.
Yes, it's all about the waiting.
Okay? Okay.
Yeah. Okay.
So let's start like we did with
Josh and tell me your name.
I'm Ben Horman.
I go to James Madison Memorial High
School in Madison.
I'm currently a senior and I'm
going to attend the University of
Madison Wisconsin next
year.
Who's Jerry up?
Jerry Apps is my grandfather.
Do you remember, what's
your earliest memory of
walking around with him?
My earliest memories up here
are actually planning
the garden and taking
gator rides and walking around
up here learning about stuff that
I didn't really notice before back
at my own house, about different
trees, about the way
nature works outside of
all human interaction.
What do you find interesting?
Basically, it's just my curiosity
of how nature works in general
without any
human connection, basically.
Just the fact that all this exists
outside our.
Outside anybody's.
Anybody's like, contact with it, I
guess.
You think about the fact that
when your
dad was
a little kid,
half the people in this country
lived on farms.
They didn't have direct contact with
nature, and now it's, what, 2%
or something?
5%?
Two percent, yeah.
It's a total flip.
So just the idea that how
far we've come from back when
my grandfather was young,
everybody was on farms, and now
essentially less
than 5%, 2% are
now living on farms.
And it's kind of disappointing,
honestly, that not as
many people are as intertwined with
nature as.
As they were.
And do you find, when
you talk to people,
you know,
your classmates and
neighborhood kids and so on,
how many of them do you think have
any kind of contact with nature
outside of the city?
Yeah, honestly, probably not
many at all.
Whenever they think about going out
to nature, they think of going to
a resort or something, honestly.
Something just like a vacation.
Because when I say I'm going up to a
farm, they don't really know what
that means in general.
So I'm saying I'm goin' up north,
I'm goin' to outdoors.
They just think I'm gonna go camping
in some campsite that's
still regulated and everything.
But no, I'm just walkin' around out
here, just learnin' about.
Outdoors and it's really nice.
Do you think that you
find yourself just
walking around by yourself and
looking at stuff and trying to
figure things out?
Yeah, just even
walking around the cabin
in general, just seeing a frog or
seeing a caterpillar, wondering what
it's doing, wondering where it's
going, how it is
related to everything else around
it.
Do you think he's always telling you
the truth?
He always has stories to tell,
he always talks about how different
animals are communicating in
different ways, how they have their
own little conversations going on,
how their always thinking about what
they're going to do and how their
home life is between like
geese and such.
And have you noticed that
the limiter is named Mabel?
Ha ha ha.
Haven't you noticed that?
Yeah, that always seems to be a
common theme throughout all the
stories.
Similar names, but different
species.
So, did I hear you're going into
engineering?
Yeah, I'm thinking about going into
either specifically biomedical
engineering, so I'm just really
curious about biology in general and
about how the biology of
life works.
That even corresponds to
everything that's going on around us
right now, just how the trees are
growing, how they're blooming right
now since it's spring,
down to how the
tops of the trees bloom
first before the bottoms.
It's all very interesting to me.
It goes back to the curiosity of
how, what my grandfather was talking
about with his dad, about how,
like learning about how nature
works.
I'm also really curious about
how biology works and
solving unknown mysteries and the
mysteries that nature has into
itself.
There are lessons everywhere.
Exactly, it's almost
an infinite amount of knowledge that
you can actually get from
nature just by walking around out
here, more than you can learn in
a classroom by far.
More than you could learn by walking
around out here.
It just keeps going.
You're learning more and more and
seeing more.
That's how you think you'll be doing
more walks with it.
Oh, definitely.
As long as I try
it out here probably two or three
times a year throughout all
the seasons.
Seeing how things change.
In the winter you can walk out on
the ponds, walk it on the ice,
try to see where beavers have their
dams and there's little wood
sticking out of the ice.
Down to the thaw when you can see
the remnants of that and
see life sprout.
And then you get leaves on the
ground in autumn.
What's your favorite season?
Probably spring, but not exactly
right now, because it's a little bit
early.
The first bloom is definitely the
best, because that's when you get to
see all the color, you get see even
more animals coming out, all the
birds and all the different noises
you hear.
What's going to happen here?
What kind of
flowers and do
you know what kind of flowers in
these woods?
Not really.
Like my brother said,
I'm not great with naming trees
and naming flowers.
Do flowers grow up in this
grove here?
I don't know for sure.
I know in the prairies, that's
definitely where they're more prominent.
Right around us is mostly woods and
that, but down right
by the pond, between
the pond and the woods,
is probably where there will be a
good amount of flowers.
So why are there no berry bushes
around here? Why is there so little
undergrowth?
Do you have any idea?
It's probably because when the
trees actually get their leaves,
they get all the sunlight.
It doesn't really leave much room
for bushes and undergrowth to
grow underneath and get that
sunlight.
It's kind of survival of the fittest
out here.
Got a thumbs up from grandpa.
49 states, 65
states, I'll
tell you what a chick-magnet that
would be.
Check me out on PBS.
Oh, yes.
Oh, you just whistled grandpa?
Turn around And
we're gonna go back
tree has got to get sawed up a
little bit too.
Should I do some pointing out here?
I have the binoculars.
Don't let me hit a tree.
You're good.
You're Good.
Listen for a whistle.
I just heard a whistle
Alright, let's do it.
Here we go.
No, we're driving it.
It also must have gone home, huh?
And don't look at the camera.
How's my hat look?
Oh, it's fetching.
They might all have.
Yeah, it is.
I fell asleep in the car on the way
up here and my hair is
a little flat.
Well, that's what I had to.
And it works good.
This is a two-camera shot too,
my goodness.
You run over the camera man, or you
just drive by him.
Don't get out!
Don't Get Out!
Get behind them.
OK. Run straight to the food.
That's all we got.
Burgers?
Oh yeah.
It smells wonderful.
That smells good.
We got burgers.
We got burger.
We do.
We need buns.
There's some brat burgers too.
Brat burgers? Which are the Brat
Burgers?
Well, I just tossed them on so
they're gonna flare up a little bit.
You're gonna see some flames coming
out here shortly, but How come you
put it so close to the grill?
With flames coming. I don't want to do
it that way.
We got one solo coming up later.
Yeah okay all
right then
We're gonna need some buns.
Mustard.