A Postcard from the Moss: November 2024
Storrs Lake Wildlife Area
I love sending postcards when I travel, so once a month I share photos with a postcard-length blurb about a place I’ve recently visited.
A rainy trip to Storrs Lake Wildlife Area with a friend last weekend exemplified what I love about hiking after the leafpeepers have gone home for the season. Earlier this fall, I wrote:
“After peak, the skeletal trees and fading colors add a moodiness to the landscape that reminds me of watercolor paintings and characters lost on the moors in British novels. The contours of the topography come into focus as brush dies back and reveals hidden hummocks and kettles. If you’re lucky, a bit of fog will creep across the trail to enhance the ambiance. The views are bare, but not barren. You just have to train your eyes to be curious and appreciate the quiet beauty.”1
Well, we had ambiance and quiet beauty in abundance!
Aside from a couple hunters in the parking lot, my friend and I were the only ones out there. We took our time noticing the textures—the puffy white tops of prairie plants, the ruffles of mushrooms on logs, the burls protruding from trees. We admired the remaining pops of color from sumac and American pokeweed. At one point, I tried to explain how eskers2 were formed, using frantic hand motions and overuse of the word “serpentine.”
The last time I’d been at Storrs Lake was in June 2023 for a volunteer trailbuilding project to construct an 856 foot boardwalk. I spent several days in temperatures hovering around 90° with high humidity, minimal shade, and plenty of bugs, so I can definitively say that late fall makes for a more enjoyable visit.
Part of the fun of this recent trip was sharing memories that are intrinsically linked with that place. I got to show off some of my handiwork, including the first blaze I ever painted and a (slightly wonky) section of deck boards I had personally spaced out and screwed into the boardwalk. I pointed out changes from the past year, like the new benches installed on the bump outs. And though it was a moody November day, in the periphery I could almost hear the whirring of drills, taste the lingering sweetness of Gatorade, and see the haze of that June heat on the horizon.
How to visit:
Storrs Lake Wildlife Area is located in Milton, WI and the main parking lot is located at the south end of the park on E. Storrs Lake Rd. An additional parking lot on the north side to access the Ice Age Trail is located on N. Bowers Lake Rd.
Bathrooms and potable water are not available in the park, but Milton is an Ice Age Trail Community and offers a nice variety of restaurants and shops for a post-hike treat. Unfortunately, Cone Zone was already closed for the season on this trip, so I didn’t get to enjoy a towering cone of soft serve, but drinks from Northleaf Winery and Sharla’s Coffee Stop warmed me up!
Read the entire essay:
Fall foliage frenzy
It’s a common misconception that fall hiking is great because of the changing foliage. Pretty colors are a bonus, but the weather is really what makes fall the ideal time to get outdoors. Trees need cooler weather for their leaves to turn and I need cooler weather to (comfortably) hike more miles.
An interpretive sign about eskers from the Loew Lake segment of the Ice Age National Scenic Trail:
Sharla's Coffee is a gem. I like the cool old building (part of a long-defunct college campus) and that it's right on the Trail.
You did forget to mention that while we were working on the boardwalk, fires in Canada were adding poor air quality to the mix. Maybe that wasn't an issue on the days you were working.