Kickapoo 2010
I would love to start this post with a poetic line invoking a sense of approaching autumn, but lately in my college town it has been in the mid 80′s each day, concealing the fact that October is just around the corner. Plans have begun for The Beef Cave Adventure Side’s second annual trip down the Kickapoo River and I am getting excited to once again set out on the ancient river. According to the Kickapoo Valley Reserve page some geologists have suggested this may be the oldest river system on earth, aside from those in Antarctica, and you begin very quickly to develop a sense of the age of the river as you paddle through its twisting turns and past its high sandstone cliffs. It feels very remote, and we learned last year that the campsites where
less well maintained than we had been led to believe, I think ultimately this made for an even better experience. As we set out on our second morning on the river I had no idea how much I would fall in love with the Kickapoo by the end of the day. We began to paddle while the morning air was still quite cool and a light fog rose off the water, it was in this setting that we first encountered the towering sandstone cliffs that would occasionally rise from the landscape on either side of the river. These where the kinds of moments that would characterize the trip, beautiful, serene, and awe inspiring. This year there will be more of us, and with story’s fresh in my mind I hope to return to write a couple more blog’s about this wonderful river and unique resource here in Wisconsin.
