Hiking Wisconsin With ‘Ghosts’ of the Ice Age
A Scenic Trail Takes Me To Centuries Past, and Forward Into a Climate-Changed Future
In “Marshland Elegy,” an essay in A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold described a dawn wind slowly rolling a bank of fog across a Wisconsin marsh. “Like the white ghost of a glacier,” he wrote, “the mists advance, riding over phalanxes of tamaracks, sliding across bog-meadows heavy with dew.” It’s a haunting image that enthralls me each time I read the essay. Even if you’re unfamiliar with marshland and have never witnessed a fogbank in motion, the scene plays in your imagination like a film clip or a video.
And …
