Understanding driftless...

...as a lifestyle is catching on.  More and more, folks are getting it...less, really is more.  Mass consumerism as a lifestyle is almost by definition doomed to failure.  Now, I'm not saying we don't consume or its not part of our existence...its how and what we consume.  We seem to have a hard time understanding decay...a part of consumption.  A balanced land will use decay...necessary for fertilizing and sanitation.  Recycling isn't just a trendy word for driftless living...neither, is sustainable, or permaculture.  Water can run uphill...

I think to understand this, one must understand the driftless area as an equation...balance.  Some researchers are now saying the Kickapoo river and its valley is one of the oldest rivers and places on the planet.  An ancient place we know the story of how the glaciers missed the area but only the heart of the driftless, the kickapoo valley, missed each lobe of the last three.  Biodiversity is said to be the largest anywhere.  Its just that much of it is small...like flowers, snails, fungus, or, decay.   Permaculture, for a larger scale...Understanding the driftless is a matter of scale.

It wasn't always so...for over 100 years the land was abused.  Mass consumed...its natural balance was upset by man.  Hillsides eroded and valleys filled in.  100 year floods

came every 10 years.  100 years is a short time in the frame of the oldest place on the planet.  Its just to what effect man has become part of the equation.  Thus...a driftless life.  And, understanding it...Each year I watch the leaves grow and turn and fall.  Winter snow causes decay and decay nurtures life.  A simple process that can balance itself given enough time...that largest biodiversity on the planet takes time.  Like a falling rock...it didn't happen in an instant.  It started falling long ago...

Driftless love...

My new favorite stream is an old one...a ghost town with remnants of an old mill pond, pottery, and other looks into its past.  Downgraded for years, better land use practices are now producing multiple year classes of wild trout.  And, I pretty much have it to myself...for all the love given to other more famous waters.  Five bridges and nobody there except the two bald eagles who nest above a fine riffle.  You should have heard them squawk each time I released a trout...

A tale of two...

...fish managers.  Well, four...but, the other two have my respect.  Scott Stewart asked me to help him electroshock Black Earth creek for an FFF demonstration.  And, on the horseshoe no less...my favorite piece of water on the entire stream.  Brown trout rolled out of undercuts in numbers that were hard to believe.  Jordan Weeks came out to my property to look it over and talk even though my property is not in his area.  He commented this part of the valley hasn't changed in hundreds of years because of the limited agriculture and could probably once again hold 18 inch brook trout.  We discussed a brook trout sanctuary for the headwaters and he thought it do-able.  If my local fish manager had any interest in this part of the driftless...

You see, he is a few counties over and has his hands full just dealing with those waters...my stream flows into the kickapoo river with the county line just a mile down the road.  The lower half is one fish managers area and the upper anothers...and we get little love.  In fact we got caught up in a war of fish managers of the worst kind...selfish, vindictive, and catering to opposing interest groups.  So, my property sits with nothing...even though the other manager in charge of a large piece of the kickapoo watershed and the lower half of my stream, has offered to take over my headwaters section.  A practice already used between these two on another watershed in my county.  He's also straddled a fence to upgrade regulations to limit brown trout overpopulating brook trout waters like happened in my valley.  A manager with a pulse on the times...

Now, these other two...I also electroshocked my valley with both of them.  We took almost 100 brook trout out for replanting a feeder downstream...then onto another nearby valley where we took 70 larger spawning brooks that went behind a locked gate on a wealthy landowners property three counties away.  My phone calls to this fish manager go to voicemail with no replies...even though I sold my easement and have willow and beaver problems.  His answer is to call the feds who come out and dynamite the beaver dam after trapping them for two weeks.  There has to be an expense here and it does nothing to solve the problem...the kickapoo river has an endless supply of beavers.  Its the willows, stupid...

The other fish manager has taken it on himself to to go all civil disobedience and I wont give him the benefit of my long history of obeying only good laws...also, the vitriol to those other professionals and anyone else with another opinion.  Mostly, flyfishermen...and, catch and release.  Now, we all know catch and release is a management tool, not a religion...but, the same can be said for catch and kill and its extremes.  A brook trout sanctuary would require a no limit on browns...This is all obvious stuff for fish managers.  Or, it should be...I sat on an advisory committee to change Wisconsins regs with both these fish managers and heard little from them in disagreement to our proposals for a system of regulations tailored for individual streams according to their capabilities for fishing opportunities.  We're all for fishing opportunities, right...but, not when its bad for the fish.  This has gone too far and reasonable anglers and professionals in the driftless realize that there is overcrowding and stunting of trout but the answer isn't blanket rules in the name of simplicity.  The class system of regs was meant to be simple...and, it is.

To ones credit...he's retired.  Its just too bad to throw away a lifetimes work in the field to make a little tiny point.  The other could make a larger point by also retiring.  Something, that should have happened before the restraining orders and threats and public pulling down of pants...

 Well...in payment for the rant, here is some shots from the Little Hole National Trail and the Green river...

And, another nearby small mountain stream...

I wonder...

...what the heck has been going on with the west fork.  No I don't...I know.  Poor Roger must be rolling over...the mismanagement of the club has been apparent for years.  The squabbles and rifts between just about everybody have kept me off that now infamous river for that same amount of time.  Its just not that great...not like a real driftless stream.  Rogers work on the lower end of my stream is the work of an artist...its in one of the lower pictures and if anyone ever finds this blog they might recognize it.  Roger was one of the first folks I met out here and our love of trout made us fast friends.  That and a few other common ground items made us able to discuss life on familiar terms.  Like the time I made a stink on wisfly and one of the weenies drove down from up north to tell Roger I was stirring things  up again...Roger later told me his reply was, "good for Bob."  If I remember right my stink was the desire by some to line every driftless stream with rock.  Of course every flyfishing lawyer and doctor knew better than we did...we who grew up here.  But, I first met Roger at a party at my farm.  My neighbor Duraframe Dave invited some local musicians including Chris Aaron...now playing somewhere.  And, we had a great time...the first of many with Roger.  Most, at the store and campground as we watched it grow into what would later become Frankensteins monster...

And, the night I met Roger...Dave Crook aka duraframe dave, Steve Holcomb, and Chris Aaron.   Dave and Steve have joined Roger on the other side.  The west fork.  Along with an infant son of Lisa's and mine buried on Hwy S in the little church and cemetery in what was once Manning... with Kickapoo center,  the population center of the entire Bad Axe.  How short time is...and how pitiful the squabbling.