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Lasting Impressions: Clear As MudSeeking Solace, the Writer Finds Some in an Unlikely Place, a Wisconsin Swamp
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Small lakes wander across southeastern Wisconsin like the tracks of an enormous, heavy-footed beast. Here and there meander streams and rivers careless as a tail-drag. Among the trail of paw prints is a lake that appears as tentative as a toe mark jammed against the low hills. A stream enters the lake to the south. Extending east and west stretches a pristine sedge meadow and fen nourished by mineral-rich springs.
The first time I stumbled into this place was July 1994. I was still full of grief. Eight months earlier my father had died of lung cancer. That same year, my father-in-law succumbed to a stroke. My family was in a shambles. We decided to look for a piece of land in the country; it seemed a way to reconstruct ourselves, my husband and I agreed.
We launched into a rural real estate search that soon appeared doomed.
The houses we could afford were mostly desperate, dilapidated places. Advertised as “rustic farmettes,” they featured such dubious charms as crusty refried beans caked on the stoves, abandoned autos and farm machinery rusting in the back yards, collapsing barns, and fierce German shepherds living next door.
This was not the reconstruction I had in mind. We were about to give up when we received a phone call. “Come look at the place,” the real estate agent begged. “Eleven acres. Needs some work, but the price is right.”
I drove up. Her assessment of the house proved far rosier than the reality. The place was a nightmare of Brady Bunch-era decorating ravaged by neglect and abuse. It reeked of rancid grease, stale pipe smoke and cat litter. Grime coated the windows. The roof leaked.
I turned to leave. “Go out back,” the agent said. “There’s a path that leads to the stream that connects to the lake.” Reluctantly, I wandered behind the house. In the distance I could see shimmering water. I walked down the hill and entered a path surrounded by overgrown shrubs and small trees. I kept walking, and the trees began to disappear. Now I was surrounded by cattails with bobbing, brown, sausage-like heads. Long, spear-shaped leaves arched over the path and swiped me in the eyes. The path turned soft, treacherous and wet. I sank ankle-deep into the black ooze. When I struggled to pull out my feet, I was assailed by the ripe odor of rotten egg, decaying leaves, old clothes and wet dog.
Finally, I found the bend where the stream curved among tall reeds. Cold water seeped up to my knees. I stood in a small clearing among the cattails and tried to peer out at the current. The place certainly did not look promising. I decided to go back and tell the real estate agent once again that this was definitely not the place we wanted.
I turned. And for the first time I scanned south beyond the cattails. Alive with wind, the marsh sedges moved like a great ocean. And at that moment I felt a kind of awe. I was struck by the boundlessness and the incomparable grassy smell of distance. I had discovered a whole new world.
Muddy and wet but strangely revived, I trudged back up to the hideous house to say we’d make an offer. I wondered how I’d convince my family. How could I describe the value of owning a house purely for the wet, muddy openness in the back? Here was something I could not really understand except that I knew it was a good idea. We needed to buy this tender place, this piece of swamp.
—Laurie Lawlor
Essay adapted from This Tender Place: The Story of a Wetland Year (University of Wisconsin Press, 2005).
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