Leopold Legacy: April Traditional Geocache
shanty: In 2004 my son Aaron (shanty) and I deployed the Leopold Legacy series. Aaron was active in Scouting and this was one of three projects that he completed for the Hornaday award with the BSA. Shanty, i.e. a little shack, was a parody on the famous Leopold retreat on the Wisconsin River.
The project was designed to combine the sport of geocaching and environmental education. Since the series was deployed, we have distributed about 1000 packets of pale purple coneflower (Echinacea pallidia) seed with propagating instructions and about 1000 dreamcatchers. There were over 4,500 visits to the series in its 15-year run. Many people we drawn to the Dane County parks because of the caches and discovered what a valuable resource they are to our community.
Aaron now lives away with his own home and career. Dad has developed health issues from his exposure to agent orange in Viet Nam. It’s time to wrap this project up and move on to new ventures.
Thank you all for the wonderful comments and photos over the years. It has been a pleasure.
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(regular)
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This cache is a part of the “Leopold Legacy” set. The Leopold Legacy set is a series of twelve caches all placed in Dane County Parks. Each one of these caches has a quote representing one month of Aldo Leopold’s The Sand County Almanac. At each of the sites you will find something relating to the quote at or near the geocache. Aldo Leopold was a famous Ecologist from Wisconsin, and The Sand County Almanac is his most famous book. It is a collection of short stories related to each month of the year. I decided to make this series to bring geocachers to some of the Dane County parks, and to give them a sample of some of Aldo Leopold’s writing.
This cache has been authorized and the proper permit was issued by Dick Black, Dane County Parks on July 16, 2004. I would like to acknowledge Wayne Pauly, the naturalist at Dane County Parks, for his assistance in my project.
“Have you ever wondered why a thick crust of corky bark covers the whole tree, even to the smallest twigs? This cork is armor. But oaks were the shock troops sent by the invading forest to storm the prairie; fire is what they had to fight.”
This quote is talking about the Savannah Oaks. They were some of the few trees that were able to survive in a prairie environment. One of the things that they had to fight was fire. Fire was what kept most trees out of prairies. As Leopold said, it is their thick corky bark that helps them against the fires. There are some examples of savannah oaks near this cache. Unfortunately they now have competition, and there are other trees surrounding them.
The cache is in Walking Iron Park. Parking coordinates are N 43º 11.256’ W 089º 49.400’. The cache is in the northern area of the park. Follow the trails; you won’t need to go very far off of the trail to find the cache. It is under a large Savannah Oak that is starting to become overgrown because of absence of fire. The cache is a brown ammo box. Inside I have placed a few carabineers, some small dream-catchers made by me, and some small packets of seeds for pale purple coneflower, a threatened species in Wisconsin.
Additional Hints
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