Leopold Legacy: September Traditional Cache
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 the threatened 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 were 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 our pleasure.
Leopold Legacy: September
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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.
The 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.
“The outstanding scientific discovery of the twentieth century is not television, or radio, but rather the complexity of the land organism. Only those who know the most about it can appreciate how little is known about it. The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: ‘What good is it?’ If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.” “Have we learned this first principle of conservation: to preserve all the parts of the land mechanism? No, because even the scientist does no yet recognize all of them.”
Parking is at coordinates N 43º 00.930’ W 089º 31.180. The cache is in the Ice Age Trail Junction Area, just north of Badger Praire Park. When you arrive at the parking area just follow the trail. When you arrive near the top of the hill look down and you will see the city coming up right next the prairie restoration. Think of the interaction of the land organism, as you stand in a restored prairie and observe the urban sprawl. The trail leads into a section of mixed hardwoods, the cache is on the closer side of the woods.
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.
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