Leopold Legacy: November 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.
-
Difficulty:
-
-
Terrain:
-
Size: 
(regular)
Please note Use of geocaching.com services is subject to the terms and conditions
in our disclaimer.
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.
“American conservation is, I fear, still concerned for the most part with show pieces. We have not yet learned to think in terms of small cogs and wheels. Look at our own back yard: at the prairies of Iowa and southern Wisconsin. What is the most valuable part of the prairie? The fat black soil, the chernozem. Who built the chernozem? The black prairie was built by the prairie plants, a hundred distinctive species of grasses, herbs, and shrubs; by the prairie fungi, insects, and bacteria; by the prairie mammals and birds, all interlocked in one humming community of co-operations and competitions, one biota. This biota, through ten thousand years of living and dying, burning and growing, preying and fleeing, freezing and thawing, built that dark and bloody ground we call prairie.”
You can park at Lake Farm Lussier Family Heritage Center. Follow the road for a short while until you find a trail leading up a small hill. You will now be in the Nine Springs E-Way. Follow the trail up and down the hill. There is a lookout just on over the crest of the hill. The cache is along the boarder of public land leased to a neighboring farm. Please respect the integrity of the farmer’s crop. The cache should be accessible on the park property.
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
(No hints available.)