Autumn Comes Home

It’s fall, friends. While we might be putting our gardens to bed with scant thought of spades or rakes until spring, our canoes and kayaks shouldn’t be shuttered to the same fate. Indeed, some of us have been waiting for fall all year – autumn paddling our carnival. It is the season of pent anticipation and bittersweet passing, the paddling equivalent of “eat, drink, and be merry,” for tomorrow… All too soon, we fall back to standard time when it’s night by 5 pm. Or if it’s not the darkness, it’s the orange blaze of hunting, or the craze of the holidays, or the first flakes of snow. Suddenly, summer feels like forever ago, archived and already succeeded by next year’s plans.

Hang on. What about here? What about now? What about carpe diem in the heady kaleidoscope of colors, fueled by campfire coffee, warm in our flannel, the crisp air curled like bacon with the smoky scent of burnt wood? What about the great, big bevy of birds filling the skies or feeding in the fields before their seasonal send-off? What about seeing the surrounding landscape with naked elegance now that the trees have undressed their leaves?

With bewitching magnificence, our rivers and lakes beckon our boats and souls for one more trip and let the good times roll. It’s October. It’s last call, y’all. Come and get some!

From Lake Superior’s sea caves to the sandy beaches of Lake Michigan, the steep ravines and valleys along the Mississippi River, and the boreal north along the U.P. border – not to mention a treasure trove of terrain in between – Wisconsin offers a forequarter of ecological landscapes to dazzle paddlers. It’s not too late to plan a trip or just wing it at the last minute. To use Wausau as an indicator since it lies plumb in the middle of the state, from the first day October to the last, we’ll lose around 50 minutes of daylight. That’s not inconsiderable, but even by Halloween there’s still ten solid hours of golden light, a plenty generous window for play and prayer. And the average high for the month is around 60 degrees – meaning several days of sunny bliss at 75 degrees (as well as some overcast blusters at 45 degrees).

The throngs of tourists and swarms of mosquitoes both begin to wane after Labor Day. Similarly, as heat and humidity falter, solitude and wildlife encounters soar. No more sunscreen or bug spray, but the campground is accommodating. The sun is warm, the air is cool. Feel that north wind rustling the crimson leaves or shushing through the pines? It whispers welcome home.

There is a season for everything, and paddling is no exception. Spring inspires whitewater, when bone-frozen ice breaks and creeks burst in berserk ebullience. Summertime invites touring kayaks along the Great Lakes as well as canoes on inland lakes or down broad boulevards of rivers to camp on sandbars. The landscape changes before our eyes from threadbare austerity to every shade of green there is to a fiery canvas of red, yellow, and gold. Autumn paddling is less fastidious about boat types or styles. The best boat is whatever’s comfiest and allows you to be on the water as often as possible in this ephemeral hour called now. After all, we’re on borrowed time.

The northwoods will peak first, of course, beginning near the end of September, but even the southernmost counties along the Illinois border continue to blush a full month later. Paddlers with the time and inclination can do their migration following the foliage and flow of water.

Begin at the Bois Brule or the Flambeau, boreal rivers both in the forested northwest. End at Loew Lake on the Oconomowoc River in the southeast past eskers and tamaracks. Good bookends, but we’ve weeks of wonder in between.

Casual paddlers will want to avoid the Great Lakes, as the surface temperature is only about 55-60 degrees, and inevitable wind means waves. But dedicated sea kayakers seek the gales of the Great Lakes to surf in the rough stuff. Wisconsin boasts over 800 miles of coastline for the long boats to day-trip or through-paddle a maritime array of wooded bluffs, brownstone arches, dunes, swales, limestone escarpments, and occasional shipwrecks. Moreover, the peak runs of salmon swimming upstream the many tributaries to spawn occur from Late September to mid-October. Patient but wily paddlers can time their trips on rivers like the Peshtigo or Sheboygan for these annual rites of passage. Hardly the Pacific Northwest, but seeing a steelhead thrust itself fin-up and flailing to clamber above cascading staircases is still mystical. And where else but Milwaukee can one witness such a spectacle while at an Oktoberfest biergarten?

For those casting lines before an audience of trout, the equinox is particularly excellent in the southwest and northeast. Streams such as the Blue River in Grant County and the Rush River in Pierce County – a distance of 150 miles as the crane flies – showcase migrating trout for paddlers and anglers alike surrounded by stunning scenery in a rugged part of the state that the glaciers of the last Ice Age did not run aground. Freestone streams are numerous in the boulder-prone northeast, home to the “border” Brule and Pike. And while fishing inland trout streams ends mid-October, the season is extended for rivers like the Bois Brule, unspooling into Lake Superior. Lake trout heed the clang of last call, too, and come home to spawn.

Quietwater paddlers have a lot to kvell over as well. First and foremost, there’s the Mississippi Flyway, the original interstate highway, where nearly 40% of all migrating waterfowl known in North America fly down the Great River to the Gulf – well over 300 species. Not only are the backwaters the primordial soul of the Mississippi, curating quiet contemplation from the hustle and bustle of the main channel’s brain and brawn, they are a birder’s paradise – from pelicans to scaups, warblers to owls, vireos to woodpeckers, swans, geese, and nearly every kind of duck there is, the sky is alive with symphonic cacophony.

No-wake lakes also provide a private oasis to partake in the turning of the year. The Bittersweet Lakes State Natural Area in Oneida County provides over 2500 acres thickly swaddled in wild forests of hemlock and pines and four small seepage lakes to paddle-portage, base-camp, and bask in the unrivaled ravel of the backcountry. Similarly, the eastern shoreline of the Turtle-Flambeau Flowage invites wanderlust paddlers to embrace hints of wilderness without trolling motors. Necedah and Trempealeau both have national wildlife refuges, not to mention Horicon Marsh or Crex Meadows, each a marvelous arena to witness the pilgrimage of plumage.

The big rapids have lost their roar by autumn, but whitewater paddlers can still dabble in Class II-III conditions on select streams – especially after a wet and windy front. The Jump, Prairie, Tomahawk, and Wolf rivers all offer swift water and boulder gardens in a mosaic of wetlands and woods.

But if I had to choose one part of the state to revel in and visit in autumn, it would be the waters of central Wisconsin. Framed by Marathon County to the north, Portage and Waupaca counties in the middle, and Waushara County to the south, the river environs here rise to a fevered pitch in fall. Clockwise, these streams are the Pine, Trappe, and Wisconsin; the magnificent Eau Claire and sumptuous Plover; the many branches of the Embarrass; the howling Little Wolf; the boulder gardens gone mad of the Tomorrow-Waupaca; the delicate intimacy of the Crystal; the lush sands of the meandering Mecan; quick but exquisite Mill Creek; and the business end of the Big Rib. Any one of these streams offers multiple day trips, and each river is at most an hour’s drive from another.

Being in the middle of the state, Central Wisconsin is easily accessible to most folks and generally has reliable water levels. (The ample opportunities for hiking, bicycling, skiing, and camping, along with umpteen amenities in nearby Wausau, Waupaca, and Stevens Point, amplify the area’s desirability.) Lined by sand or gravel, these rivers run cool and clear, occasionally copper-toned. Several plummet past rock-lined walls called “dells,” while others tumble down small falls, shelves, and ledges of exposed bedrock. Some are accentuated with boulders the size of dining tables and tiny houses, others flow past old flour mills or under covered bridges. All meander beneath a canopy of conifers and deciduous, with cedars lining the banks – and many banks at the base of a precipitous ridge.

The region marks a transition from the Northern Highlands to the Central Sands, so Precambrian geology like rhyolite and granite cooled from ancient volcanoes a billion years ago are on prominent display – the original Old Fashioned on the rocks – while second-growth pine species are ubiquitous. Together with a wealth of deposits that the glaciers left behind – flowing rolling hills, dotted kettle lakes, and a gazillion boulders (called “erratics”) – the region provides primers of the northwoods with comparable intimacy and intimation, but without the long drive or crowds. Come autumn, sugar maples and aspens, birch and oak, all lend to the vibrant palette and make the whole landscape explode with aplomb. Only an April fool couldn’t fall in love with this area in October!

While “homecoming” in Wisconsin may conjure Big 10 events and wearing school colors, many of us want to leave and be outside – imbued by the hues of trees, impressed by the hard work before hibernating or winterizing dens and nests, amazed by the huge nets of stirred birds in the air. As a paddler, I want my canoe to be blessed with wet again and anew as often as possible before the baptismal font freezes over. I’d be jubilant to see an actual badger poking above its burrow. I’d thrill to see a gopher, too. But above all, I’d love to see a red fox, an incarnation of the fall equinox, elemental and quintessential. The wolves and walleye, black bears and bluegill, can all line the halls of the hallowed northwoods. But give me a red fox any day, phoenix of canids. Full of tricks and treats, I’d climb inside his canoe-like tail and paddle down the central waters from orange fire to golden ash, all while giving thanks to raise a glass for this one last round here and now.