Devil's Lake - Wisconsin

 

Devil’s Lake - Wisconsin

"The Mountain's Wall in the Water, it looks like a great blue cup, And the Sky looks like another, Turned over bottom side up”

 H.E. Cole

View from the top of the Balanced Rock Trail down on to Devil's Lake - JDJ Photo

There is a beautiful and mysterious place about 1 hour North of Madison, the Capital of Wisconsin called "Devil's Lake" that should not be missed by anyone traveling to that city. According to Birmingham & Eisenberg in the fascinating book "Indian Mounds of Wisconsin" The name for the lake comes from the Ho-Chunk people who named it Tamahcunchukdah which means "Sacred Lake" but it was mis-interpreted by early settlers as "Devil's Lake" which has quite the opposite meaning. Ho-Chunk legends state that, the 500-foot bluffs and cliffs around the lake were created during a battle between Thunder Birds and Water Spirits. The lake itself is approximately 30 feet deep on average with a max. depth of 43 feet. The lake covers an area of approx. 388 acres and the area is heavily forested and dominated by a north and south ridge with high broken cliffs of Baraboo quartzite. The lake is situated at an elevation of 960 feet with the ridges rising to elevations as high as 1,600 feet. According to a sign at the site, the last great episode of the Ice Age ended about 10,000 years ago. It was called the “Wisconsin Glaciation” and it radically altered the landscape in this State. The creeping ice excavated vast quantities of rock and soil. When the ice sheet finally retreated, the debris its glaciers carried was deposited forming an impressive array of glacial features. Devils Lake was formed when the glacier advanced to this point and then melted away leaving terminal moraines that blocked avenues of drainage for the waters. Diane Pillsbury, who is a Naturalist with the Wisconsin State Department of Natural Resources, states that Devils Lake has also been revered and visited by Native American peoples ever since the ice receded over 10,000 years ago and local historian H.E. Cole stated in 1920 that "Indian legends hover over the lofty crags and cling to the rocky shores".  When you visit Devils Lake these legends are easy to believe because when you are climbing up the old stone steps that were carved into the rockfalls and cliffs by the Civilian Conservation Corps nearly a century ago, it seems as though you are not alone and that the spirits of those who came before still whisper on the wind around the boulders and through the trees. Thanks to the boys of the CCC and the State of Wisconsin, there is now an amazing 29-mile trail network throughout the park, parts of which are included in the 1,000-mile Ice Age National Scenic Trail. I had only a short time when I visited this place so I decided to start my exploration at the south shore because I believed that was where the most interesting rock formations were. It was early spring and mid-week so unbelievably,

I had the park to myself. I saw only a few other souls during my visit as it was a cold overcast day and the lake was still frozen. I parked my vehicle and walked over to the edge of the lake and stood there for a min. on the shore and admired the scene and how the edge of the lake for about 20 feet out into the water was not frozen and I could see rounded pebbles and stones on the lake bottom, but the rest was covered in ice. Across the lake the North ridge was a rounded densely forested hump seemingly rising out of the lake. As I continued along the shore looking for the right trail head, I came across a peculiar and interesting edifice in the grass. I had stumbled upon "Bird Mound" which is an ancient "Effigy Mound" that according to an article written by Mary Fairchild, was built by the people of the late woodland period sometime between 300 BC and 400 AD. The plaque on the mound states that this Mound was the only one in the park in which a human skeleton was found. Another plaque near the site states that "The sun has come up and the sun has gone down more than 300,000 times since the Mound Builders piled up earth to make Bird Mound". Something I find intriguing about these mounds is that their shapes can only be fully appreciated when you are above them say in an airplane, up in a tall tree or standing on a hill above them. Bird Mound is about 150 feet long and its body has a forked tail with wings - the span of which is over 200 feet. Some writings claim that the dirt used to build the effigy mounds was brought from other places which begs to question how the archaic peoples moved all that dirt, what tools did they use to excavate the dirt and then shape it? How did they get the animal and human figures so well represented without being elevated above them to ensure they were getting the lines right? All of these are things that I think about when I look upon an Effigy Mound. A few paces beyond Bird Mound I crossed some railroad tracks and then found myself at the base of the Balanced Rock Trail. I followed this trail up the slopes through boulder fields, under pines and along the base of shattered cliffs until I found myself at an interesting vantage point looking down at the "Balanced Rock".

Balanced Rock is a huge rectangular chunk of Baraboo Quartzite that is standing on its end, perched on a cliff overlooking the entire Devils Lake area like a silent watcher forever standing guard. In the area of balanced rock there were different kinds of large pine trees, with cones strewn about the forest floor and sitting on top of broken rocks, and dark green clumps of moist moss and light green round splotches of lichens nearly covering some of the rocks. In a short distance the trail tops out on the summit of the rim. At this point I headed east across the top until I came to a small spur trail that led me down to the cliffs edge and the prominent rock formation known as the "Devil's Doorway". I crept out to the very edge of the cliff east of the Doorway, a rather sketchy thing to do, so I could get a better picture of it and suffered vertigo as I looked down upon the slope covered by broken boulders that had fallen from the heights that I now clung to. What an amazing view I had from up there. A slight, chill breeze was blowing and the late afternoon sun was waning in the western sky. It was very silent as I sat on the edge of the cliffs and looked down upon the forest, lake and ridges and thought about how eons ago, a massive glacier's advance abruptly halted here. Facing geologic events and spans of time makes a person feel insignificant in the grand scheme of things. I continued across the top of the rim from the Devil's Doorway to the "Potholes" Trail junction which I decided to follow as it would lead me back down off the plateau to the level of the lake. 

Descending the potholes trail was interesting as the name comes from several depressions hollowed right out of solid rock by water that on this day were full of water and the leaves of the previous autumn. I then walked down more stone stairs through a veritable crack in the rock. The stairs no doubt were more handy work of the CCC. Giant old solitary pines stood out from the piled rock slope at precarious angles making the scenery behind them that much more picturesque. Once I had descended the steep rocky slope, I found myself down in the Oak Forest where I thought about the ancient peoples who had once roamed these lands either for sacred purposes or more sinister rituals such as those performed at ancient Mississippian culture city of Aztalan south and east of Madison. As I walked along through the woods, I noticed large fallen logs with various colors and types of moss on them, the interface of the boulder scree slope and the flat lands of the forest, and several different squirrels sitting on large pine branches chewing on this and that. I finally made it back to the edge of the lake and stood there at the shore as the eerie light of the setting sun was semi penetrating the grey overcast sky. I thought again about who the skeletons in the Bird Mound might have been and how they came to their end and why they were put there in the mound. Due to the lack of written language for many of the archaic civilizations, these are questions that may never be answered but are interesting to think about and consider none the less. For more information about Devils Lake, please visit the State Park Website below: 

http://dnr.wi.gov/topic/parks/name/devilslake/  or call them at (608) 356-8301.