Le Claire, Iowa’s, Buffalo Bill Museum of Prairie Life and River Life

My sister and I made it to the Mississippi from Chicago’s western suburbs, due west on straight 88, — Farm Central, where the harvest was everywhere underway on every side.  Corn is still king, west of Chicago.  Farmland stretches to the horizon, so far as the eye can see.  In all those 247 miles, there was barely a tree.  The cornfields were studded with barns and silos, most barns red, some white.  Silos of dun color, of almost cloisonne enamel blue, of metal like spacecraft rose rose among palomino-pale cornstalks, reminding me of my first view of Chartres in her wheatfields.  As though we ourselves were pioneers, we arrowed due west until we literally hit the river.

Check-in was swift.  We could barely bear to leave our bedroom windows, with the the Father of the Waters stretching unendingly north and south right outside.  Eager to learn about the town of our Twilight steamboat embarkation, we drove straight into tiny Le Claire, so I could kneel and touch those waters.  The next two days, we would be sailing upon them, on The Twilight steamboat.  Tonight, I had to connect on my knees…

The Delta Queen, painting in Buffalo Bill Museum

A sleepy town, Le Claire is bordered by that broad and deceptively sleepy river (which had yet to crest, we would learn).  Marilyn and I studied river buildings of a curious characteristic boxy shape; marveled at river pilots’ houses (famous for safely and heroically running the Le Claire rapids, and obviously generously rewarded); checked out riverside Saloons with names like Sneaky Pete’s that, initially, we found somewhat daunting.  A Mississippi Brewery was under construction.  We didn’t voice our puzzlement - does that mean they’ll use the waters of the Big Muddy?

With my sister and me, however, there is no discussion of priorities when there’s a local history museum at hand.  Arriving at the above sign at 4 p.m., we had exactly one hour to learn all we could about Le Claire.

Hurriedly we studied relevant facts about the entire life of her famous part-time resident, Buffalo Bill.  But, first, we turned to hand-knapped tools, hunks of obsidian that didn’t make it to arrowhead or spearpoint, exquisitely beaded mocassins crafted for a child, by Sioux and Potawatomi natives to whom this river and its ever changing banks once belonged.  Although, of course, with Native Americans, it was more that they belonged to the river and the land - it’s European, this ownership-fixation.

Spinner’s Chair - Wouldn’t Antiques Road Show Love this Three-Legged Treasure?

The venerable custodian of the Buffalo Bill Museum, overhearing our enthusiasms, began to tell us stories.  That Buffalo Bill was known first of all for being a crack shot, outmaneuvered only by Annie Oakley, who could put a bullet through a dime, and even through the hole her bullet had made in the dime.  That Buffalo Bill was good to the Indians, paying them handsomely for their participation in his internationally known shows, (he disdained the term, you can be sure.)  That he only lived in Le Claire a few years, many of them in various fairly primitive log cabins.

Buffalo Bill Life Images in Needlework

We were really riveted by the story of moccasins beaded on the bottom.  “For the grave,” our interpreter explained.  Nobody’s going to walk on them…  Visited a woman just this week who had a pair on her wall.  Turns out they were Red Cloud’s.”  “‘What’d'you plan to do with them?,’” I inquired of my hostess.  Our storyteller waved a languid hand, “O, my son wants ‘em,” was her reply.  “‘Those moccasins,’” I blurted, “‘…they belong in a museum!.”  There was a long sad silence followed by, “No tellin’ what she’ll do with ‘em.”

As he talked, we trailed from handsome Victorial garments of former residents, past musical instruments used by the famous of the town, over an early fire engine - so red, it seemed to throb.  Our mother’s father, Fred Foote of Bowling Green Ohio, had been fire chief in his town.  Each day he had to exercise his horses.  If there hadn’t been a fire by the time school let out, the scarlet fire wagon would make its noisy way to the gradeschool where Mother and four little sisters waited to be driven the mile they otherwise walked.

For my mother and her sisters, it was a sad day when the fire horses were replaced by such a truck.

Essentials for Turning Milk to Butter in Le Claire, Iowa

When we were girls, our favorite museum was Henry Ford’s, in Dearborn, sporting everything from snazzy cars of other eras (of course), to (OUR) Edison’s laboratory, through the Wright Brothers’ Cycle Shop.  Stephen Foster’s home was on some stretch of water, evocative of the Mississippi, I now realize.  Most harrowing of all at Greenfield Village was the chair from Ford’s Theatre, in which Abraham Lincoln had been murdered.  I think his hat was near the chair, but I can still see that faded red-to-pink velvet upholstery and the dire stains.  There was nothing sinister at Buffalo Bill’s museum.  Unless you count this travesty of the Red Man:

Feather Lollipops

The Tools That Broke The Prairie

Or, for a preservationist whose emphasis is farmland and native species, these handsome and historic and essential tools, that nevertheless destroyed the sea of grasses that once stretched even farther than the mighty Mississippi.

Hitting the Trail - How the West was Won

Many pioneers, of course, set out from St. Louis, not that far from us in Le Claire.  Our Brandywine River Valley claims the invention of the covered wagon - first to keep the flour dry that was ground in mills along the steady Brandywine (steady current meant no lumps), and then to keep the black powder of the French (Revolutionary refugees) the du Ponts, dry en route to wars beyond counting.

Marilyn and I would take off on an historic voyage ourselves at eight a.m.

“The Eclipse”- written about in my Mark Twain “Life Upon the Mississippi”

Ours would not be a paddlewheeler, but in many other respects, these two evocations of steamships in the Buffalo Bill Museum set us off on our journey.

First, dinner would be in order.  On land, but as near to the river as possible.  But that’s another story.

To Be Continued…

Memorial to Pilots Lost Upon the River

Two in One Kayak by Tasha O’Neill

NU Wild readers know that kayaking on our canal is dear to my heart, central to my being.

What you don’t know is that an unexpected autumn fall awhile ago has hampered my walking, erratically, unexpectedly, infuriatingly.

All summer long, I feared trying to kayak, lest my right leg not cooperate, on the way down, on the way up.

Recently, “I screwed my courage to the sticking point” and went to Griggstown Canoe and Kayak to attempt what seemed impossible.

It wasn’t the possibility of failing, so much, that daunted me.

It was what that failure would mean - that I am no longer a kayaker.

No more peaceful sojourns upon our bucolic historic canal, rare birds squawking as they rise or singing as they pass over me, ripples soothing the worst reverberations of the work week, flowers doubled in water, gliding through branches, brushed by dangling leaves.  No more cleaving the clouds.

A surprise was in store for me.  With the help of understanding spirits and strong arms at the kayak center where I first learned, ten years ago, I could lower myself and take off forever, or so it seemed.  Fatigue was not a factor.  Not even pain.  And no buckling leg hampered me, on the way into the kayak, nor rising from it.

I tried again two weeks later.  Same story - longer ride - peace and beauty even though some of it was crafted of autumnal leaves letting go too soon, kissing themselves in the canal.

The accident happened.  I survived without broken anything.  Most important of all, I am still a kayaker.

In what ways are you depriving yourself of something you’ve always longed to do, something you used to do, something you’re sure you cannot do?

Try it.  Surprise yourself.

Tis better to have tried and failed than never to have tried at all.

And the fates and your courage have gifts in store for you, in the attempt…

Let me know what you try…

First of all, my sister and I had to learn that not all steamboats are paddlewheelers.

This is a Paddlewheel, in Le Claire, Iowa, without its Steamboat

We would be steaming up the Mississippi the next morning in a boat with smokestacks marked HOT!  DO NOT TOUCH!

But our gentle wake would not be paddlewheel-churned.

Twilight’s Gentle Wake, Flood-Drowlning Island

The Twilight, ‘our’ steamboat, sailed serenely into port while we were enjoying cowboy-grilled shrimp and iceburg lettuce from the salad bar at Sneaky Pete’s Saloon, in Le Claire-on-the-River.

And, o, yes, Wine and Ale at Sneaky Pete’s, while the sun set over the Mississippi

And, overhead, the ever-opening front door stirred expensive truncated silks, the cut-off ties of God knows how many Iowa-visiting businessmen, with their business cards pinned into immortality.

Beware re Ties, All ye Who Enter Here

Truth to tell, Marilyn and I wouldn’t have been able to define a steamboat.  To be honest, I recreate the all-too-frequent art line, “I don’t know anything about X, but I know what I like.”

We recognized the Twilight, when she steamed into Le Claire, right past our table.

Twilight Glides Home to Le Claire Iowa, October, 2010, as River Reaches Record Levels

Well, then, what is a steamboat?  Until this moment, I might’ve said “Something between myth and mirage.”

From paintings of steamboats at the Buffalo Bill Museum, I could’ve said, “Something shaped like a shoe box, turned slightly up at each end and frosted all over, icing blinding as that on wedding cakes.”

Watching from tableside, I could conclude that a steamboat is remarkably stable, even as the river hurtled toward record crests.

The next day, fog or no fog, under the capable hands of our young captain, I knew the steamboat to be far more broad and solid than it looks here, in its dreamy debut.

The steamboat, in my experience, mastered that flood, even when the captain revealed that, on our way downriver, we were traveling at the swiftest speed of his entire 23 years at that wheel.

That steamboat, The Twilight in this record flood, proved far more stable than the Queen Mary, the S.S. France, adn the QEII in all my transoceanic crossings, when they laced ropes across our dining room tables.

That steamboat, The Twilight, was spiffy and trim.

In Grace Kelly’s words in High Society, “My, she was yar.”

Those who tend her, do so with pride I can define as actually familial.

Ship-Shape on The Twilight

On the Twilight, one needn’t toss about words such as ‘port and starboard’, above- or below-deck, required at sea. ‘Left and right’, ‘upstairs and downstairs’ work perfectly well.

The most important words aboard The Twilight were “Eagle ahead, in the cottonwood.”

All our vistas were framed by impeccable scrollwork.

Even the shadows were trim.

Victorian-Shadowed Smokestack of the Twilight

In another post, I’ll use Mark Twain’s words, from his irresistible Life on the Mississippi, to answer my headline question through the expert.

For this post, it is enough to say that, even after Twilight Days, that boat feels like a dream.

I resent having been awakened.

All I want to do is turn ‘right round and return.

Sister Shadows - Birding from The Twilight’s Stern in Autumn Migration

The Hella and Scott McVay Poetry Trail will be dedicated tomorrow, Sunday, at Greenway Meadows, surrounding D&R Greenway Land Trust, One Preservation Place, Princeton 08540.  Unveiling of the 48 master poems us scheduled for 3 p.m., with readings by (living) poets and the music of the legendary musician, Paul Winter, to follow.

The public is welcome, not only to this free event, but any time upon this meandering trail that celebrates the union of nature and creativity.

As with their art exhibitions, the purpose of arts events at D&R Greenway Land Trust is always to call attention to nature, especially in beleaguered New Jersey, and to intensify everyone’s determination to preserve it.

The world knows the McVays on many levels, not least of which is that Scott co-founded the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, so recently successfully completed in its new venue of Newark.  Few know that Scott himself is a poet, although none of his works appears on the trail.  Paul Muldoon is among the legends chosen by Hella and Scott for the Trail who will read their own work and that of others, tomorrow, at the Dedication.

Significant and fulsome publicity of the Trail has appeared in the magazines of the Packet and Town Topics.

Come, see for yourselves!

Let this trail ignite your creativity.

Lucky Mark Di Ionno of the Star Ledger gets to enter the closely guarded new Parker Preserve, with legendary Pine Barrens Naturalist, Author, Artist, Howard Boyd.  He not only has written what Mark rightly calls ‘the bibles’ of natural matters in the Pines - he illustrates these treasures.

***

I keep them always in the trunk of my car, especially the one which reveals new miracles of each Pine Barrens month.  Whenever I find myself out to dinner unexpectedly, I dine with Howard.  Studying, relishing each drawing, each fact, each explanation by this thorough scientist, this artist in scientist’s guise.

***

His books are timeless, as are the Pines.  Enjoy all his books and this generous region, masquerading as ‘Barren’!  Native-Species-Central…

***

Go to my dear friend, Marilyn Schmidt at Buzby’s General Store in Chatsworth, “Heart of the Pines”, where I met Howard and Doris when he was signing books and she was exhibiting needlework.  Ask Marilyn for the splendid map she herself drew.  Then you’ll never be lost in the Pines, as McPhee warned us we’d all be if we ever ventured down there.  While in the store Marilyn restored to its old-time warmth and energy, pick up jams made of Pinelands products, cranberry mustard, local honeys, and Bog Beans - chocolate-covered cranberries.  Don’t wait for the Cranberry Festival.  For one thing, the harvest is going on now, on all sides.  I agree with Howard on the Festival - once is worth experiencing, but they’ll be out of Bog Beans.

***

And by the way, I still search on every trip for the Jersey Devil.  He was born in the 1700s at Leeds Point, out Alternate 561 - a charming working fishing village where, if you’re lucky, you can feast on local seafood at the Oyster Creek Inn.

***

The Packet’s Michael Redmond, Lifestyle Editor, sent me this to ground me back in my cherished Jerseys, after floating the Mississippi on a Steamboat.

***

Mark Di Ionno/Star-Ledger Columnist

Ed Murray/The Star-Ledger
Howard Boyd, who has written books on the plants and animals of the Pinelands, makes his way up an observation deck overlooking old cranberry bogs.

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Howard Boyd doesn’t hear well these days, but that doesn’t stop the naturalist from asking questions.

He wants to know exactly how many acres are in the newest tract of the sacred Pine Barrens land. He wants to know how the old cranberry bogs are being returned to their natural state. After collecting information and cataloging species in the Pine Barrens for half a century, he wants to know more.

Boyd was standing on an elevated platform with Louis Cantafio of the New Jersey Conservation Foundation, overlooking the bogs and a reservoir at the new 9,700 acre Franklin Parker Preserve, the former DeMarco cranberry farm. He was getting a tour and a key to the gates of the preserve, so he could come and go as he pleased.

“If it weren’t for Howard, there would be no Pine Barrens,” said Cantafio, a Ph.D. conservationist. This may be true. If the body of ecological science Boyd and people like him discovered was never publicized, the Pine Barrens might well have been sprawled upon and the federal Pinelands National Reserve wouldn’t exist.

“There is a uniqueness to this place. The acidity of the soil, and lack of nutrients in the sand, force vegetation that you don’t see in other places,” Boyd said. And that attracts weird bugs, all of which Boyd has cataloged.

As Cantafio answered his questions, they watched a bald eagle perched on a distant stump, its regal white hood almost luminescent against a backdrop of gray water and green scrub pines. Another eagle flapped by, not 20 feet over the water. This one all brown.

“That’s an immature one,” Boyd said. “It takes about five years before they go white.”

Howard Boyd turns 96 this week, He doesn’t get into the woods much these days, not that he’s incapable. He still drives the flat Pine Barrens roads like he did at 60, doing 60.

“I better watch my speed,” he said, riding through the village of Tabernacle on Route 532 in Burlington County, where he lives.

He still knows exactly which sandy dirt road leads where, slowing down his old forest green Honda enough to lessen the bounce of ruts and point out some not-so-obvious plant species. And he still dresses the part: layered plaid-on-plaid woolen shirts — the quilted one on top — work pants and heavy black shoes. The top shirt, and his green field cap, are as weathered as their owner.

“I’ve probably been on 80, 90 percent of the trails in here,” he says. “Look hard enough, you always discover something. There’s always something new to see.”

After decades of discovering and exploring and collecting and studying, Boyd wrote the naturalists’ bible of the Pines. “A Field Guide to the Barrens of New Jersey” (Plexus) was published 20 years ago. It is an illustrated catalog of most everything that flourishes there. There are thousands of entries, beginning with algae and fungi and liverworts, and working up the ecological food chain to fox and deer and eagles. Man’s history, and industry, from Colonial bog iron to modern cranberry production, is also documented.

His latest, “The Ecological Pine Barrens,” came out in 2008 when Boyd was 93. That one was subtitled “An Ecosystem Threatened by Fragmentation.” It is dry science, but necessary to keep the place 100,000 tourists will find unspoiled when they descend on Chatsworth next weekend for the annual October Pinelands cranberry fest.

“I stay away from that. Too crazy,” Boyd said.

At the Buzby’s Chatsworth General Store, which is a Pine Barrens gift shop and book store, owner R. Marilyn Schmidt keeps Boyd’s books in stock for the serious ecological tourist. It is surrounded by Pine Barrens folk tales and ghost stories, and picture books and casual memoirs. But the heavy stuff, the bibles? They’re Boyd’s.

“He is a remarkable man,” said Schmidt, an author herself. “No one has accumulated his knowledge.”

There will be no more Boyd books.

“Oh, hell, no,” Boyd said. “It’s too much work. I’m cleaning house now.”

Boyd’s wife, Doris, died last spring, after 71 years of marriage. Some things you can’t catalog, like a lifetime spent together. Other things, you have to find a home for.

“I’ve been a naturalist my whole life,” said Boyd, who grew up on a farm in Billerica, Mass., and got every nature merit badge as a Boy Scout. In 1938, he got a biology degree from Boston University, with a concentration in botany; 41 years later came a master’s in entomology from the University of Delaware. He has a university-worthy library.

His rare entomology books are going to the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. His personal papers will be archived in the academy’s department of entomology.

In this, his lifetime of knowledge is preserved, like the land he explored and studied, and loves.

And there will be one more piece of the Boyd legacy.

A new generation of entomologists studying Pinelands insect life have discovered a new variation of the Crane fly. It will be named after Howard Boyd.

Steamship on the Mississippi: “The Twilight — Steeped in Fog”

Reading Mark Twain’s “Life on the MIssissippi”, I knew more than I wanted to know about the dangers of embarking in fog, when we boarded “The Twilight” at dawn last Tuesday.  Years in shore houses, here and in Chatham, Mass., reassured my sister and me: “Ah, morning fog always burns off.”  But what do we know about rivers, let alone riverboats?

Come, stroll “The Twilight’s” decks with me, learn with me about cold river, warm air, in October upon The Father of Waters.

***

TO BE CONTINUED

Who else has done this, where and how?  All I want to do is turn ‘right round’ and return!

Fog as Abstract Artist

Somewhere There’s Sun…

Young Captain in Fog - Luckily 23 Years’ Experience

O, Say Can You See?

The Mississippi’s Down There Somewhere…

Bob, Host/Bartender:  “Don’t Worry, He Won’t Go if He Can’t See”

It Really IS a Steamboat!

Ready and Waiting Lines

Dawn Fog Lifting

Last Wisps

Stern Fog

Old Glory - Big Muddy

Brenda Jones: American Bald Eagle in characteristic straight-winged flight

One of my all-time favorite birding sites is Hawk Mountain, over in Pennsylvania.  Once birds, especially raptors, were slaughtered in the hundreds of thousands in migration time.  One brave woman, Rosalie Edge, said, “Enough!”  She gathered forces human, financial, political, adding them to her own formidable courage.  Rosalie literally stood on that mountain, once she’d succeeded in having it declared a Wild Life Refuge, and stared down furious hunters with guns.

I try to do my bit for Mother Nature, but my physical courage never equaled Rosalie’s.  Luckily, it need not now, where birds are concerned.  (However, according to scientist/author Carl Safina, in his splendid Song for a Blue Ocean, there are remote islands in our world where ecologists are seen as enemies, as potential hostages, and even are eliminated for taking stands for the fish.)

At Hawk Mountain now, one arrives at nine a.m., climbs awhile through woods and rocks to the North Lookout, and spends a sacred day with fellow bird enthusiasts and winged miracles on all sides.

Brenda Jones:  Duck Flight Before Storm

Here’s what I’ll be missing while on the Mississippi.  Assuming The Father of The Waters chooses to become less turbulent, to carry less flood debris, to ’stay in his bed.’  LeClaire Iowa and Dubuque, where we will embark and disembark, are in watery peril right now.  The Mississippi is not supposed to flood in October.

People on the North Lookout don’t need to worry about floods.  Instead, they train their eyes on qualities and quantities of rarities, beyond belief.  Brilliant birders on all sides serve as gentle coaches.  They’re the ones who taught me, when I inquired watching a kettle of golden eagles, “How many birds in order to call it a kettle? (a swirl of raptors riding thermal lift currents):  “Takes two to kettle.”

Go to Hawk Mountain for me.

Smiles

Brenda Jones: American Kestrel in Flight Carrying Vole

Hawk Mountain Migration eUpdate for Sept 28

Weather and Migration Predictions for This Week:

A frontal boundary to our south moved north yesterday bringing occasional showers and rain for today as a low pressure system from the south moves north along the boundary. The front will move off the coast tonight and stall, bringing the potential for more rain on Thursday. The current forecast calls for northwest or north-northwest winds Thursday through Sunday.

Sharp-shinned hawks will be the most numerous migrant this week with counts of more than 100 birds expected on most days. Ospreys, Bald Eagles, and kestrels should be seen daily as well.

Sightings of Merlins and Peregrine Falcons also should increase this week. Days with northwest winds should offer great views of migrating raptors as they hug the ridge and fly close to the lookout. Based on weather forecast, this weekend should be ideal!!

Brenda Jones:  Gees Pass Moon

For more detail on flights and timing, your best bet is to call the Info Line: 610-756-6000×6 or monitor the Hawk Mountain Facebook Page (click here).

Migration for Last Week:
The number of Bald Eagles have been well above average this year and on Saturday the previous record of 245 set in 2008 was broken when an adult Bald Eagle soared past the lookout at 1 p.m. By day’s end, the new record stood at 251 and by the end of the day Sunday it was already at 255. At this rate, a count of more than 300 Bald Eagles this season is very possible. Other highlights last week included 817 Broad-winged Hawks on Thursday and a season high 55 American Kestrels on Saturday.

Reminder: Our Migration Info Line is updated every evening after 6 pm. To hear the day’s count and a weather and flight prediction for the following day, call 610-756-6000 x6. You also can see the day’s count on our website, also updated every evening on our home page, OR, view the season total or use the searchable database(click here to link and bookmark)

Last Week’s Count/Season Count
Note: weekly total is Mon-Sunday; Season-to-Date is thru Sept 26

Other Migration Highlights:
The composition of non-raptor migrants has started to change. Fewer warblers are being seen in the morning and sightings of kinglets, Red-bellied Woodpeckers, and Canada Geese are increasing. Flocks of Blue Jays were seen migrating past the lookout including a high of 116 jays on Thursday. American Goldfinches also have been increasing: a high of 61 goldfinches were seen Tuesday. Other highlights last week included a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker on Tuesday, a White-crowned Sparrow on Thursday and 2 White-throated Sparrows on Sunday.

AUTUMN LECTURES:
Hawk Mountain: the world’s first raptor sanctuary
Sat, October 2
Presented by Jim Wright and Kevin Watson
An overview in photos of the sanctuary and what makes the Sanctuary and its people so special

Scenes from the BP Oil Spill
Saturday, October 23
Presented by Shawn Carey, Migration Productions
See footage and hear Shawn’s first-and account from his own week-long trip to Louisiana to document the largest oil disaster in U.S. history.

Off I go, into the wild blue yonder, questing for birds in migration, above the Mississippi, as my sister and I become boat passengers upon the Father of Waters.

This is key migratory time for many species, especially raptors.

A Getty Image of normally migrating birds

NJ WILD readers know my concern that these winged travelers are heading for the Gulf and oiled habitat, oiled nourishment.

This is a normal migratory scene.  Wish miracles for the birds, for my sister and me.

When our eyes are not on the skies and our Sibleys, mine will be on Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, and/or Twain’s Life on the Mississippi in my lap.

We board in Le Claire, Iowa - a first for me.  You’ll get a full report.

What migrants are YOU seeing, right here in our own major flyway - our unique three-coasted state?