Father of national parks John Muir called Wisconsin home

Skyscraping mountains and plunging canyons, sweeping deserts and towering trees — all dramatic landscapes most readily associated with the national park system.

But it was a different vista, one of a small, clear lake in central Wisconsin, rimmed by lilies and rushes and lighted by thousands of neon-green lightning bugs, surrounded by lush meadows, woods and farmland, that first inspired the protection of those great landscapes.

It was there that a young John Muir — known as the father of the national parks — and his family settled after emigrating from Scotland in 1849.

Muir was just 11 when his family settled in Wisconsin. His father was a demanding, strict, religious man who put the Muir family to work on the new homestead. Muir and his siblings often worked 17-hour days, six days a week, on the farm.

But the young Scot made the most of the limited free time he had, riding horses through meadows and woods blanketed in flora from oaks and hickories to orchids and ferns. He feasted on strawberries and cranberries that grew along the Fox River and learned to swim in Fountain Lake by imitating the frogs that called it home.

"The water was so clear that it was almost invisible, and when we floated slowly out over the plants and fishes, we seemed to be miraculously sustained in the air while silently exploring a veritable fairyland," he wrote in his book "The Story of My Boyhood and Youth."

"This sudden splash into pure wilderness — baptism in Nature's warm heart — how utterly happy it made us!" he wrote. "Nature streaming into us, wooingly teaching her wonderful glowing lessons, so unlike the dismal grammar ashes and cinders so long thrashed into us. Here without knowing it we were still at school; every wild lesson a love lesson, not whipped but charmed into us. Oh, that glorious Wisconsin wilderness!"

That glorious wilderness playground is still there, now part of John Muir Memorial Park in Marquette County, between Portage and Montello. The lake where Muir learned to swim still glimmers in the summer sun; the meadows are still blanketed with goldenrod and aster; burly oaks and hickory trees still dot the landscape.

But it's not entirely the same. Gone are the prairie chickens and their booming mating ritual Muir wrote of, gone are the passenger pigeons that migrated overhead in droves, what Muir described as "a mighty river in the sky." There are more trees now, too, as fire suppression has allowed for more hardwoods to sprout.

Visitors today can follow Muir's footsteps in exploring the land, although the path is a little more defined. A 1.7-mile segment of the Ice Age Trail loops around the 30-acre kettle lake, now known as Ennis Lake.

From the parking lot off Highway F, the trail cuts through an oak opening and past a prairie on the north end of the lake, where the Muir family farm was located. Look for black-eyed Susans, prairie blazing star, lupine and Canada goldenrod.

Continue following the trail through a stand of hardwood trees, including burr and black oaks and shagbark hickories, before crossing a bridge over a small creek that passes through a sedge meadow on its way to the lake.

It was that meadow that was one of Muir's first targets for preservation.

"The preservation of specimen sections of natural flora — bits of pure wilderness — was a fond, favorite notion of mine long before I heard of national parks," Muir said in an 1896 speech to the Sierra Club, noting that he had asked his brother-in-law (who owned the land) to sell him 40 acres of the lake meadow to "keep in untrampled for the sake of its ferns and flowers; and even if I should never see it again, the beauty of its lilies and orchids are so pressed into my mind I shall always enjoy looking back at them in imagination, even across seas and continents, and perhaps after I am dead."

Muir's brother-in-law didn't share his vision for preservation, but the conservationist's wish came true in 1957 when Marquette County bought the first bit of land on Ennis Lake that would become his namesake park.

In 2014, the park got a big boost when the Natural Heritage Land Trust purchased a 198-acre farm on its northern edge. That farm included 38 acres of the original Muir homestead (60 of the original 320 acres were already part of the park).

Part of the purchased land will become part of the Fox River National Wildlife Refuge, which is just west of the park, while the eastern portion of the land will go to the Ice Age Trail Alliance for continuation of the segment that circles Ennis Lake. All of the land will be open for hiking, cross-country skiing, bird watching, hunting, fishing and trapping.

The current trail segment continues around the southern edge of the lake, passing more oak openings and vibrant fern colonies that Muir wrote of, before finishing back at the parking lot.

There, a granite monument pays tribute to the man who in addition to fighting for the national park system was the founding president of the Sierra Club.

And it wasn't just this land that helped shape Muir into one of our country's greatest conservationists. The hard labor and long days on the farm instilled in Muir a work ethic and tenacity that would serve him well in his wanderings out west.

It was those wanderinga that led him to the Sierra Nevada and Yosemite, which he would convince President Theodore Roosevelt to visit and camp in 1903. Three years later Roosevelt signed legislation designating Yosemite Valley as a national park, following a 17-year fight by Muir and the Sierra Club. Ten years after that and two years after Muir's death, Congress officially established the National Park Service.

Upcoming events: The Wisconsin Friends of John Muir and the Ice Age Trail Alliance will celebrate the National Park Service's centennial at John Muir Memorial Park on Saturday.

The event will include an early morning bird hike, speeches from national park service officials and local politicians, children's activities, group hikes around Ennis Lake and various workshops.

Registration is required at iceagetrail.org/nps100.

The Wisconsin Historical Society is celebrating Muir and the NPS centennial with a special traveling exhibit, "Wisconsin's John Muir." The free display looks at Muir's time in Wisconsin, his fight for the national parks and his views on the environment.

It's traveling to libraries around the state through the end of the year and will be on display at the New Berlin Public Library through Monday, the Northern Great Lakes Visitor Center Aug. 2-15, and in Fort Atkinson Aug. 16-29. See wisconsinhistory.org/muirexhibit.

More information: John Muir Memorial Park is on County Highway F in the Town of Buffalo, about 11 miles north of Portage and eight miles south of Montello.

For more on the park and John Muir in Wisconsin, see johnmuir.org/wisconsin.