THE DRIFTLESS READER
Edited by Curt Meine and Keefe Keeley; University of Wisconsin Press (392 pages, $26.95)
Like the region it portrays, “The Driftless Reader” offers constantly changing vistas and surprise after surprise.
Editors Curt Meine and Keefe Keeley have selected dozens of excerpts of scientific, literary and journalistic writing to create a composite portrait of the region. You’d expect to find words by Hamlin Garland, Laura Ingalls Wilder and Ben Logan here, and you will. But the diligent editors have also turned up remarkable writing by Frank Lloyd Wright and sci-fi master Clifford D. Simak, as well as a stunning letter from a group of Old Order Amish Churches.
Meine wrote the excellent biography “Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work” and edited the Library of America compilation of Leopold’s
writing. Leopold’s represented in “The Driftless Reader,” too.
Driftless means this area was spared the flattening effects of the most recent glacial period. The Driftless region includes southwestern Wisconsin and parts of Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois, veined by the Mississippi, Wisconsin, Kickapoo and other rivers. Meine and Keeley describe its topography lyrically:
“It is distinguished by its layered foundations of sedimentary rock; by its rolling ridgelines, hilltops, and bluff lands; by its dendritic network of waterways; by soils born of bedrock, blown in as loess, and carried in its running waters; by its mix of remnant prairies and savannas, woodlands, forests, and wetlands; by a rich array of wildlife adapted to its variety of wildlands, farms, woods, waters, towns, and cities.”
The editors’ selections describe the distinctiveness of the region, and how it shapes the people who have lived and still live there. They’re impressed by its beauty, but mindful of the difficulties, sometimes harsh, of traversing this hilly country, making a living from it and getting along with others trying to do the same.
Meine and Keeley have organized this mosaic thematically, beginning with a segment on “geologic origins.” If your mind, like mine, absorbs geology in small doses, you can always skip forward to people-centered selections, then return for more bedrock.
Many of the scientific excerpts describe diligent efforts to understand how this distinctive region developed, in both macro and micro senses. I was delighted by the excerpt from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s “Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses” (2003), which chronicles her attempt to explain why two different species of moss were layered in a stratified way on the cliffs facing the Kickapoo River. She had to devise a plan to make her observations while in the water without losing her canoe, her gear or herself in the flowing river. “So I collected my measurements using a tape recorder. The machine sat securely duct-taped to the seat of the canoe and the microphone was looped around my neck. I could then have both hands free to position my sampling grids and collect specimens, and still have a free leg to snare the canoe rope when it began to drift. I felt like the one-man band of the Kickapoo.”
Kimmerer solved the scientific mystery, with periodic flooding being a key factor. She also enjoyed the occasional perks of this unusual fieldwork: “I even had tape of an entire conversation with passing canoeists who handed me a cold Leinenkugel’s Ale as they floated by.”
“The Driftless Reader” pays attention to the Native American experience of the region, including the notorious Battle of Bad Axe. A functionary of President Andrew Jackson recorded a remarkable statement by Ho-Chunk chief Hoowaneka (Little Elk) to the U.S. Indian Commissioners in 1829, ending with this poignant lament: “Do you want our country? yours is larger than ours! Do you want our wigwams? you live in palaces! Do you want our horses? yours are larger and better than ours! Do you want our women? yours are now sitting behind you … are handsomer and dressed better than ours! Look at them, yonder! Why, Fathers, what can be your motive?”
Several excerpts address the prevalence of massive, animal-shaped effigy mounds in the region, and what they meant to Native inhabitants.
Closer to our time, the excerpt included from Frank Lloyd Wright’s autobiography connects his distinctive approach to architecture to growing up in the Driftless region. Looking at the hill near Spring Green where he would build Taliesin, his home and studio, he writes, “I knew well that no house should ever be on a hill or on anything. It should be of the hill.” He goes on for paragraph after rapturous paragraph to envision the locally congruent wonder he would create there.
Amish farmers also settled in the Driftless area. In 1995, more than 500 members of Old Order Amish Churches signed a remarkable letter to the Wisconsin Air National Guard, asking the Guard not to institute planned low-altitude training flights over the territory, citing not only the disruption to their worship and their farming, but also the infringement of “our Christian religious beliefs as visual symbols of war rending the heavens overhead us.”
One of this anthology’s finest and longest literary selections also considers relations between the Amish and their neighbors. An excerpt from David Rhodes’ novel “Driftless” (2008) describes, with understated humor, a local man’s bargaining with an Amish worker over repairs to the roof and joists of his home.
Meine and Keeley get gold stars for finding and incorporating more than 50 illustrations, including works by prominent artists Truman Lowe, Aaron Bohrod and John Steuart Curry. Gems include a photo of the remarkable Gottschall Head (circa 1000), a carved and painted head discovered at a site known for elaborate cave paintings; a colored pencil drawing by Dan Hazlett of an American badger, the critter whose appellation was used as a nickname for lead miners in the Driftless area; and a watercolor circa 1880 of a Honey Creek farm by folk artist Paul Siefert.
Any good anthology will make a reader wish for more on favorite subjects, and wonder what was left out. The editors have included an extensive bibliography for further reading.