I immediately felt like we were trespassers -- there must be some law we were breaking by being here.
Beyond the thicket was a worn path that snaked its way past land that was dry, sandy and broken, dotted by burr oak, hickory, maple and basswood trees. I looked straight up toward the sky and found myself looking at sandstone cliffs, one nearly 30 feet high. Above the bluff, cotton ball clouds floated in a powder blue sky.
"This way, Paul, " I said. "We can climb to the top from here," My companion was Paul Mundinger, a backyard neighbor for nearly six years, and someone I could count on to skirt a little trouble.
My eyes followed the man-made trail as it wound its way immediately around and over sections of rock that had been exposed by centuries of pounding rain, wind and sun.
Adjusting the back packs on our shoulders, we began the climb, focused on the flat landing twenty feet away. I grasped a handhold of weeds strong enough to support my weight, before finding an exposed root that offered additional guidance for the final few feet. From this height, we could already see over the rooftops of the neighborhood houses we had come through on the other side of the highway.
Always one to feel a little queasy about heights, I took a deep breath and kept my eyes focused on the steep, rocky incline leading to our right. Paul, wearing grey sweat pants and a Packer tee shirt, already streaked with sweat, wasted little time observing his surroundings. He quickly disappeared through a thicket of trees, before appearing again twenty-five feet above me, smiling with the knowledge that most of our classmates were sitting in school, listening to Bunny Bowler -- who by now was boring them to death with tenth grade math.
I finally caught up to him another fifty feet later where the path leveled out through an open stretch of prairie grass, still wet from the morning dew. "Look what I found," Paul said excitedly, as he held up a woman's red silk bra, coated with dust and dirt from being smashed into the ground. "Someone obviously got lucky," he continued and hung it on a nearby bush for the next hiker to see.
"Well it wasn't me," I said, a little embarrassed at the thought of how it got there.
"Duh! That's for sure!"
Paul moved on as the path continued to rise through more hickory trees, moving left, then right and finally to an area above the exposed, rocky face of Welch Bluff. Standing at this vantage point, we could follow the broken trail we had just climbed, twisting its diminutive way back to the highway. Vehicles, the size of a mini-matchbox cars, zipped in and out of town as drivers headed to work for the day.
Three hundred and seventy feet below us, etched in the bright sunlight of the morning sun, was the city of La Crosse, Wisconsin. Looking west -- across straight, tree-lined streets -- wound the Mississippi River, looking like a brown trickle of water I may have created with my finger in the dirt. Further west, on the Minnesota side of the river, rose more bluffs, covered in a thick blanket of dark green and black. The La Crosse coulee region -- God's Country -- if you believed the Old Style beer commercials, stretched into Iowa to our south and Minnesota to our north.
"Come on, let's keep moving," I said, finally exhaling in relief. "We didn't skip school today to stop now."
Having grown up in the La Crosse area, I'm positive I've become spoiled. Like all things in life, if you do something a hundred times, you are bound to take it for granted.
La Crosse is in the heart of the "drift less" or unglaciated area bypassed by the great glaciers of the Ice Age. Glaciers passed west and east of here. A small portion of the Lake Superior lobe went into the Chippewa River area to north and a small portion of the Lake Michigan lobe went into the Green Bay area. Both glaciers were headed toward La Crosse, but they were going uphill and they were melting, so they never reached here. This left the undulating hills now known as the Coulee Region.
Then glacial deposits melted and drained into the Mississippi River -- with far greater volume than now -- and cut the valley between the bluffs, leaving their edges hard and flat.
Today, this valley has become home to more than 100,000 people living in La Crosse and nearby cities We are sheltered by the bluffs, some rising more than four hundred feet above us. Through the years, I have either climbed or driven to the top of most of them -- Miller and Grand Dad bluffs to our north, and Cliffwood, Hedgehog and Welsh bluffs to our south. I'm not as familiar with the bluffs on the Minnesota side of the river, but I have driven the bluffs above La Crescent and Dresbach, past the sweet smell of apple orchards and scenic river views that are to die for.
There was a time -- before conservationists and naturalists organized to make a name for themselves - that these bluffs were used as quarries for limestone that were used in the construction of buildings during the early history of La Crosse.
By digging through some old Tribune new stories, I found a history of quarry activity on the bluffs that increased as the city grew. It goes back prior to the Civil War when the city was but a small village, limited to a few blocks of residences and business housed near the water front. As the town grew, the limestone rock from Grandad and the surrounding bluffs was in greater demand.
The quarrying business -- run by La Crosse Stone Company and Wolley & Hanson -- never had much of a foreign business, it was practically a local industry, running only to meet local demand. Many of the buildings still located downtown sit on foundations made from this limestone. Some of the more famous buildings are the Mons Anderson home on Cass Street and the George Zeisler building, which currently houses Satori Arts and the Pearl ice cream shop. Smaller pieces of crushed limestone were used for macadamizing (paving) roads and highways, while dust was used to make concrete.
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Another person that had to do with the ownership of Grandad Bluff was Henry Bliss, who at one time had a summer home on top of the bluff. The road leading to his home was called the Bliss Road, and it is still known by that name today.
In 1928, there was a movement to change the name of the bluff to "Granddad Mountain," and to name the series of bluffs along the Mississippi River the "Mississippi Mountain Range." While neither proposal ever happened, it was important to the survival of the bluff lands surrounding the Mississippi River that conservation, not quarrying, was pursued as a legacy to the future.
Today, Grandad Bluff and the surrounding bluffs of Miller, Clifford, Hedgehog and Welsh, have become a popular destination for thousands every year. Recent renovations to the bluff area have allowed better views from the 600 foot bluffs that overlook the city of La Crosse, the Mississippi River valley and the three states of Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa. Wisconsin Trails readers recently voted the bluff area as the "Most Scenic in the State."
For most of us locals, it remains a symbol of the Coulee region. It's who we are - we ride bikes on the dirt bike trails, practice climbing the limestone faces, or walk through heavily forested trails, We feel it in our legs, arms and backs the way our bodies feel while floating in the muddy waters of the Mississippi. When we move away to go to college, start a family or to find a job in another state, our memories of climbing the bluffs never fade away.
"Do you know why they call it Grandad Bluff?" I asked Paul as we lay on our stomachs creeping closer to the edge. A couple hundred feet directly below us someone was cutting some grass. With my finger tip, I covered him up and most of the yard he was mowing. "Some say because it's the grand daddy of them all. It's the largest bluff in the area and offers the best views."
Our point of view was slightly to the left of Cass Street, which ran in a straight line from the base of the bluff to the Cass Street Bridge, its light blue tresses reflecting the late morning sun as it crossed the Mississippi River.
"I always thought it was because the rock formation looks like an old man's face." Paul's thick glasses had slid down his nose, threatening to fall off and over the edge. With a dirty finger, he pushed them up, then continued. "It doesn't really matter. I like it over here better anyway. Not so many people and a lot more room to explore."
And explore we did. Our adventure had taken us up Welsh and over Hedgehog before back up Cliffview to our current location. I rolled over to my back and looked up to the sky, which by now had become partly cloudy. The leaves of the trees had begun spinning in the wind, making it look like the some of them were full of silver tin foil.
"You know, I've never called in sick before," I said, "when I wasn't really sick. That was pretty cool calling in as each other's dads." A smile crept across my face as I remembered how nervous I was when the office secretary answered the phone. "I don't think shouting into a pillow made much difference though. My voice is about as low as it's going to get."
I looked over at Paul who was sitting up digging through a lunch bag, looking for the sandwich he had made earlier at his house. His face suddenly looked grim as a cloud moved in front of the sun, casting a shadow that slid across his body like water flowing downstream. "I just hope the school didn't call back later to verify that we were really sick. It seems like I'm always getting blamed for something. I don't need anymore trouble."
After lunch, we continued on our way, finding new paths to explore. We climbed down a path that narrowed as it passed beneath one of the rocky faces of Cliffview Bluff. Round holes pocketed the layered cliff where birds had dug nests. Some of the larger holes contained bees which for the moment left us alone. With my right hand I was able to rub loose some of the soft sandstone, creating a shallow ridge that I used for balance.
Between two large rocks that had fallen from above, we found a shallow cave that provided shelter from the hot sun. Inside was an abandoned campfire, with remains of blackened sticks and tree branches scattered around a flat, sandy area. Empty Papst beer cans were thrown in the back of the cave along with a two-month old newspaper that was probably used to light the fire. The words FUD WAS HERE! was scratched on one of the limestone walls -- a meaningless scribble that archeologists would someday question.
I felt strange sitting in this cave, as though we were violating someone's private dwelling. I pictured a hobo spending a few nights here, or even some Indians from long ago using this cave as a temporary shelter while exploring the valley below. I imagined these bluffs were climbed many years ago by New World explorers traveling west in hopes of a better life, risking lives against waring Indians and savage animals looking for their next meal.
But today, there was nothing to fear. With an innocence that only comes from being young teenage boys, Paul and I moved fearlessly from the cave and descending through the surrounding trees and rocks. It had taken us half an hour to climb the bluff, but coming down -- with little to stop us -- we quickly found ourselves in someone's backyard and headed for home. The freedom and sense of adventure I had felt while we climbed the bluffs was still with us and would remain there for many years, but never repeated.
Glancing behind, I could no longer see where we had walked. No footsteps creased the grass -- not even a broken branch hanging from a scrub bush. It was as if the green shadows beneath the swaying trees and hardened rocks had swallowed our footsteps, leaving no sign that human beings had ever existed.
