It’s not yet time, on Valentine’s Day, for the marsh’s muskrats. They pair up around April. Males compete for real estate and mates. Monogamous muskrat couples establish territories that can be around 100 feet in diameter. They rarely leave their grounds. Lower-rung muskrats have to toddle off and find their own less desirable territories. Muskrat love is not always easy.

By Jonathan Shipley I’m writing these lines when it’s -8º outside. I just walked the marsh in the pre-dawn light. It was cold. Quite cold. Bundled up, though, I could make my way on the desolate trails: beneath the empty trees; alongside the frozen ponds; up the hillocks of prairies; down the frozen tumps; through the crystalline landscape towards the car; and back home. And, as I write this (warm now in a sweater, cozy now on the sofa), I think of how cold things can be and

The Northern Lights over Cherokee Marsh are beautiful. I walk the paths, stumbling in the dark, looking up; always looking up to see that indescribable cosmic majesty.

I’m not the first to be thankful for a November walk amidst the drooping oaks, the rain-wet sedges, the bog birch. Far from it. There are the turkeys, for one; the deer bounding off the main trails, their telltale white tails flying up before becoming lost in autumnal camouflage; the sandhill cranes gliding overhead and caterwauling in the glades.

As I walk in the fog across Cherokee Marsh, I can’t help thinking about time and changing seasons and the mysteriousness of life and, ultimately, death.

There’s a fire here, too. One of life. One that continues regardless of temperature or the level of particulate matter wafting through the air.

She was an acorn once. She’s an oak now. An oak, and maybe a branch, too, of a mighty oak: our family.

Enter stage right, the muskrat, a resident of Cherokee Marsh. The muskrat, the not-often-thought-about rodent. O muskrat! O you, the poor man’s beaver! Ondatra zibethicus is its scientific name, and it is found almost everywhere in Canada and the United States. Yet, how often do we think about it? How often are muskrats championed?

Cherokee Marsh is not yet a dazzle of blossoms, but it is on its way. Bellworts are ringing their yellow bells. Mayapples hide their blossoms beneath green umbrellas. Shooting stars glitter in the thickets. Daisies dance. These are wild geranium days.

Sometimes I can be done with work early enough to glimpse the last gleams of daybreak at the marsh. Glorious days, those.

The marsh in rainy weather has a different feel. The soft susurrus of the rain over trees and fields, ponds and riverbanks, pulls me in.

On a frigid winter’s day, it did happen. I saw a coyote on the trail.

February is a quiet month here at the marsh. That is, until a wind comes.

The marsh is a snowy wasteland. Or is it? I hear Canada geese with their rapturous calls on the Yahara. Even in winter, life abounds.

The holidays are upon us and the marsh is quieted by the soft wind and softer snow flurries.

For more than 12,000 years, people have lived and died here.

Autumn comes, as it does, with crispness in the air, color in the leaves, and introspection in the mind.

More than 400 species of plants exist on Wisconsin’s prairies. Whitman would have delighted in the rich variety, the rolling canvas of land

Essay and photos by Jonathan Shipley “I really just want to be warm yellow light that pours over everyone I love.” —Conor Oberst The...