Eighty volunteers from the JP Cullen construction company, supervised by Madison Parks staff and the Friends of Cherokee Marsh conservation volunteer crew, came in September 2026 to the Cherokee Marsh North Unit to do conservation work.

Consider the monarch butterfly. The marsh is littered with them on this day. We could all look to their example as a way to live. The last generation born in late summer and early fall flies as many as 3,000 miles from parts around here—this very marsh—to the forested highlands of central Mexico, a place they have never been.

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.

There are active beavers at the two ponds along Wheeler Road in the South Unit of Cherokee Marsh Conservation Park.The City of Madison is working with an environmental contractor to protect the drainage culverts in the ponds without harming the beavers.Parks conservation staff will also consider how best to protect valuable trees.

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.

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

A beautiful October Saturday for our annual Hayrides & Hikes event.

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