by Jonathan Shipley
Autumn has come. The oaks are vibrant and the wind, aroar with the echoes of summer, has blown the trees’ colorful leaves to the ground. They crackle as I walk on them, after this autumn’s warm weather. Twigs snap as I hike from the woods to the meadows and the marsh. The summer flowers have gone to seed. The grasses have turned from green to gold to brown. Everything is hushing itself for the winter.
I keep walking. Resident birds, or those passing through, sing their little songs, call their little calls. Bluejays tell stories limb to limb. Chickadees gossip. A V of geese fly overhead telling all, again, that winter approaches.
Thoughts of mortality come with a season’s turn to autumn and winter. Halloween’s origins go back some 2,000 years to the Celtic festival of Samhain. The Celts believed that the veil between the living and the dead was at its thinnest on the night of Samhain. They danced at bonfires and wore costumes to avoid recognition by evil spirits. At Samhaim, they thought, those that died during the previous year returned to Earth for one night.
Dia de los Muertos was also just days ago. The “Day of the Dead” has roots in the ancient civilizations of Mesoamerica. Death is not the end. Death is but a part of a cycle in which the dead continue to exist on a spiritual plane. They return to the world of the living on Dia de los Muertos to spend time with those they loved.
The Yahara River is placid as I walk toward it. Blue, it is silent and still. There are no flocking birds on it. There are no riffles on the water. The wind has stopped. It is just a mirror for the sky.
Near the river is a conical mound. It is ancient. Parks staff have placed barriers around the mound to protect against disturbance of this sacred site.
The Ho-Chunk people descended from the mound-building culture. An estimated 20,000 mounds such as this one were built across Wisconsin. Some were conical; others were effigies in the shapes of bears, turtles, panthers, water spirits. Many have been destroyed by farming and development. About 4,000 remain.
Not far from the Marsh, overlooking Lake Mendota, is an effigy mound of a bird—the largest of its kind in the world. There is an effigy mound of a human near Baraboo, the “Man Mound,” that is the only surviving anthropomorphic effigy mound in North America. The Madison area has the largest concentration of effigy and conical mounds in the world. Around 1,500 still exist here in Teejop (Four Lakes), the Ho-Chunk placename for this area.
For more than 12,000 years, people have lived and died here. These mounds are a testament to that. Walk respectfully around them, breathing in the autumn air. A bird flies off. A leaf falls.
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