Henry David Thoreau, in his classic A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, struck a rare note of optimism: “He who hears the rippling of rivers in these degenerate days will not utterly despair.” John Hildebrand, one of Wisconsin’s finest nature writers, drives this home in his new book, Long Way Round: Through the Heartland by River, published by University of Wisconsin Press.
It recounts a summer-long river journey undertaken by Hildebrand — a former Wisconsin Trails columnist and author of several previous books who teaches at UW-Eau Claire — on a circular network of Wisconsin rivers in 2015. Along the way, he tells the back stories of the places he visits and relates his encounters with current residents, all against the backdrop of the political issues of the day: Scott Walker’s failed presidential bid and the nascent candidacy of Donald Trump.
Walker’s signature legislation stripping public employees of their collective bargaining rights, Hildebrand says, came as a “terrible shock” — but worse was the knowledge that half the state agreed with Walker. “I didn’t feel angry,” he writes. “I felt displaced. Having lived here for 30-odd years, I couldn’t tell you what here meant anymore.” So he set out to find out.
Hildebrand’s journey using motorized canoes encompassed eight rivers, including the Chippewa, Mississippi, Wisconsin, Fox and St. Croix, spanning most of the western half of the state. It took about three months, with time off for a visit home.
It’s an enjoyable read. Here’s a line from his description of Kenny Salway, a writer and “river rat” on the Mississippi he meets up with in Alma: “He spoke in a hushed baritone so resonantly deliberate that it sounded as if he was smoking each word over an open fire.”
Hildebrand visits an Indian massacre site, explores the origin of the name Wisconsin (“an English misspelling of a French version of a Miami Indian word”), visits Aldo Leopold’s shack in Sauk County and the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum in Pepin. His account is loaded with nuggets like: “Nostalgia is an ache in the heart for what is unrecoverable. The only cure is to try something new.”
The people he meets are Midwest nice, letting him pitch his tent or helping fix his outboard motor, but there is an undercurrent. One woman at the Buckhorn Bar and Grill in Princeton leaves a table where patrons are cracking jokes about “colored” people and Mexicans to present him with a tiny wooden cross with the imprinted words “God Loves You.” He thanks her and puts the cross in his wallet, where it remains.
Hildebrand doesn’t reach any grand conclusions about Wisconsin or its people. But he does connect with them, in ways that have the power to transform, like the rivers on which he traveled.
John Hildebrand will appear at the Wisconsin Book Festival on Oct. 19 at the Discovery Building, 3 p.m.
