The Other Side of the Tracks

You are coming from The Other Side of Starkweather Park.

The north side of Starkweather Park is bounded by Highway 30. Underneath the overpass the Marsh View path, Starkweather Creek, and rail tracks owned by Wisconsin & Southern all converge, more or less. There was the obligatory graffiti everywhere. "Kode" was painted everywhere. Sagacious advice like "Eat pussy not animals" was interspersed among words and shapes I could not discern.



Graffiti aside, the overpass was rather neat. Sun and shade made for some striking contrasts while the overpass and the rails created a neat tableau of harsh lines.







The scene reminded me of The Conformist. Any Vittorio Storaro fans out there?

I took the rail tracks southwest and encountered a rail switch which looked to be manual. Not being an expert in rail infrastructure, I wasn't sure. But a friend of mine who drives trains for a living has told me stories about rail infrastructure in use today that engineers who voted for Grover Cleveland would have used. This switch directs trains to a siding that runs most of the way to Fair Oaks Avenue.





Along the siding were two platforms with a ramp on one side.





Presumably freight was taken off of rail cars here at some point in the past. As you can see from the top photograph, the area beyond the ramps is a grass field along with a retention pond that's out of view. Google Maps show this spot as being wooded so the clearing was done fairly recently. There's also a gravel road that runs to Jacobson Avenue parallel with the tracks. Besides the trees, Google Maps also shows a Stock Avenue here running one short block north-south to the end of Commercial Avenue which has a stretch that runs south of Highway 30 as well as north of it. I wonder if this area was more industrial/commercial in the past. There is very little commercial to Commercial Avenue here and a lot of the houses look like they date from the 1950s. I'd bet that this area pre-war looked a lot different. Surely Highway 30 got a big facelift when the interstates were constructed too.

Once you go west you enter a little section of the Town of Blooming Grove. I believe the City of Madison will annex this and other bits of the town in 2027. If you go through this area, you'll notice how the street signs are blue instead of green. There are some nice older homes here in amongst the ones from the 1950s and 60s. This one caught my eye.



Unbeknownst to me there was an artist residency at Thurber Park.





I suspected this was a repurposed Trachte shed but didn't spy a nameplate. However, there was a verified Trachte shed just down Fair Oaks Avenue.





I presume it's storage for one of the businesses there.

I took the long route home, going through O.B. Sherry Park. On the way there I found a utility pole that got a lot of love from the neighbors.



I had intended to wander the park a bit but the ground was much too wet. And so I wandered along Starkweather Creek which was looking pretty good, lacking the PFAS foam that we'll no doubt see in a couple of months. Instead there were mallards everywhere.



A couple blocks from home I spied a feline taking in the sun.



My hope is to walk this route again when there is more foliage and I have my binoculars with me so I can peer deeper into the marsh and see more birds. The plan is also to learn how to use this camera, specifically manual focus. I've got a whole pandemic to figure it out.

The Other Side of Starkweather Park

It seems likes it has been a couple weeks since we've had a day here in Madison with more than a few minutes of unadulterated sunlight. It's bad enough being cooped up inside in a bid to flatten the curve and avoid Covid-19 but the constant cloudiness has seemed as oppressive at the stay-at-home order, at times. Still, this spring seems like the most normal one we've had in years. My local weatherperson can probably prove me wrong, but it feels to me like spring here in southern Wisconsin the past few years has been a period of highs just above freezing abruptly ceding to 60°+ temperatures overnight. Instead we've had some lovely days in the 40s this spring, with lows dipping just below freezing. No wonder I've seen people collecting maple sap around town.

The last day we had extended sunlight I took a neighborhood stroll. It wasn't long before I noticed that my neighbors have more log cairns in their yard for growing mushrooms. I presume there will soon be shiitake shrooms bursting from the spore holes on them.



My destination was Starkweather Park. I had previous done some wandering around the west side of the park but now I would do the east and north bits. So I headed east on Milwaukee Strasse. The little strip of the park that abuts the street looked so forlorn with the leafless trees and bushes. Plus there was garbage – empty drink containers, mostly – scattered about. The old Swiss Colony warehouse was waiting impatiently to have tenants once again. Plans for it to become an Amazon distribution center are moving forward to the dismay of many who were hoping for that area to become housing and commercial. But the land is still zoned industrial or whatever classification you need for a warehouse.

However, the land owner was quoted as saying that "a low-cost housing development" was going to be built adjacent to the warehouse. This got the Urban League of Greater Madison to bite. Of course the proof of the pudding is in the eating. We will just have to wait and see if those 145 jobs materialize. I'd bet a lot of those are given to robots. But housing there isn't a bad idea as it's very close to the East Transfer Point meaning public transit is a hop, skip, and a jump away for people of more limited means.

Speaking of which, it was rather odd in a Twilight Zone kind of way to see the transfer point completely deserted.



The retention pond by Corporate Drive was full of melted snow. There was a smoking area tucked into a shady area next to the pond.



Once I was on the Marsh View path, the marsh that is Starkweather Park was to my left.



To my right I saw my first robin of the season. Unfortunately, it was hanging out in a sea of parking.



What a waste. On the bright side, there was a brace of sandhill cranes wandering the grass between the expanses of concrete.



Starkweather Park is mostly marshland and the main attraction is birdwatching. There are benches dotted along the path to accommodate practitioners of what is surely one of the more sedentary hobbies around. I did not have my binoculars with me but I still caught site of some of our flying friends, including my first sighting of a red-winged black bird.









As you get to the north side of the park, the path veers away from the marsh and continues underneath Highway 30. After crossing Starkweather Creek and some railroad tracks, it's but a short stretch until you hit Commercial Avenue.

I, however, took a different route.

Continue to The Other Side of the Tracks...