My port of entry to Madison was a frozen field of tallgrass, an echelon of dark pines and a patch of oak woods. As my brother and I drove into town along the south Beltline, searching for the Seminole Highway exit, I looked around and marveled: Hey, this is all right…. There’s a forest in the middle of the city!
I didn’t know at the time that I was seeing the UW Arboretum. I didn’t know those tawny grasses were the Curtis Prairie, the world’s first prairie restoration project. I didn’t know those were the Leopold Pines, planted in the 1930s. I didn’t know the highway had been punched through the Arboretum in the early 1950s. I didn’t know my new place was just beyond those oaks.