Heckrodt Wetland Reserve, Open Again After the Tornado
I have written a few posts over the last week and a half about the tornado that came through here on July 27, and about the damage it left behind at some of our local parks. Heckrodt Wetland Reserve, over in Menasha, sits right in the part of town that took some of the worst of it, and it was closed for a while afterward. It opened back up to the public yesterday afternoon, on the sixth, so this afternoon, the seventh, I drove over and walked most of the property to see how it came through.
The short version is that it is in really nice shape. There is damage, no question, and I will get to that. But the boardwalks are all intact, the trails are cleared, and the place is green and full of life. Considering what this side of the Fox Cities went through, they have done a really nice job getting it back on its feet.
A little about Heckrodt
If you have never been, Heckrodt Wetland Reserve is an urban nature preserve tucked right into Menasha, free and open every day of the year. The land started as a gift from the Heckrodt family back in 1976, and former Menasha mayor Frank Heckrodt was a big part of making it happen. The city of Menasha owns the property, and a nonprofit has run it since 1995. It has grown to around 90 acres now, with more than three miles of trails and boardwalk winding through forested wetland, cattail marsh, open water, a created prairie, and upland woods. There is a nature center too, with live fish, frogs, turtles, and snakes inside. It packs a surprising amount of wild into a small footprint, and it pulls in something like 130,000 visitors a year.
The boardwalks and trails came through
This was the thing I was most curious about, and honestly the most impressive part of the whole walk. The boardwalks are what make Heckrodt what it is, since so much of the property is wet ground you could not otherwise get across. If any of them had been damaged, the crews have already fixed them and put them back, because every stretch I walked was solid and looked great. The dirt trails were cleared too, with the downed wood cut back and stacked off to the side. You can walk the whole thing.
The damage
The storm did leave its mark. Walking around, I would put it at maybe five to ten percent of the trees taking significant damage, with a number of them down entirely. Some were snapped clean off partway up the trunk, the wood shattered into pale splinters, which is what a bad wind does to a living tree. Others were torn straight out of the ground, roots and all, the whole root plate lifted up on its edge. The crews have been busy. There are neat piles of cut logs and brush all over the property where they have been clearing and stacking. It is a lot of work, and it shows.
The deer, and everything else living out there
For all the broken trees, the place is very much alive. I saw several deer while I was walking, which is always the highlight for me. Two of them were grazing together at the base of a big tree, heads down in the ferns, and they let me stand there and watch for a good while. That is the pair at the top of this post. Another was out in the tall grass near one of the planting areas, close enough that I did not need to zoom in at all.
There were wildflowers going, and little surprises if you looked down. On one mossy, rotting log right along the trail there was a cluster of pale coral fungus growing straight up out of the wood, the kind that looks like something you would find on the ocean floor. Up by the entrance, black-eyed Susans were blooming in big yellow drifts.
The nature center and the gardens
The nature center itself came through fine. The building sits back among big cottonwoods with native plantings all around it, and the gardens out front were full of color. There is a bench shaped and painted like a monarch’s wing sitting right by the flowers, and under one of the shelters there is a beautiful carved and painted panel of monarchs resting on coneflowers. It is a welcoming spot, and it was good to see it open and looking after itself again.
If you have been wondering whether it is worth heading back to Heckrodt yet, it is. The damage is real, and it will take a while for the canopy to fill back in where the big ones came down, but the reserve is open, the trails are good, and the wildlife clearly never left. The folks who take care of this place deserve a lot of credit for how quickly they got it back on its feet. Go take a walk.
