The Daze of My Life: Robert Glenn Ketchum, An Autobiography
Biographies are studies of someone's life based on cumulative research. Good ones may reveal something, but probably barely scratch the surface of what actually went on. The internet is allowing me to do something VERY different.
~Robert Glenn Ketchum
Friday, January 24, 2020
The Daze of My Life: Robert Glenn Ketchum, An Autobiography #184: Daze, #184: While working on my Artist-In-Residence for the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha, co-funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Wisconsin Arts Board, I resided in a lovely old farmhouse in the Kettle Moraine, that the UW had turned into a biological field station to study the re-establishment of a tall grass prairie in an oak savanna. Professor Marlin Johnson and his students worked on that project, and a large community garden they established, and I wandered the property trying to translate the landscape that endowed the farm. The Kettle Moraine is unique to eastern Wisconsin and southwestern Michigan because that is where the line of moraine residue stretches after the retreat of the Laurentide Ice Sheet which covered these states, and, in fact, all of the Great Lakes. Any glacial mass, and especially one this large, picks up an immense amount of rock, boulders, and silt/topsoil as it creeps across the landscape. Because this was a HUGE ice sheet, with numerous glacial fingers, it collected an incredible amount of debris that was then deposited when the melt back occurred. The Kettle Moraine was formed of these deposits. Within the soil/rock residue were buried volumes of ice, which melted more slowly because they were covered by the dirt. As they did melt, the covering soil collapsed forming potholes and lakes. Potholes generally range from 3-200ft. wide, but lakes were created also, some of them quite large. Now this area has rebounded, vegetation has moved in, and the potholes and lakes are often connected through systems of streams that flow through them. All that water nurtures a now-vibrant surface habitat of lush native plants, and large established trees, many of which are ancient, impressive oaks. As this landscape is part of the Atlantic Americas Flyway, million of birds travel through this domain every year. On their long flight, they need food and resting places, and the farms fields, ponds, and lakes, of the Kettle Moraine are a favored place to stop. At the height of the migration, birds are EVERYWHERE, and the squawking and cooing can be heard for miles. (If you would like to see the entire body of work from this project, use this link.
photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2020
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