I lived most of my life in Dousman. If you’ve never heard of it, which is often the case, it’s a village about 45 miles west of Milwaukee, whose population has recently grown to around 1,700. My family still lives there, so I go back to visit every now and then. When I do, I frequently end up taking a walk on the bike trail. That’s what we always called it, although it’s officially part of the Glacial Drumlin State Trail. Since I was about seven I’ve been trekking this path, by bike or foot, with friends or just on my own. A main point of interest is always what we call the “first bridge.” As its name implies, it’s the first bridge one encounters when heading west on the trail. It’s old, the wood weathered, a slight trough in the middle along its entire length, formed by the repetition of one course by many for years. I remember my cousin and I exploring out here. We would crawl over the railing and sit on the wooden beams that jutted out from the sides, overlooking the river. We would slip through the grasses down to the river shore beneath the bridge and skip stones. In the winter, we’d tiptoe out onto the ice. I think my cousin almost fell through once. But we liked the risk.
In the river and along the trail there were rusty railroad stakes and abandoned railroad ties being overgrown with forest plants. At the time we didn’t know what they were and we were fascinated by the mystery. Then we learned that the trail had been a major railroad established in the mid-nineteenth century. Dousman was the main hub between Madison and Milwaukee. This only further provoked my curiosity. From then on, whenever I walked the trail, I wondered who had traveled that same route one-hundred years before me. I looked to the enormous trees on either side me, wanting to know if any had been there to witness it. I still think of these things when I trod this path today. I still stop at the first bridge, observe what new names have been carved into the railing, and gaze down into the water. I look far, across the winding river, and try to conceive of the movements of glaciers, and rock, and the burgeoning of vegetation that have shaped this place over millennia.
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