By Justin Isherwood

At 7:30 a.m., a bus load of new hires of the University of Wisconsin arrived at the Pfiffner Building on Franklin Street. The morning air was mild, spring-like. Interesting was how immediately after unloading this group of young academics found themselves on Stevens Point’s shore of an old river called Wisconsin.
A group had been assembled to introduce this batch of new academics to our Central Wisconsin including its river; our message being this river is the message. How the Wisconsin River is the artery and pulse of this region, in fact this state. To deliver this feel for this river was Bill Berry, Carrie Butt, Nick Schultz and myself, alas the sole and lonely dirtball version.

Despite the four narrators of this Central Wisconsin theme, including four different life occupations, the odd thing was how consolidated was our message to these new staffers, at core being our beloved river. How this river mattered to our history, our place, our identity, our home town. Perhaps it is a little embarrassing that as diverse individuals, we did not have any more distinctive voice about our Central Wisconsin lives than to focus on the presence of this river.

To the end, we were probably a touch boring, all of us saying the same thing – how the Wisconsin river is central to Central Wisconsin. True to the words of Norman Maclean and his novel “A River Runs Through It,” this river, its history, its hydrology, its industry, its sinuous inter-twine of our landscape and our communities, our health, our recreation, our sense of place. All of which this Wisconsin, this Ouicousee River runs through it.

Carrie Butt spoke of how her Main Street business Dive Point was endowed and enabled by the return to health of this river, what was once an ignoble industrial sewer is now a place of recreation. At a site not miles away, not a half-day’s drive but just down the road, just off the pier on the far end of Main Street. A river that close. A river that nurturing.

Bill Berry told of this river’s resurrection from the dead with the Clean Water Act of 1972. How our paper industry took up the daunting, highly technical challenge to clean up industry’s open pipe of a river. A mission that lots of citizens and businesspersons believed impossible, the better left untried. Instead, how we tried, and the Wisconsin came to life again as did the Chippewa, the St. Croix, the Ohio, the Cayuga. Rivers raised from the dead.

Nick Schultz described what has become an icon of Stevens Point, the result of that George Rogers, Roy Menzel conspiracy: the Green Trail and its now some 27 miles of paths linking the segments of our greater community that coincidentally describe our region’s hydrology, where water is the connective tissue of our landscape and our community. The Little Plover trail segment, Moses Creek, the Plover, Lake Pacawa, the Schmeeckle.

At 9 a.m. this group of new hires boarded their charter for a ride to Gottshalk Cranberry to hear another take on Central Wisconsin. As Bill Berry pointed out, all of it the “same ol’ water theme,” this, what is, Central Wisconsin. Whether it’s our paper, our cranberries, our potatoes, beans, corn, peas, carrots, cabbage, peppers, or just a nice place to put in a paddle.

I left soon after because my tractor was waiting for me, already idling for another day in the fields.
Thousands of years ago my farm stood on the shore of the Wisconsin River; if soon after the glacier moved it via that watery elbow at Plover. That river is now 22 miles west.

When I entered the throne room of my John Deere later that morning, I realized how the river unites and connects us, binds our history, connects our vocations.

What once was saw logs and window sashes is now corrugated and kayaks, not to forget, center pivots and cranberries.

We are a neighborhood of waters, all of it related.