windinthemaples

Saturday morning, awake before the boys, I curled up in the hotel room's armchair and read Boston Jane: An Adventure before showering and applying what proved to be an inadequate amount of sunscreen. We had a leisurely morning all the way around, picking up veggie sushi and dried fruit strips for brunch at the local Pick & Save before driving out to Old World Wisconsin for their old-fashioned Fourth of July celebration.

So, in 1964, the Wisconsin Historical Society got this hare-brained, brilliant, big idea to try and preserve the rural ethnic patchwork history of their state's settlement. They spent twelve years finding old farmhouses, barns, stores, and inns from around the state and then dismantled, rebuilt, and restored them on 500 some-odd acres that was part of Kettle Moraine State Forest. It opened in time for the bicentennial and is in a constant state of improvement as they add more farms and settlements, hire and train more interpreters and whatnot. So you park your car amongst the trees of a pine forest, pay your admission, and then are free to roam over 500 acres on foot. There's the crossroads village with a stagecoach inn, the ringing metal of a blacksmith, the chatty persuasion of the general store owner, the well to-do ladies and the Irish washerwoman. Then down the road, through the woods and across sunlit fields of wheat, through pastures with grazing sheep and oxen and horses, there are farms dotted here and there where the doors stand open and visitors are greeted warmly. Women in summer kitchens caught cooking cornbread or feeding chickens. Men plowing fields or oiling harness leather. Beans snaking up little stick tripods in heritage gardens, the school master sternly writing on the board in the schoolhouse, the cemetery sitting silent in the sun behind the church. Sunday, we would explore it all with hardly another modern visitor in sight. Today, though, we were there for the bustling excitement of the July Fourth celebrations where all the villagers and local farmers and reenactors from all over the place were there for the tug of war, the greased pole climb, the patriotic singing and poetry recitations, and the big set piece, the parade. We arrived just in time to see the parade wheel and stomp and sing its way to the parade grounds, representing chronologically, the settlement and changes of the 1830s-1900.

Halfway through the post-parade prayers, poetry, and patriotic sing-a-long, Graeme became Very Sad. He needed a nap but just couldn't fall asleep in the carrier, no matter how much I paced and patted his back, with all the activity going on. We walked back to the car, I nursed him to sleep, and then we sat out there for an hour and a half while he slept. It made for a good time to read books and magazines we'd stashed in the backseat but kinda a disappointing day at Old World Wisconsin. Once he woke up, we were able to go back and explore the last hour or so before they closed. The crowds and thinned and we were alone as we explored deer paths through the woods that led to farms staffed by reenactors. They were inobtrusive, quietly working at chores and open to conversation and questions if we wanted it. It was really incredible--a place captured in time and so big and with so few visitors that we really were captured by its spell. We were the only modern piece visible in this summer landscape of subsistence farms. The sounds, the smells, the sights were all imported from another time. Amazing. We'd just wander up the lanes, through the fields, knock on the door frames--exploring this history dream world.

That night, after dinner and another swim for the boys, I curled up into bed with Graeme around 8pm and slept for almost twelve hours. It was unexpected and perfect, like transforming in a cocoon or something.