TALES FROM THE ICE-FREE ZONE, by Robert E. Lee, was seriously and
soberly written to inform anyone who might pick up the book about
life in the Driftless Area of America's Upper Midwest. Here lies
the portion of our country that the great glaciers bypassed, though
glacial activity completely surrounded it -- on one side at a time
-- during at least four advances of the ice sheet. The bulk of this
anomaly lies over the southwestern quarter (approximately) of the
State of Wisconsin, though its edges slop across state lines into
the adjacent corners of the neighboring Sister States of Minnesota,
Iowa, and Illinois. Tracks of the great ice sheets can be seen all
around the "Ice-free Zone" -- with plenty of glacial till of sand,
gravel, and boulders in the landscape. The principal signs of
glaciation within the Driftless Area lie in the bottoms and on the
banks of rivers such as the Mississippi, Wisconsin, and Black
Rivers that completely traversed the Ice-free Zone. The beds of
such streams are filled with glacial till that was dropped as the
melt-water flooding subsided. Such material is dug from gravel pits
today and used as the aggregate in the mixing of concrete. On the
other side of the glacial coin, it seems reasonable to suppose that
much more of the pre-glacial topography adjacent to the Driftless
Area must have looked much like the unglaciated terrain does now.
Therefore, one might very well say that we have a living museum of
ancient landforms right in front of us today. Only the life forms
upon it have changed. These life forms are the principal subjects
of this book. Here are the flora and fauna, depicted as the author
has met them. He sees subjects of interest wherever he goes. Almost
all of them are commonplace individuals of ordinary species, yet
each one seems to tell a story by doing something that many folks
miss. Every individual plant, mammal, bird, amphibian, or reptile
has its own individuality and beauty, too. And the things that some
of them do Within these pages you will meet the Lone Ranger, The
Sandbank Blues, and the Ugly All-American. You will be introduced
to an "Odd Couple" that you have probably never dreamt of before.
Their true story could probably be turned into a novel, especially
in this era of cartoon style feature films of everything from bugs
and chickens to superheros. Read further, and you will learn both
when and why "Pink" is also "Violet." You will visit the perfumed
ballerina fields of deep summer, and you could also see surprising
summer snow. On a hot August afternoon, without a breath of air
stirring, you might see a flowering plant doing a wildly gyrating
dance -- and, later, find out why That same evening, with luck, you
could hear a loud and clattering "Midsummer Night's Chorus"-- of
what? Again, the answer may surprise you. October nights in the
Ice-free Zone may bring you the sound of the voice of the
"Hob-goblin of Frosty Nights," a sound that might make your hackles
rise. You will find out why this same month came to be called the
"Crazy Moon" and who the "crazies" are. Get to know why November is
likely to have a "Touch of Scarlet" at a season of the year when
the rest of the world is a dull gray. Do you know why December
sometimes brings us "Big Yellow Birds"? Or why January is an
excellent time to track the Sub-arctic Snow Snake? Have you ever
met the "Tiny Terror of the Tabletop"? One must really pay
attention to see this fellow, but a visit with him is worth your
time. Inside information on all of these subjects and many others
will be revealed to you if you but open the covers of "Tales from
the Ice-free Zone." The author is an old hand at spinning a yarn,
and there are a lot of those yarns in this book. It should be
mentioned that the great majority of the subjects of the stories in
this volume are native to the great northeastern section of the
United States from Virginia into Canada and west to the 100th Meri
General
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