By Kristen Wilhelm
 Every
time I take a walk through Fitzsimmons Road Woods, I step back
to the time before European settlers began farming southeastern
Wisconsin. This isolated natural area lies relatively undisturbed
on the outer edge of suburban development in the city of Franklin.
Wandering along the paths worn by deer and a few fellow wanderers,
you can't help but appreciate the wonderful diversity of this
woodland. Surrounded by beech and towering oaks hundreds of years
old, the woods are dotted with wetlands that pop up in the spring,
offering temporary homes to salamanders, frogs and many rare
plant species. Plant and animal life are abundant in this forgotten
corner that became the front lines of a battle and changed the
way we view development in the city of Franklin.
Fitzsimmons Road
Woods now stands as a symbol for a changed attitude toward
a balance of development and preservation, and how a few determined
people can change their world – or at least preserve
a piece of it.
~ Don Dorsan
Growing up, I spent most of my time in my father’s
Michigan woods. Hunting morels, wandering on horseback under breezy
leaf shadows, feeling cool pond water on my legs and the touch
of earth and pine needles under my bare feet are experiences that
made me more of a person than I ever could have been without them.
When I moved to Milwaukee many years later, it sometimes seemed I could never escape the buildings, roads, and commitments that always seemed to draw a fence around my life. But while I could not replace the huge woods of my youth, I found an orphan, the 40 acres of Fitzsimmons Woods, to fill my life in a different way. Surrounded by development and soon to be developed itself, the woods sheltered blazes of blue phlox against massive trunks of beech, oak and maple, yellow carpets of water crowfoot over pristine vernal pools and the rare hop sedge, whose fat papery fruits seemed like tiny gift-wrapped secrets harboring the promise of life.
This special little woodland, so rare in southeast Wisconsin, soon became the focus of a group of talented friends that would become the Milwaukee Area Land Conservancy. Time and space here could never do justice to the seven years of effort that claimed thousands of hours of our lives in testimonies, meetings, letters, plans, inventories, disappointments and triumphs that finally saved these woods. And Fitzsimmons Woods came with so much – new zoning and environmental standards for the City of Franklin, security for its rare plants, vernal pools and trees, stewardship funding from surrounding homeowners, and fresh understandings among stewards and developers about the possibilities of life. Along the way, I became something of a botanist and an ecologist, and learned the many joys the names of things unlock.
Returning to my Michigan woods not long ago, I saw them in a new light. I’m certain now that my journey to save special places began there, and I hope by helping save Fitzsimmons Woods I’ve given the same chance to some unknown youngster. Slipping down a slope under those familiar beech and maple of my youth, I stopped to check a presence I felt. A tiny wood frog looked back at me, resting calmly in the hollow of a tree stump and reminded me of how small things of beauty can create such big places in your heart. I’m happy knowing that partly because of me, there is a treasury of beautiful things in Fitzsimmons Woods for others to discover and begin their own special journey.
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