WOOD COUNTY — A lifetime of educating, and yet he remains passionate about his subject. For more than 60 years, Dr. Robert Freckmann has been sharing the treasure that is Powers Bluff, a park in Wood County. “This isn’t just a treasure for Wood County, this is a significant site for the entire state,” states the internationally-renowned botanist. He notes that the dense canopy of the mature hardwood forest allows spring flowers to bloom each year without competition from other late-season plants which would crowd them out.
Professor Emeritus of Botany at UW-Stevens Point, Dr. Freckmann has been leading tours on this hill since he began teaching. “All students who took my course, Plant Taxonomy, got to Powers Bluff or knew about it,” he recalls. Even though he has retired from teaching in the university classrooms, he still conducts tours of the spring wildflower display every year at Powers Bluff. “I would never say ‘no’ when asked to lead a tour. Everything else gets pushed aside on my schedule.”
He has led classes and students from Madison and other locations within the university system, as well as many of the garden clubs in central Wisconsin. A yearly tradition is a field trip with members of the Aldo Leopold Chapter of the Audubon Society of Stevens Point. “It’s outstanding, it’s worth a trip to see in May. For a brief time, after the melt of snow and warming up, the flowers bloom, complete their life cycle, put stored food underground, produce seeds, and go dormant. Trees leaf out around the third week of May, and then light is cut off to the forest floor.”
As Dr. Freckmann notes, “Not many places in Wisconsin equal that. Powers Bluff is pretty close to what it was like 150 years ago. If we could get everybody who cares about the outdoors to walk through a pristine sugar maple woods in the first three weeks of May, we would get a whole different attitude. That’s the period that shows the quality of a broadleaf deciduous forest. If there’s no way you could walk without crushing spring wildflowers with every step, you know you’re in a pristine, pre-settlement woods of the highest quality and increasing rarity.”
Many other groups value this park for different reasons. In addition to the ecological and botanical significance for the wildflower enthusiasts and biologists who have studied its unique flora, Powers Bluff carries historic and cultural significance for the Prairie Band Potawatomi and the Ho-Chunk Nations. It also has recreational significance for the generations of families who have come to play on its slopes for winter skiing and tubing.
