The glaciers went around us. That is why October looks like this.

Everybody in Wisconsin gets a fall. We get a better one, and there is a reason for it.

The last ice age came down over this state and flattened most of it. Lakes were scooped out, hills were shaved off, and the land got left behind smooth and tidy and easy to farm. It skipped this corner. The ice split around the highlands and went south on either side, and the piece it missed is the Driftless. The name comes from drift, the rubble and gravel a glacier leaves when it finally gives up. We do not have any. Nothing was ever dropped here because nothing ever came through.

So while the rest of the state was being sanded flat, we kept our ridges and our coulees. We kept spring creeks that run cold all year and bluffs that stand over the Wisconsin River, looking like they know something. Which means that when the maples turn, the color is not laid out on a table. It is draped over something. Take any of the back roads out of town and come around a bend and the whole valley is stacked up in front of you in layers, gold along the ridge, red down the slope, and the creek at the bottom going about its business.

Peak is usually the middle of October here, give or take a week. Nobody can tell you exactly. It depends on the summer we had, the first real cold snap, and the wind, which decides on its own how long the show gets to run.

The cranes come through around the same time. They gather along the river bottoms in the evenings before heading south, in numbers you have to hear to believe, a sound somewhere between a barn door and a rusty trumpet section. If you have never stood outside at dusk in October while several hundred sandhill cranes talk over one another, put it on the list. It costs nothing and it is one of the finest things that happens around here.

Our part in all this is small, and we are fine with that. The ovens feel friendlier this time of year. The Cress Spring pastries come in while it is still dark. The loose leaf tea from Telsaan up in Mount Horeb finally makes sense again. The cold brew stays on, because some people are loyal to it in a way the weather cannot touch, and we respect that deeply. There is a pumpkin spice stroopwafel in the Vault that we ordered too many of, on purpose.

So here is the whole suggestion. Come get something warm, take the long way home, and stop the car once. Not for a photo. Just stop, put the window down, and let October be loud for a minute. It is only loud for a few weeks.

Wednesday through Monday, six to three. Open Mondays, which we will never stop mentioning.

The 1855 crew

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