Credit: Council member Mike Breckel reads Process, the first zine in the Walking with Water zine collection at the June 2024 Council Meeting. Free copies of Place, the second zine in the series, will be released at our Nov. 6 meeting. Photo Credit: Sydney Widell.
Place, Second Volume in the Walking with Water Zine Collection, to be Released at Nov. 6 Meeting
by Sydney Widell
Coon Creek Community Watershed Council
The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) project that transformed the Coon Creek Watershed in the 1930s is widely celebrated as the nation’s first experiment in watershed-scale conservation. For some Coon Creek Watershed residents, the project has long shaped perspectives on economic resilience and community care as well.
“From a more social standpoint, my dad shared that the CCC was a lifesaver for a lot of people around here,” said Lisa Aalgaard, whose family has lived in the Coon Creek Watershed for generations. “I remember being raised to think, ‘Doesn’t everybody think this way, that we should take care of everybody?’’
The CCC’s work famously began at a time when catastrophic flooding and soil erosion were upending lives and livelihoods in the Coon Creek Watershed. Aalgaard noted the project also coincided with the peak of the Great Depression, and that it provided resources to families in the watershed at a moment when many were struggling to get by.
“I think the CCC was my dad’s early introduction to his belief in having a strong social welfare network,” Aalgaard said. “That’s a layer I don’t want to be missed in the work of the CCC. The timing of it and the value that it had for conservation was huge, but it had a bigger impact, at least from my family’s perspective,”
Aalgaard is one of 70 Coon Creek community members who shared their perspectives on the CCC and life in the Coon Creek Watershed as part of Learning to Make Running Water Walk, an oral narrative project we organized in collaboration with partners at University of Wisconsin-Madison and University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. Stories participants shared uring the project are featured in Walking with Water, a four part zine series devoted to highlighting reflections on flooding, conservation, community, and culture in the Coon Creek Watershed.
Place, the second zine in the Walking with Water collection, will be released at our Nov 6 General Meeting. The free event will begin at 6:00 pm at the Coon Valley Conservation Club, and feature fresh woodfired pizzas from Tucker and Becky’s Pumpkin Patch, as well as free copies of the zine for all meeting attendees. Storytellers who participated in the oral narrative project will receive a special edition of the publication, and those who miss the meeting may find additional zine copies at the Knutson Memorial, Bekkum Memorial, and Cashton Libraries.
In Place, storytellers reflect on how the Coon Creek Watershed is changing, and what it means to be a part of a watershed community. They look to the past to understand how the region’s history has shaped its present, and in turn, imagine how current actions might shape Coon Creek in the future.
Place and the other zines in the series are produced by our staff, students and faculty at UW-Madison, and La Crosse-based Ope! Publishing, and they feature original artwork from artist Gabrielle Whisler. Process, first zine in the collection, was released in June 2024 and shares stories and lessons from the CCCWC’s first two years.
The Learning to Make Running Water Walk Oral Narrative Project developed from a partnership between us, UW-Madison faculty, undergrads, and graduate students, and the UW-La Crosse Oral History Program, in response to chronic and accelerating floods in the Coon Creek Watershed and surrounding communities.
By gathering together to listen to stories in the Coon Valley Conservation Club and homes and farms and fields across the watershed, the group worked to learn from the experience and expertise of past and present watershed residents, to build on the watershed’s history of conservation leadership, to understand current practices, concerns, and hopes, to support the development of a Coon Creek Watershed Plan, and to grow community around shared stories.
The mission of the Coon Creek Community Watershed Council is to continue the historic legacy of conservation leadership through improving and restoring our soil, water, and air as stewards of the Creek Watershed. We focus on strategies and practices that individuals can implement. Together, we are learning to make running water walk.