1 “It’s Our Fox River” History—An Introduction Shawn Bailey On September 8, 2022, ecologist, educator, and river enthusiast Jenni Schiavone slid an aluminum canoe into mild waters in south central Wisconsin, beginning a more than 200-mile float that she later described as “the best trip of my life.” She hoped to paddle the entire length of the Fox River and, in doing so, bring attention to the “It’s Our Fox River Day” conservation events scheduled for September 17 throughout the valley. At its true headwaters, near the Wisconsin town of Colgate, the Fox is little more than a swampy depression full of cattails, basking turtles, and bootsucking mud. By Brookfield, enough water flows to allow a canoe or kayak under normal conditions, through a narrow channel a spry child could hurdle across. Near Waukesha, eighteen miles west of Milwaukee, a goutier river emerges and flows south into the state of Illinois. During her journey, Schiavone crossed over this man-made border, paddled through multiple ecosystems and across private property lines, bisected golf courses and skirted a small airport, portaged around more than a dozen low-head dams and navigated through crowded towns like Aurora, Illinois, the second largest city in the state. Along the way, Schiavone witnessed the intersection of human beings and other animals within the Fox watershed, juxtaposing the healthy fauna “constantly soaring or splashing” around her on a daily basis with disconcerting sights such as a dead goose hanging in a snarl of discarded monofilament line. Less than two weeks after she started, Schiavone ended her adventure in Ottawa, Illinois, at the confluence of the Fox and the Illinois Rivers. When asked about her goal for undertaking such a trip, Schiavone later remarked: “I wanted to know this river.”1 1 Aaron Dorman, “An Algonquin conservationist finds turtles and trash along Fox River as she canoes the 200-mile length,” Northwest Herald, September 20, 2022; and Dale Bowman, “Paddling the Fox River, source to confluence: History and fun,” Chicago Sun-Times, September 18, 2018.
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