Driftless but not alone

The Upper Iowa is a National Scenic River winding its way through one hundred miles of jagged country in Northeast Iowa to its destination at the Mississippi River. Pale limestone bluffs topped with dark cedar ridges usher the river on its curling course from Bluffton to Decorah. That section of river is a favorite daytrip for canoeists and kayakers, but not one to mess around on when spring floodwaters wrap wayward canoes around fallen trees. On windy days, open waters show whitecaps and weak paddlers make painful progress.

It’s rough going as well when river levels fall in summer and boats get dragged across gravel. More than one loving couple has broken ties over a bad river experience. These are the risks you take in the Driftless region where wild woods and waters test the will of adventurous souls. One doesn’t have to wander far out of town to find fun trouble. The mountain biking trails in Decorah feature enough ridge-line single tracks to tempt people who love terror and treasure the occasional tree meetup. Road cyclists strain up steep grades on the way out of town, then grind over windswept rollers that the RAGBRAI ride loves to toss in at the end. The fat tire community rides snow-packed roads in winter and kicks up dust all summer. For all others the twelve-mile Trout Run Trail throws hills at you every mile or two.

A long heritage of Luther College distance runners (as I once was) has logged thousands of miles in those hills where both human and natural mysteries abound. Petroglyphs etched into riverside walls testify to the people that once occupied the Driftless region. From deep within the earth cold water pours out of springs into rambling trout streams where native brook trout share riffles with stocked with rainbows and browns.

The Driftless life

Into this environment I came as a college freshman with nature on my mind. I was never disappointed. There were ruffed grouse drumming in the woods. Wild turkeys burst into flight as we ran past. Hawks and pileated woodpeckers soared on valley thermals. Great-horned and barred owls called at night and the moon and stars shone brightly during our runs outside of town. In one dank ravine on an early winter day, I found a wayward Townsend Solitaire and through all these experiences I fell in love with the place.

As field biology students in college, we spent a semester exploring Driftless region flora and fauna, documenting all kinds of species in our lab notebooks. Each turn of a season called us into the field. We trapped voles and mice during subzero January weather, marveled at skunk cabbage emerging in February snow, reveled as spring wildflowers bloomed in profusion on southern hillsides, and waded into cold ponds catching frogs and salamanders. Back in the lab, we stuffed birds and mammals learning the elements of taxidermy.

Field biology class raised expectations of what could be found by keeping eyes open for new discoveries. Yet some came about by surprise. On a warm spring day in late April, I was running with a fellow steeplechaser on a road beneath some south-facing bluffs when he suddenly leaped in the air and landed six feet down the road. He turned around and pointed at something curled up in the dust. I looked closer to identify it as an Eastern Massasauga rattlesnake. “Awesome,” I called out. “A rare species for my bio journal!” My running partner was not impressed. “Come on,” he urged me. “Leave that thing alone. Scared the hell out of me.”

From that point on, I ran that stretch of road every few days hoping to find more species of snakes, but had little luck. In early May, I decided to try the route one last time. Running along with my eyes hopefully trained on the roadside, I was startled when a man dressed in a white cowboy outfit jumped out from behind a tree. He held a hammer in his hand and down the front of his shirt ran a spatter of rich, red blood. Giving his hammer a shake, he asked, “Do you wanna see my snakes?” I wasn’t sure what his next move might be but admit to being curious about what kind of snakes he was talking about. I had a few days left in class, and my lab book was still hungry for a few new species. I figured it couldn’t hurt to see what he’d found. “Sure, whatcha got?” I answered. He raised his hammer to point at the tree behind me. I turned around and saw a ring of snakes nailed to the trunk of the tree. Blood trickled down the bark.

Taking a quick glance to make sure the Cowboy Guy was a good distance away, I stepped closer to look at his snake collection. I ticked off the species in my head: bullsnake, fox snake, corn snake, and peering farther around the tree I found a milksnake, garter snake and a large canebrake rattlesnake with a beautiful cinnamon stripe down the back. That made me sad, then a bit angry. “What the heck?” I said out loud, turning around to face him. The Cowboy Guy grinned.

I decided to leave at that moment. “Thanks for showing me your snakes,” I offered, and moved to step around him. He blocked my way, so I threw my best football fake at him and took off running toward campus. Back at the college I related my encounter to some teammates. They were skeptical at best. “Sure,” one of them teased, rubbing his chin in mock doubt. “A Cowboy Guy killing snakes…” “If you don’t believe me,” I told them, “We’ll run back out there. I’ll show you!”We ran back out but the Cowboy Guy was gone. All that remained on the tree was the ring of blood spots where the snakes had hung. I pointed to the blood on the bark, but my teammates ribbed me even harder. Only one of them sided with me and admitted, “That must have been weird.”

Making sense of madness

I’ve had many years to contemplate what motivated the snake-killing Cowboy Guy. Had he been raised by his family to fear and destroy snakes? Did he simply enjoy hunting them and tallying the slaughter? Or was he just whacked in the head? Edgar Allen Poe once described the instincts of madness as the Imp of the Perverse, and perhaps that why I stayed to see the man’s reptilian quarry. “We stand upon the brink of a precipice," Poe wrote, "We peer into the abyss -- we grow sick and dizzy. Our first impulse is to shrink from the danger. Unaccountably we remain. By slow degrees, our sickness and dizziness and horror become merged in a cloud of unnamable feeling.”

Most of us contain the Imp of the Perverse through healthier forms of release. We run or ride, scramble or climb, swim or ski or hike to remote places to expend energy and pursue exhaustion. We welcome its release from whatever tension fills our heads. For many, these paths offer sanity and salvation. It helps us feel alive and real, not driven to hammering snakes on a tree to gain some mad sense of satisfaction. We can enter the Driftless region without letting the Imps of the Perverse take over. But you never know.

Christopher Cudworth is the author of several books including Honest-To-Goodness: Why Christianity Needs A Reality Check and How to Make It Happen and The Right Kind of Pride .