Crossing the Driftless: Some Upstream Paddling Required

It was Joseph Nicollet’s 1843 topographical map—created when the Upper Midwest had no roads to travel, just rivers—that led to Lynne Diebel’s book Crossing the Driftless. Nicollet paddled those rivers to map the land. Lynne and her husband Bob had paddled thousands of miles on Midwestern rivers, but always downstream. What about traveling a river route where they had to paddle upstream at times to get where they wanted to go? Their trip would take them from Faribault, Minnesota, where her original family has had a summer home on Cedar Lake since the 1800s, to their Wisconsin home in Stoughton, close by the Yahara River, on the eastern edge of Nicollet’s map. There’s a river route for that, if you throw in a few portages. The rivers carried them across the Driftless Area, a land that has always fascinated them, and traveling by river through the Driftless gave them a new sense of the beauty of this rugged, never-glaciated landscape. Lynne will introduce you to Nicollet’s map, to the rivers, and to her award-winning book, <em>Crossing the Driftless</em>. She’ll talk about their adventures, share some pictures, and encourage you to take your own personal river trip.