Hidden America: The Wilds

One of the activities on our itinerary that I was most excited about was a visit to The Wilds, a ten thousand acre wild animal conservation center in eastern Ohio. The center was developed on land that was once surface-mined for coal and then reclaimed according to federal conservation laws that were passed in the 1970's. Przewalski's wild horses were the first animals to be released onto the grounds in 1992 and the center has subsequently welcomed seventeen more species including rhinos, cheetahs, and giraffes. I discovered The Wilds by casting a wide net in my pre-departure research, performing internet searches for the best things to do in the entire state of Ohio and not just the cities we were visiting. The Wilds was an hour and a half to the east of Columbus but I decided it would be a unique enough experience to be worth the drive. I booked our Wildside Safari at noon to be sure we would have enough time for a leisurely breakfast.

As it turned out we finished breakfast with an hour and a half to spare before we had to get on the road. I decided to knock off a couple of the quicker items on our Columbus itinerary. First we visited Topiary Park, a nine acre park in an area east of downtown known as the Discovery District. This district received a special designation in 2007 to recognize its high concentration of cultural institutions such as the Columbus College of Art and Design, Columbus Museum of Art, and Columbus Metropolitan Library. The park once had the odd name of Old Deaf School Park due to the presence of a school for the deaf next to it, but was rechristened in 1992 after local sculptor James Mason and his wife Elaine filled the center of the park with artfully trimmed yew bushes in the shapes of people, animals, and boats. The school for the deaf was abandoned in the 1950's but was subsequently repurposed as a Catholic high school and retains its beautiful historic character.

The theme of the topiary is the Georges Seurat pointillist masterpiece A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. The remarkably lifelike bushes are carefully accoutered in recognizable Victorian accessories such as corsets and top hats. The crescent-shaped pond reflected the topiary and the high-rises around the park and also featured wooden rowboats that were clad in foliage. It was a tableau I might have expected to encounter in a major European capital or an East Asian metropolis but not in Columbus, Ohio. This unassuming but vibrant city was turning out to be something of a revelation.

It was a short drive to German Village, a neighborhood south of downtown that was once named Das Alte Südende by a large contingent of German immigrants who settled there in the early nineteenth century. By the end of the Civil War Germans made up a third of the population of Columbus. In the twentieth century the area declined due to anti-German sentiment during World War I and closure of the local breweries due to Prohibition. By the 1960's the neighborhood had become an urban wasteland and was in danger of being completely demolished, but local preservationists managed to get it listed on the National Register of Historic Places and established a commission to restore and maintain the buildings. German Village is mostly a residential area and does not have an overtly German character, so any visitors seeking beer halls and lederhosen would leave disappointed. There are a few German restaurants such as the Alpine Restaurant and Schmidt's but the neighborhood's appeal is largely based on the preservation of twentieth century brick architecture. We found a place to park on an attractive brick street and took a ten minute walk through the quiet neighborhood just to absorb the atmosphere. Aside from the ubiquitous brick the area was notable for the exuberant landscaping that sometimes turned the sidewalk into a tunnel.

We still had a half hour and I was a little flummoxed by the lack of actual sights in the German Village. I spent a few minutes with ChatGPT, my beloved new travel tool, and came up with the Stuart Little Household. To make the stop a little more memorable for the kids I didn't tell them what we were there to see. I told them that I was testing their powers of observation and asked them walk up and down the sidewalk in front of the house until they spotted something that didn't belong. Cleo is very competitive and instantly began pointing out items in every direction, none of which were particularly incongruous, but it was Ian who surprisingly spotted the tiny doorway that had been set into a layer of concrete at the base of a small, unassuming brick house. A small black and white sign next to the doorway read "717 1/8 S. 3rd St. THE LITTLES" and another a little distance away implored visitors not to touch. The door was surrounded by a pretty archway of multicolored pebbles that were also set into the concrete and a tiny basket of fruit had been placed on the sidewalk in front. The contest had worked well to pique the kids' interest and I think they'll remember that quirky building decoration for some time. I don't think the doorway actually had anything to do with Stuart Little, since in both the book and the movie Stuart lived with a normal-sized human family in a normal-sized house. Whoever first pinned the spot to Google Maps made the association and now it is permanently enshrined as the Stuart Little Household.

Most of the drive to the Wilds was along the brutally boring Interstate 76, which travels east-west all the way from Utah to Baltimore. At Zanesville we left the interstate and traveled through some undulating countryside for about a half hour, occasionally passing through small towns that were barely more than clusters of a few ranch homes and small businesses. We didn't have to wait until reaching the animal preserve to see wildlife. A doe and two fauns were walking across a front yard in one of the final towns we passed through. The doe paused and stared at us impassively as we drove by.

A little while further we reached The Wilds and took the short shuttle bus ride from the parking lot up to the top of a hill from which the tours departed. I had booked the most expensive safari, called the Wildside, which meant we were in a truck for eight people rather than a bus for twenty and our route would take us off road to get closer to the animals. We had a young and energetic driver who seemed to know each of the resident beasts on a first name basis. We passed by a herd of Pere David’s deer which weren't very exciting before coming to the Przewalski's horses. This animal is native to Mongolia and may constitute the only true wild species of horse, as the North American and Australian wild horses are considered to be feral descendants of domesticated animals. Our guide advised us that the Przewalski's horses cannot be broken and are quite aggressive. As if to punctuate the point one of the females came trotting over to the truck with teeth bared as our guide swung herself inside, imploring the aggressive animal not to bite her.

The Bactrian deer were a little more interesting that the Pere David’s, mainly because a group of does were guarding a faun that had just been born. They milled around and peered at us nervously as we tried to spot the newborn amid the tall grass. Finally we spotted the tiny brown head almost indistinct against the beige background. An encounter with Grevy's zebras led the kids to ponder the age old question of whether they were white animals with black stripes or black animals with white stripes.

After a quick stop for lunch we headed back out on the trail for a close look at some more African animals. There were two kinds of rhinos on the preserve but the Greater One-Horned Asian rhinos were also protecting a newborn and couldn't be disturbed. We could see them with my binoculars under some trees around the pond. The southern white rhinos were quite docile and allowed the truck to approach very closely, even a mother who was watching over her calf. Southern white rhinos came within a hair of being extinct in the late nineteenth century but thanks to conservation efforts the wild population has increased back over fifteen thousand. The ostriches showed more interest in the truck than any of the other animals. Two of them ran right over and stuck their heads over the railings. Our guide warned us to keep our hands and backsides well away or they could give us an unpleasant pinch. Apparently they aren't the brightest of animals but their long, minimally feathered necks seemed quite elegant and graceful when seen at close range. The coup de grace for the kids was Tuffy the giraffe who came over to the truck to receive a head of lettuce. Tuffy's stoic expression somehow became even more mournful when Ian dropped the lettuce heart off the side of the truck, but our guide made sure to retrieve it for him.

After we got back to Columbus we still had an extra couple of hours to kill before our eight o'clock dinner reservation so we decided to check out the Dublin Irish Festival. The city was named after the birthplace of one of its founders in the early nineteenth century but was never the recipient of many immigrants from Ireland. Dublin, Ohio was officially recognized as a city in 1987 and when Dublin, Ireland chose to mark its own official millennium in 1988 the Ohio town decided to establish a stronger connection with its distant Irish heritage. The inaugural Dublin Irish Festival was held in 1988 to celebrate these momentous occasions for both Dublins and continued to be held every year thereafter with the exception of 2020. Between 1988 and 2023 attendance at the three day festival grew from 500 to 78000. When we arrived just a couple of hours before the end of the final day of the festival not many of those attendees remained. The weary gatekeeper waved us through without charging us admission. The food and refreshment vendors looked similar to any other festival except for the preponderance of booths dedicated exclusively to whiskey.

Most of the remaining people were collected under the shed housing the Celtic rock stage. The festival has grown to the point where it can draw performers from all over the world, including Ireland of course. This year's line-up featured performers from Japan and Italy among other countries. I'm not sure what band was playing when we arrived but they sounded pretty good. I could have hung out for a while if the rest of my family wasn't immediately bored by anything that wasn't pop music.

One aspect of Irish culture that I wasn't previously aware of is that Dublin was founded as a Viking settlement and remained under their control for three centuries during the middle ages. I don't think that Viking heritage is of high importance to the Irish but it had an outsized presence at the Dublin Irish Festival with a large area devoted to games and crafts from that era. The guys overseeing those activities looked like they might have just stepped off a dragon-headed longship on their way to plunder a coastal village. I felt reassured that we were more than five hundred miles from the Atlantic Ocean. It took some convincing to get my kids to try the games but eventually their competitive spirits took over. There was one block-throwing game called kubb and another that involved reeling in wooden boats as quickly as possible.

Our time at the Irish festival eventually ran out and we headed back to Short North for our reservation at Mandrake, a rooftop restaurant on the tenth floor of the Moxy Hotel. I had chosen it because it seemed like the best combination of atmosphere and cuisine that Columbus had to offer and I was excited to see how it compared to the best restaurants in more renowned cities. It was funny that in just two days in Columbus this was the third time we had unintentionally found ourselves in Short North. Across the street from the Moxy there was a large metal sculpture in the shape of a crystal called the Makers Monument. The tiny perforations in the metal surfaces leave behind an interlocking representation of items that have been made in Columbus throughout its history such as metal gears and padlocks.

A young woman met us in the lobby of the Moxy and put us on an elevator that went straight to the top floor. The hostess of the restaurant could have been the first woman's sister, platinum blonde and early twenties. Like the first one she was polite and quite outgoing, making small talk with us while they got our table ready. It was a noticeable difference from Miami where one wouldn't be likely to get more than the flash of a smile from the hostess at a rooftop restaurant. When we were seated and our waitress appeared, it was clear that whoever did the hiring had a very specific type he was looking for. The menu was a fusion of Mediterranean, American grill, and Japanese that was ideal for our family and we had no problem finding the perfect combination of dishes. The rooftop design was magnificent and the views over the city were amazing.

Our solitary fine dining venture in Columbus turned out to be the best restaurant meal we had had in the United States in a long time, certainly better than any recent experiences in Miami. Mandrake was proof that a lofty attitude isn't necessary for a restaurant to deliver a premier dining experience in a beautiful environment. As the sun set we watched North High Street turn into a river of lights far below us and reflected on another amazing day spent in Ohio, that most unassuming of states.