Chicago Wildlife News: Des Plaines River Journal: My very own back fence

Des Plaines River Journal: My very own back fence

(POSTED: 6/8/10) The naturalist, John Muir, when in the mood for a walk, felt the need to do nothing more than "throw some tea and bread into an old sack and jump over the back fence." Warm summery temperatures in the area now stir in me the same feelings as I vault over the fence bordering the forest preserve near me. In the Dam Number Four Woods of the Cook County Forest Preserve District, the delicate, pastel greens of spring have matured with the lengthening days into the strong green of summer. The steady Des Plaines River, having reached spring fullness a few weeks ago, has settled to a lower level and on a slower speed.

I walk the trails in these woods throughout the year, and always encounter people, no matter the season. Summer brings of course more visitors: cyclists, joggers, soccer players, walkers, picnickers and inevitably a sub-type of us ordinary hikers -- the dog-walkers. Today I met, leashed to friendly owners, a Brittany spaniel, an Italian greyhound and a Sakhalin Islands husky. In an open field, I see several sunbathers in lawn chairs, and on a neighboring trail young parents gently push their baby in a stroller. Joggers, with admirable determination, and the runner's inward focus, rush by. A forest preserve community of folks assembles for the day.

On an afternoon in this early summer, there is a special pleasure in the feeling of foot upon a path of soft dirt, newly soaked by spring rains. There is a happy rhythm to walking on such a path at a comfortable pace. Indeed, there is an art to walking well, and these woods, in full summer bloom, make that art easy to practice.

I head towards Higgins Road where I am rewarded with a lovely copse of purple and white wild phlox. Their delicate scent lightly infuses the air. Spring wildflowers appear to be mostly gone, but these remain behind, gracing the trail just north of Higgins Road. Will they last through the summer? I will watch to see; they are worth future viewings.

My walks meander, usually without fixed goals. After leaping over that back fence, I never know exactly what awaits me. What leads me? Do unseen attractions beckon? In his essay, "Walking," Thoreau wrote, "I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright. It is not indifferent to us which way we walk. There is a right way; but we are very liable from heedlessness and stupidity to take the wrong one." I don't know if there are any wrong turns in these tame woods that I know well. Yet, encountering these graceful phlox, or a group of quietly grazing deer, or a trotting smiling coyote who pauses long enough to give me a look at it, makes me feel that I've made a right turn. Thoreau may well be right.

I feel fortunate that I do not have to go far to find natural beauty such as this. A fine poet and writer I know, Tom Montag, of Fairwater, Wisconsin, has written of his deep appreciation of the local, of those places that are near to us, and that we may sometimes dismissively overlook. He writes in his book, The Idea of the Local, "To know the world, some people need to travel the globe; others simply examine their own piece of ground entirely. This place will be revealed to us if we let the ghosts speak, if we listen to what tree and stone and hillock want to tell us."

Is it my aging that cultivates a greater appreciation of what I find nearby? Or a kind of practical laziness? I have, to be sure, walked the great Rockies in Colorado, New England's White Mountains, the aged and unusual Black Hills, California's "Range of Light," the Sierra Nevadas, and remember them all happily. What drama I, a Midwesterner, found in these glorious places! At times, flat Illinois and environs have seemed less interesting. Yet now, on these quiet, now flowering woodland paths, I think that the meaning and depth of Montag's "local" outweighs the drama and romanticism of great panoramas far from me. I mean to take nothing from -- and of course could not -- the magnificent Yosemite Valley. For Californians, that valley is local, but not for me.

Perhaps it was when I saw that a wild trillium in a glen near Camp Fort Dearborn was no less beautiful than one I saw on the slopes of New Hampshire's mighty Mount Washington. I love the memory of both three-petaled gems. And fortunately one of them -- the one just south of Devon Avenue -- is for a time each year quite near to my very own back fence.

By Jeff Wagner, for ChicagoWildlifeNews.com

Jeffrey Wagner, a graduate of Northwestern University and Indiana University, is a Chicago-area musician and writer who has published numerous articles in Clavier Magazine, and other journals. Since boyhood, he has loved the outdoors, and has hiked, camped and back-packed all over the United States.

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