North Park, Lincolnshire, IL: We all live in a watershed

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There is a lovely woodland on the west side of Interstate 94 north of Chicago that I’ve driven past innumerable times on my way to and from that great city and points east or south of it. Its name, or even whether or not it had one, has always been a mystery—until today.

Since I am the “designated driver” in my family when we are anywhere near Chicago, I’ve rarely gotten more than a passing glance at this park as it flashed by at prevailing freeway speeds. But I do glance. Many of metropolitan Chicago’s patches of forest preserves lie alongside the freeway corridors. There they are welcome variations in the otherwise dull “viewsheds” that have in recent years become dominated (or shall we say it bluntly: obliterated) by the sound-absorbing barriers erected to protect burgeoning subdivisions.

When the patches of woodland green flash past I invariably take a glance (or two, road conditions permitting!) Over the years I’ve gotten to know quite a few of these fleeting bastions of nature. Or, to be more precise, I’ve become superficially familiar with the face they present to the freeway. (There’s no “stopping by woods on a snowy evening” along the freeway, of course.) This particular stretch of woods has seemed especially inviting. On occasions when the sun’s rays stream through the tree canopy they reveal, even at freeway speeds, an open understory that can appear quite enchanting. A gracefully arched footbridge is visible, as it crosses over some watercourse unknowable from the road.

Welcome as these brief, beguiling glimpses are as visual distractions on a road trip, they are definitely unsatisfactory to someone who desires an intimate “acquaintance with nature,” as Thoreau put it. I cannot recount how often I have yearned to take the next exit and double back to find this park. That it took so long may be attributed to destination-minded driving, to the inertial logic of freeway traffic, or to an internalized skepticism about the chances that roadside parkland can live up to my imagination of it as urban wilderness.

Today I resist skepticism—and I plan time into my return from an errand in Chicago. I exit the freeway at Half Day Road and turn north on the ambivalently named Riverwoods Road Trail. Definitely a road; not a trail. The park is easy to find but the name, when I finally see it on the entrance sign, is disappointingly prosaic: North Park. No matter: “A rose is a rose is a rose” and, prosaic or not, it will “smell as sweet,” to mix quotations. And the Shakespeare, referencing smell, will prove very apt indeed, as we shall see.

I drive past a series of athletic fields, down a very long, narrow set of parking spaces, every one of them empty today. Not surprising, though: it’s just after noon on the first day of the new school year. (I’ve just driven past Daniel Wright Junior High, which has a packed parking lot and a marquee sign reading, “Welcome back!”) I park at the far end, delighted, as always, to have the woods to myself. Tempting to throw in the Thoreau quote about companionable solitude, but I so recently used it, I’ll resist. Besides, although there is no one else about, as I enter the woods the solitude and otherwise bucolic character of the woods is immediately and, as it will turn out, irrevocably compromised by the incessant roar of the beastly freeway; ironically, the very conduit that led me to this moment of exploration.

It is a small sacrifice, I always think as I embark on a new urban wilderness adventure, to have to endure the racket in order to enjoy the nature. Unfortunately, it is one to which I am accustomed. I forge ahead. At first the forest is dense and shadowy, but soon the understory opens as I had foreseen from the freeway. A wide, neatly mulched trail makes the trek decidedly tame. But the sun is pouring through the foliage; it spreads across the dry ground like butter on toast. I can ignore the noise. The scent of the earth is sufficient, I think to myself, to transport me away from the Interstate, away from Illinois, into that enchanted place that I have been imagining here all these years.

The air is sultry. The leaves, still vibrantly green, haven’t begun to turn. And yet the dry, earthy scent no longer speaks of summer. It is an autumn scent, redolent of finality. But it is the finality of transformation, of new beginnings as well as endings. Summer, the season of indolent days and endless youth, is over. Autumn may presage winter, but begins with a new school year full of hopes and promises. This is the finality of cyclical nature, not the finality of death. For, unlike we mortals who walk in its paths, nature never dies.

Unless it is paved over.

OK, OK: sorry. I had to do it. I was getting a little maudlin there, with the syrupy sentiments. The trucks are still roaring by on the Interstate. I’m trying to ignore them, but there they are, RIGHT THERE. The trail I am walking angles towards the freeway and the scrim of trees is tapering. The traffic, no longer merely audible, is a clearly visible blur. I can now make out brand names on the trucks—and super-graphics of fresh vegetables on their way to the shelves of some supermarket.

It is true that nature never dies. Nature will outlast us. Paradoxically, perhaps, it’s also true that we’ve been killing it little by little for at least a couple thousand years, but lately at a rapidly accelerating pace. A freeway through here, a new subdivision there, a little more carbon in the atmosphere, another 200,000 people added to the planet since yesterday.

Well, yes, it is all of a piece: a new year; hopes, promises, youthful vigor and ambition—these things come burdened with death and decay, violence in the Mideast, global warming, and so on. A walk in these woods comes with the roar of trucks on the Interstate. One ball of wax. Yin and yang. Urban wilderness. Every little—and big—thing “hitched to everything else in the universe.” Forever and ever, Amen.

I’m still walking through the lovely woods, breathing the sultry air, basking in the buttery sunlight, stopping to delight in the glow of asters and goldenrod. It’s still beautiful. I come to a sign, posted knee high, encased in watertight acrylic, and canted for easy viewing. “We all live in a watershed,” it proclaims to those who pass.

I approve, of course. Having written Urban Wilderness about a watershed, I’m all for educating the public about the importance of drainages, aquifers, wetlands and rivers; of understanding natural geography—biodiversity, ecosystems and watersheds—instead of the imposed geography of cities, streets, counties and freeways. “North Park was designed to protect the natural area and watershed of the Chicago River,” it says. Then it asks, “What can we do to protect the watershed?” And, appropriately, goes on to provide a detailed list of answers.

Halfway down the list I read, “Preserve our open spaces.” Indeed, I think ruefully, as a truck RIGHT THERE on the freeway throttles down, engine groaning. “Restoration of the natural area here at North Park will improve water quality and reduce flooding along the Chicago River.” Yes, it will. In a curious bit of graphic invention, the map on the sign shows the Village of Lincolnshire as an unnaturally spiky purple blotch that appears attached to the side of the smooth green shape of the watershed like a parasite or a cancerous growth. North Park is a tiny blue shape shoehorned between Lincolnshire and Interstate 94. Three long forks of the North Branch of the Chicago River extend down and away from this point at one of the headwaters.

What is missing, however, are all the adjacent, equally irregular and obtrusive shapes of towns and villages like Lincolnshire here in Lake County, Illinois that overlay the entire watershed. Lake County is home to over 700,000 residents. They all live in a watershed. Unless they choose to walk this trail in North Park and to stop to read this sign, I wonder, how would they know that?

I reflect on the word watershed, which has another, related, meaning. If I walk west from North Park to the far side of Lincolnshire, at some invisible point I will cross from the Chicago River drainage to where all the rainwater flows into the Des Plaines River instead. Temporally, too, the tipping point when everything changes is often referred to as a “watershed moment.”

Not long ago we were warned that once carbon levels in the atmosphere reached 350 parts per million (ppm) there would be no stopping the disastrous effects of global warming. Today, as CO₂ levels approach 400 ppm some organizations, businesses and countries are scrambling to reverse the trend and re-cross the watershed.

This week there were news reports that a long-awaited turnaround has sent home prices soaring again. A watershed. Good news, of course, for the many people still caught in financial straits brought on by the Great Recession. Rising home prices, however, also means rising prices on land and a resurgent demand for development. According to the New York Times, “The latest land rush is in full swing, as developers realize that they have failed to feed the zoning, permitting and mapping pipeline, which can take months or years to turn raw fields into buildable lots.” Municipalities are adjusting rules, lowering development fees, and using other strategies designed to encourage this new “land rush.”

We all live in a watershed.

The warm, autumn scented wood is dappled with sunlight. The flowers are dazzling. I reach the gracefully arched footbridge I’d glimpsed so many times through the trees from the freeway. A faint trickle of water sparkles here and there amongst lush wetland reeds and grasses. Meager headwaters of the West Fork of the North Branch of the Chicago River in an obscure little woodland squeezed between Riverwoods Road Trail and Interstate 94. Never more important than today, right now in the watershed.

Chicago wilderness sustains an abundance of life – human included!

I’ve never been able to get so close to a great blue heron before – not without startling it into rapid retreat. I had been strolling along the bank of the Chicago River in the shade of the dense hardwood forest canopy. I came to a clearing where the slant of the evening light shone like a spotlight on the opposite bank. My attention was drawn by the dramatically splayed skeletal roots of a long dead stump and the symmetry of its mirrored image on the water.

I made my way incautiously towards the point on the bank opposite it to frame a good shot of the stump. I set up my tripod and looked through the viewfinder. Only then did I notice the heron perched on a log off to the side, motionless and perfectly camouflaged against the exposed earth and tangle of roots on the deeply eroded bank.

 

I was stunned. Not by the heron’s presence; I see them frequently along urban rivers. The surprise was that it remained there, so still and poised, focused on its quarry below the surface, after I wandered carelessly into its field of view. An ancient bird, the great blue heron has adapted well to habitats altered by human development. However, unlike some other species, it has not grown accustomed to humans themselves and nearly always flies at the slightest intrusion. 

Perhaps its lack of fear was a result of immaturity. The slate gray of a full-grown heron was still mottled with shades of brown and white, indicating this bird’s relative youth. I waited patiently for it to fly off and provide a picturesque moment. It didn’t. Finally, I waved. It looked up at me and then back at the water. Nearing exasperation, I threw a stick. The rippling water fractured its slender reflection but the bird remained imperturbable. Two men jogging on the bank above yelled back and forth to one another. As their colorful outfits flashed by there was no reaction from the heron.

Finally, for no apparent reason, it slid gracefully off its log and sailed away – just after I’d given up and lifted my camera from the tripod, missing the shot. 

Later, as I rounded a bend and beheld the idyllic scene ahead another heron, larger and grayer, disappeared with more characteristic alacrity, proving the rule that had made my first encounter so surprising.

 

I saw many deer. There are always deer. The whitetail is common enough to be a nuisance. Two does shepherded two tiny dappled fawns as they foraged across the river. Elsewhere, two young bucks with velvet antlers allowed me to get even closer than the heron, without an intervening river. But the self-assured poise of the deer was not surprising; they had little to fear from me and clearly knew it.

I was alone with the animals for quite a while.  But when I came to rail line turned recreational trail that bridged the river I found a refreshingly diverse, steady stream of people using it. I noted two joggers, a cyclist, two young mothers pushing strollers, a dog walker, several solitary amblers, and a trio of shirtless Hispanic teens in thigh-hugging baggy pants and exposed boxers. All were enjoying a tiny green space wedged between Chicago’s urban grid and a curve of the Edens Expressway.

I crossed the old railroad span – staying well away from the edge without any railing! Through the trees ahead I spied a field full of soccer players. I was reminded of Richard Louv’s book, “The Nature Principle,” in which he insists not only that everyone needs the tonic of wildness to maintain wholeness and mental health but also that we who already love the parks need to understand the cultural and preferential differences of others who use parklands and the various needs that they satisfy.

On the other hand, there must be limits to tolerance, including abuse of the natural resources themselves. I wasn’t bothered by the graffiti, since some unwritten but welcome code confined it to the concrete of the bridge abutments. 

At the start of my little excursion I had passed the incongruously placed grate that provides access for one of Chicago’s extensive system of stormwater tunnels. Randomly interspersed around the same meadow were small patches of grass that appeared to have been burned. Returning through the meadow by a different route on my way back to my car the mystery was solved when I came across the sulfurous remains of someone’s impressive arsenal of fireworks.

It is easy to decry the destruction caused by unsupervised explosions. The stormwater tunnel, which stores raw sewage during storms for later treatment, represents ecological impacts of human development on a scale that are much harder to fathom. The urban wilderness, always a place rife with paradox, reveals challenges while it provides opportunities.

"I am glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in. Of what avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?" These lines of Aldo Leopold’s are often quoted. I’ve quoted them before myself. Sadly, more and more young people grow up far from the truly wild areas to which Leopold was referring. On the brighter side, more and more people, young and old, like the ones I was seeing here, are realizing the virtues of what Louv calls “nearby nature” and are making efforts to experience the freedoms it provides without leaving the city they live in.

I did a Google map search to find this park, which is called LaBagh Woods, before I came down from Milwaukee. I do that whenever I plan to travel and expect to have a little free time for exploring. When set to “map” mode the green areas on a Google map look remarkably like “blank spots on the map.” Clicking on “satellite” mode reveals the lush textures of woodland canopies that, for so many of us who live in cities, can and must be a substitute for Leopold’s vision.