Chicago’s Millennium Reserve: a photo essay

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In dim morning light the wooded riverbank stretches into a misty distance. Luxuriant early summer foliage hangs over the water. Cheerful birdsong peppers the stillness, spices the tranquility of dawn.

At intermittent intervals the blast of an air horn erupts a short way down river, from some factory. Oddly, it is less a disturbance than a punctuation of the peaceful tenor of the morning.

There is a tangle of deadfall at the river’s edge. From within it I hear the sound of some creature plunge into the water. A muskrat perhaps. The surface swirls with its passage as it swims out into the current, but it remains invisible. Then it submerges further and is gone. The water is still again.

A young deer steps out of the undergrowth onto the path. I do not move. It turns calmly, raises its white tail as if in farewell and saunters off, nibbling here and there as it goes. Stealthily, I try to follow, but I can’t keep pace and I lose track of it as it wanders back into the depth of the forest.

This is Chicago. The occasional blast of the air horn is joined now by a soft rumble and staccato clank of coupling boxcars as a train begins to accelerate. It reminds me of the importance of the railroad in the history of the city. This is the Whistler Woods Forest Preserve in Riverdale. After parking in a riverside neighborhood of West Pullman, I crossed the Calumet River on the Major Taylor Trail. The trail hints at another piece of Chicago history. It is named for an African American bicycle racer who is also revered as a civil rights pioneer and author.

Whistler Woods Forest Preserve, east boundary

After my brief reverie with the wildlife, I head back to my car. Although I would enjoy doing so, I am not here to explore Whistler Woods. I have a larger purpose in mind. I am not alone in this. For this far southeast corner of the city Chicago has a very grand scheme in progress. It is called the Millennium Reserve and if all of its plans come to fruition it will become the largest network of urban parklands and natural areas in the country, potentially encompassing over 140,000 acres.

Urban farming, West Pullman, from Major Taylor Trail

I have come to what’s known as the “Calumet Core” of the Millennium Reserve for what can only amount to a peek at the landscape of this vast project. It is a landscape of stark contrasts that symbolize all of the hopes and challenges inherent in the concept of urban wilderness. As regular readers of this blog know, that was bound to attract my attention. I am eager to explore.

The Calumet Core is billed as “a 220-square mile opportunity to transform a region in transition.” The project is ambitious, to say the least. It is, fortunately, far more than the usual attempt to restore neglected or degraded land. The visionary planners have wisely incorporated cultural, social, and economic objectives into the project. To be sustainable, environmental restoration and conservation must not only be linked to human concerns; members of the local community must recognize and believe in its relevance to them personally.

We will not survive if we do not understand how inextricably bound are human society and the natural world. This tie has too long been denied but the tremendous and undeniable changes that we have brought upon our planet over the past two hundred years make it particularly urgent now to redress the imbalance.

It is in places like this that we must begin to reverse the tide.

Here is what I found in my brief tour of parts of the Millennium Reserve.

Rainwater has turned a park lawn into wetland. William W. Powers Conservation Area.

Beyond the dead end of a worn asphalt road a guardrail is engulfed by nature. Calumet Woods Forest Preserve.

Prairie. This is Illinois after all. Flat. Few native grasses and wildflowers remain, however, in presettlement times this would have been a typical Illinois prairie and open savanna. Beaubien Woods Forest Preserve.

“River Bend Prairie.” I am not making this up. The landfill across the Calumet River from the Beaubien Woods Forest Preserve bears this ironic name. The carved wooden sign at its entrance, reminiscent of those that grace natural parkland, frames the name with cattails and wildlife. It is on a bend in the river.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but these juxtapositions are inherent to the challenges of urban wilderness in general and the Millennium Reserve project in particular. Here at Beaubien the prairie and the landfill (in the distant background of this shot) straddle the Calumet River. There are several other landfills nearby and many industrial sites along with abandoned, neglected land throughout the region. This is where a project with the objectives of the Millennium Reserve is truly needed.

River Bend Prairie landfill from Beaubien Woods Forest Preserve.

Beaubien Woods Forest Preserve is a large, well-established park with a variety of habitats. The Calumet River and Long Foot Lake both provide local residents places to fish. I saw at least half a dozen people taking advantage of the opportunity on this quiet Sunday morning.

The mulberries are at that ripe stage when they fall and blacken the ground underneath the trees.

Neither the landscape nor the opportunities for rehabilitation of it end at the Illinois border. Unaware of it until I later checked the map, I crossed over into Indiana. The last two images are from just inside the Indiana state line.

Bank stabilization. Forsythe Park, Hammond, IN.

The sign on the side of this building reads Environmental Education Center. The parking lot was vacant. It’s either defunct or closed on Sundays. Across Highway 41, a dramatic new pavilion and recreation center on Wolf Lake was buzzing with activity.

The Scent of Summer

It is something that I cannot photograph, alas, that moves me the most on my solitary walks in the forest: the scent of the earth and the newly burgeoning grasses, shrubbery, and trees. It is the scent of summer.

This evocative aroma is as potent an elixir as any I’ve encountered and it is as potent in the Chicago wilderness along the Des Plaines River as anywhere I’ve been.

The forest preserves along the Des Plaines, though narrow, are a natural wonder, which is fitting for an urban river, I think. The name Des Plaines derives from French voyageurs who traveled beneath overhanging trees (probably sycamores and maples) that they mistook for their native European plane trees.

Once again I found myself dropping my oft-traveling wife at O’Hare airport just as the rush hour starts to make the freeways impassable. What a treat to have the Forest Preserve so nearby, a place of tranquility where I can pause for an hour or so in relative solitude while the crush of cars gradually thins.

I quickly leave the wide, well-used bike path with its packed earth and mown margins for a more inviting, narrow track towards the river. I am quite alone in one of the largest, most densely populated metropolitan areas of the country. The constant drone of traffic is faint, no more distracting than the buzzing of a mosquito would be if it were safely outside a screened porch.

The regular roar of aircraft passing low overhead on their flight path towards O’Hare is a bit more distracting. But as each fades off, the quietude deepens. I gaze up at the place where a jumbo jet just zoomed over on its inflexible trajectory and I spy a hawk making slow, lazy circles in the sky.

The soft ground of the river’s flood plain has become an even softer carpet of cotton.

The wind shakes loose a steady stream of cottonwood fluff, like gently falling snow.

Perhaps eventually it will cover up the intrusive marks left in the drying mud by an errant motorbike.

Although I’m aware of the pressures of society and the compulsions it creates towards conformity and consumption, I am constantly mystified by the contrast I find when I venture off-road, so to speak, and into an urban woodland. Why do I not meet more like-minded lovers of nature? It is a curious conundrum, that I myself relish in the peaceful solitude of an urban wilderness like this one and at the same time despair for the fate of humanity because so few find equal pleasure in it.

This is far from a new or unique observation. In a journal entry, dated 1854, Thoreau wrote, “The true poet will ever live aloof from society, wild to it, as the finest singer is the wood thrush, a forest bird.”

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.

 

A Tale from the Chicago Wilderness

Lost! What a peculiar sensation; one made more than a little surreal because I can hear traffic from...some direction. And I could set my watch by the planes that rumble low over me as they throttle down to land at nearby O’Hare airport. How can I be lost in the woods and still be so obviously surrounded by civilization?

I dropped Lynn off at the airport around 7:30. Then, not wanting to drive in rush hour traffic anywhere near Chicago, I picked the nearest green spot on the map to explore for a while. Cook County has a marvelous series of forest preserves along the Des Plaines River. I pulled into one with a rather aristocratic-sounding name: Catherine Chevalier Woods. Three cars were parked in the long, curved lot carved out of the trees. Their occupants sat inside them. I headed into the woods.

A wide gravel path led towards the river. A thunderstorm had left standing water that mirrored the foliage. I disturbed a flock of mallards waddling in the puddles. Just me and the ducks out here in the wet woods today. Oh, and the deer. Every couple hundred yards heads pop up from browsing to stare as I pass. The only thing more regular than the deer are the jets flying overhead.

The river is high and the water gray-brown. It moves silently, massively, inexorably. The water tugs at the lower tree branches dipping into it. Sodden logs and buoyant plastic bottles sweep swiftly past. Trees that normally anchor the bank now stand in the river. When the gravel path veers away into the woods, I leave it for a narrower riparian track. The earth, though wet, is still hard. The night’s downpour did not last long enough to soften and melt the cracks in the mud—or the innumerable animal tracks.

So, I’m walking farther and farther, wondering when I’ll get to the bend in the river I’d seen on the map, thinking maybe I should turn around. But I prefer completing a loop to backtracking, so I venture on into ever wilder surroundings. Finally, just as I reach the expected bend, the sun bursts through lingering clouds. Its rays dapple the forest floor, highlighting fresh irises, and surprisingly colorful mosses. Another of the endless cast of deer stands in a spotlight. An enormous blue airbus, visible in snatches through the tree canopy, shrieks and shudders as it slowly descends.

The faint trail that I’ve been following peters out entirely as I reach a flood engorged slough that curves away from the river back in the direction I know the car must be. Trusting my intuition, sense of direction, and memory of the map that I neglected to bring along, I plunge forward. Tangles of driftwood deposited by greater floods than today’s create an obstacle course. Here, finally, is my wilderness: hot, humid, muddy, choked with obstructions, and throwing a cloud of mosquitoes in my face.

I begin to doubt. The traffic I’ve been ignoring seems louder, but directionless, all around, like the mosquitoes. So predictable until now, the planes are flying the wrong way, too. Have they switched to taking off? I misjudged the distance; what else? Suddenly I realize, I’m lost. Later, when I’m not tired, sweaty, and swatting mosquitoes furiously, I will laugh at my predicament. Me, lover of the urban wilderness, lost in one. It’s fitting, really—and strangely satisfying; even beautiful. I try to savor the feeling, for I know it won’t last. I will find the river and the parking lot and the city that surrounds me. As I drive home I will also try to preserve this dizzying sensation of wonder, this uncommon experience—a gift of Chicago’s wilderness.

Every city needs its wildernesses.

To see more photos go to my flickr page.
To learn more about Chicago area parks go to Chicago Wilderness, where you'll find that June is Leave No Child Inside month. Nice.