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.
