Followed by dinner at Blind Faith Cafe, of course.
First on the weekend agenda — a bonfire at Camp Shabbona Woods. The last bonfire J and I had been to there was on December 16, 2023, when the Forest Preserve folks had managed to keep both campfire and bonfire going despite a steady and sometimes hard rain.
This time the weather was nearly ideal, and more people showed up. There’s nothing like hot dogs and s’mores over a campfire while nearby it looks like the gates of hell are opening.
As evening closed in, J went on a short group hike. While he was gone I spotted some flying creatures I was sure were bats. When the group returned, they also reported seeing bats. Fires, hot dogs, s’mores, and bats. What more could I ask for?
After a cookout at the Chellberg Farm picnic shelters, J and I headed over to the farmhouse to hear Save the Tunes. I always love a late afternoon walk through these woods with the sun glowing through the leaves and onto the path, and the mostly dry creek bed to the side.
And on that note, so ends a summer weekend.
There’d been a storm that had knocked out all the panels in the fence that separates the garden area of the Flamingo from the back area of the Park Shore. I’d taken advantage to walk over to look, and found out the Park Shore has quite a lovely backyard. Either I didn’t have my phone or hadn’t thought to take a photo. By the next morning, the panels had been restored. I managed to get an awkwardly framed photo through the gap between the fence and the framework. I love the circular bench and the fountain. It looks like a peaceful oasis. I wonder if it gets less noise than we do, with the building shielding it from the street. Less noise is good.
Today, the plan was to go to Sagawau Environmental Learning Center to see hummingbirds. I couldn’t get any good photos of them, so I started looking at the pollinators visiting the flowers — from bald-faced hornets to sweat bees. There may even have been a fritillary, but if so I missed getting a photo. I love fritillaries. They’re flashy.
Sagawau closes at 4 p.m., so stopped at Saganashkee Slough, which is vaguely reminiscent of a Minnesota lake, and Joe’s Pond, which once had a pair of trumpeter swans. Then we visited Little Red Schoolhouse Nature Center, where they’ve installed a signpost with distances. It even includes Niagara Falls (560 miles) and the Boundary Waters (also 560 miles). Now I want to go to both. After a stop at Maple Lake, it was time for Ashbary Coffee House and then dinner at Capri Lounge & Grill. Mmmm.
If you had come to North America from Europe, especially Great Britain, in the 1500 to 1700s, you had to have been overwhelmed by some of the differences between home and here, especially in landscape and species. The British coped by giving some American animals the same or similar names as more familiar ones, even when the animal was clearly different. The European robin lent its name to the American robin. The European hedgehog was transformed into the groundhog (aka woodchuck).
The.2024 emergence of Brood XIII and Brood XIX in Illinois makes me wonder about those who moved here from Europe or even the eastern cities. With only the annual dog day cicada for reference, what would you think when one May day you found numerous holes in the ground, insect-shaped husks clinging to branches everywhere, and red bug eyes staring at you by the thousands, millions, maybe billions? And then you are deafened by their calls until they die off en masse several weeks later? They don’t appear again the next year, or the next, or the year after that — not for another 13 or 17 years. Nothing would have prepared you for them.
I recall the last emergence only vaguely, although I don’t think I saw any cicadas. I may have heard them a couple times, mostly while dining outside. I assumed they occur in western New York, but a U.S. Forest Service map shows they occur in a small area east of my hometown,
This time, however, I was able to see them in a few places — first at Black Partridge Woods, finally at Bremen Grove, with Riverside, Morton Arboretum, and Chicago Botanic Garden in between.
I love them and am going to miss them. If I live that long, I’ll be just shy of 79 when Brood XIII next appears.
When you think about a frail nymph burrowing underground, eating for 17 years, emerging, shedding its exoskeleton, drying out its wings (sometimes imperfectly), finding mates, laying eggs that hatch into nymphs that burrow underground to emerge and repeat the cycle in 17 years — it’s nature at its weirdest. Only through sheer numbers do they survive. As the Field Museum said, “Here for a good time, not for a long time.”
I hope the numbers are on their side in 17 years, with not too many paved over. Broods can go extinct, and I’d hate to see (or not see) that happen in 17 years.
Long live Brood XIII and Brood XIX.
Spotted during a short visit to Black Partridge Woods near Lemont, Illinois. Seen but not heard. Yet. Presumably the famous Brood XIII. I wish I had more and better photos, but I was being swarmed by another insect — mosquitoes.
Brood XIII is on the merge of emerging. Although I don’t expect to see them in my Chicago neighborhood, I’m ready with cicada postcards and a new “Love is in the Air” cicada t-shirt from Christopher Arndt. Then a co-worker alerted me to this video from the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County explaining the life cycle of the 17-year cicada. Enjoy.
I was disappointed that the Campfire, Carols, and Chestnuts program at Isle a la Cache was full, so went to a bonfire at Camp Shabonna Woods instead. Although it was gloomy and rainy, it didn’t look like it’d been canceled. And this was the sort of thing I’d bought a poncho for, right?
Surprisingly, the Forest Preserve folks managed to get both a good bonfire and campfire going and maintain them. Not surprisingly, not that many people showed up (maybe they didn’t have ponchos, unlike me). There were so few the Forest Preserve representatives told us to have as many cookies as we wanted.
Fortunately, as a campground, Shabonna Woods has a good-sized covered picnic shelter, so except for checking out the fires we could stay dry. The shelter is where we and a couple families gathered to hear ghost stories — ghost stories featuring people the teller had known that happened in places in Chicago area residents would know. Oooh — scary. One is not far from me . . .
At some point, I noticed I’d gotten an email earlier in the afternoon through Yahoo, which I rarely use — except for the Forest Preserve District of Will County. As it happened, they were letting me know they’d opened the program to the wait list. By the time I realized this, however, it was getting late in the evening, and Isle a la Cache is far from Shabbona Woods. It also wasn’t going to be any drier. Maybe next year . . . but the bonfire and ghost stories were worth it.
On August 12, 2021, the United States Postal Service issued “Backyard Games,” sure to appeal to the nostalgic baby boomer like me.
Per USPS:
The stamp pane features eight unique designs illustrating eight backyard games:
- badminton
- bocce
- cornhole
- croquet
- flying disc
- horseshoes
- tetherball
- variation on pick-up baseball
Each design emphasizes the movement of the game pieces, giving a dynamic quality to the artwork, with a simplified style that evokes the nostalgic feeling of playing backyard games as a child.
Later my brother scanned some old slides, likely taken when he was home from the Army. They included photos of two of my aunts and me playing Pop-A-Lot, a backyard game from Tupperware I’d half forgotten.
Our trailer was at the end of a row, with a field beyond. My dad and the trailer park owner had an understanding. We could use the field next to the trailer rent free if we were willing to mow and maintain it. Our yard on the other side was small and shrank more when my dad planted a shed in the middle of it, so this was a great perk.
The field offered us two to three times the space, up to the point it turned into an uneven, weedy, wet depression. My dad had borrowed a glider, which he put on that side of the trailer along with a table and umbrella. (Later he moved them behind the shed for shade. Your choices were roast in the sun all afternoon on one side, or get eaten alive in the evening shade by mosquitoes on the other.)
Dad put up a trellis or two for morning glories and, later, a wild rose he dug out of the wet depression. He got enormous tires to use as raised flowerbeds. He planted a rectangular garden with flowers like zinnias and vegetables like bell peppers, anchored by Virgil’s Arbor Day ash tree at the southwest corner.
A light pole next to the trailer sported a board with horseshoes tacked to it. I have no idea where they came from. We may have used them once or twice. I loved the idea of having horseshoes, once associated with luck, and wondered if ours had been worn by a horse.
Of course we tossed a flying disc around (maybe a Frisbee). We played badminton; I remember I hit the birdie too hard like it was a tennis ball. Virgil and his friends played a few games of pick-up baseball and even flag football. They were surprised that I could sometimes hit the ball almost as far as the woods. Not bad for a girl eight years younger than her brother and his friends. The trailer park also had a basketball hoop stuck to a light pole in the field. The last time the basket went missing it wasn’t replaced. By then, most of the people who would have used it were gone.
The backyard games we played that aren’t on the list: Jarts and Pop-A-Lot.
The last (and possibly first) time we broke out Jarts, my brother (if I recall correctly) speared the top of his friend’s foot. It was quite gory.
Pop-A-Lot’s packaging said:
Could “safe” has been in response to Jarts, which were as unsafe as anything could get?
I recall it was fun. It looks like my dad’s sisters liked it too (as long as it didn’t muss their hairdos).
Although it wasn’t a game, the other backyard activity we indulged in involved water. For a while I had a wading pool — two, actually, one boat shaped and the next round. I outgrew both quickly. We also had a sprinkler attachment for the hose that spun around — it was great fun. The only reason I can think of for not using it more was not wanting to waste too much water.
Sadly, by the time I was old enough to play some of these games, my brother had left for the Army, and his friends had dispersed to begin their own futures. The demographic of the trailer park changed, too, with the families moving out and retirees trying to stretch their pensions moving in.
The Forest Preserve District of Will County’s “Winter Wonderland” at Messenger Woods reminded me of Pop-A-Lot and backyard games, even if they weren’t all “real” games. I could see myself working to consistently get a plushie snowman’s head into a basket on my head. After all, it’s fun, safe, and develops coordination.
When I first visited the Dan Ryan Woods aqueducts in autumn, they were dry, so I wanted to go back in spring when there was more likely to be water. According to the Forest Preserves of Cook County, “The limestone aqueducts at Dan Ryan Woods were constructed by the CCC to prevent water from washing away soil on the steep ridges. Visitors can still walk alongside the aqueducts as they wind their way through the woods south of 87th St.” The aqueducts are one of my favorite things in Chicago.
While it didn’t snow, this Forest Preserve District of Will County event had a lot to recommend it:
And probably more I’m not thinking of. Afterwards, J. and I went to La Crepe Bistro in Homer Glen, then stopped near Swallow Cliff Woods, where the structure befuddled me. I suppose it’s a blind of some kind.
