While returning from a walk on the “ancient dunes” trail at Eggers Woods, one of the Forest Preserves of Cook County that’s almost in Indiana, I spotted this doe and two three-quarters grown fawns on and to the side of the trail a short distance from the parking lot. They have lots of room to roam at this park a few blocks from I-90, but friend J and I saw at least five to six deer near the trail and/or lot. While this looks like a challenging stance and she kept an eye on us, she didn’t seem inclined to scare easily. They’re used to hikers without guns, I suppose. Some of the deer seemed thin to me, which isn’t good for them with winter around the calendar corner.
It’s not easy to reserve a large cabin at one of the Forest Preserve District of Cook County campgrounds, which became very popular very quickly. I managed to book one at Camp Bullfrog Lake in the Palos Hills region of southwest Cook County. The “hills” are moraines where the leading edge of a glacier halted and material at the leading edge piled up. With hills, woods, rivers, and sloughs, and the only canyon in the county (tiny Sagawau), this is one of the more interesting areas within reach of Chicago.
Camp Bullfrog Lake lies across 95th Street from Maple Lake, which is popular with boaters and fishers. Boats and kayaks are also available for rent at the campground, where we watched two men and a tiny figure paddling away.
The campground lay under heavy, low cloud cover, but the grim sky didn’t deter one group of revelers from playing cricket in the roadway. We passed them on our way out to procure what I consider to be a camping essential for amateurs — firestarter. (We already had our complimentary bundle of wood from the 24-hour office/store.)
For dinner we stopped at the Irish Legend on Archer Avenue, which I didn’t recognize but had been to once before in January 2013. Nearby, Jen’s Guesthouse (not a B&B) has taken over the space formerly inhabited by Courtright’s, which I do remember visiting a long time ago. It was a fine dining restaurant set against a wooded hillside. I loved it.
Back at Camp Bullfrog Lake we struggled to get a fire going. Eventually it caught, then died down several times only to flare up again on its own (zombie campfire?). With so much anxiety over keeping the fire going, s’mores were too much effort, but we burned, er, toasted more marshmallows than is healthy.
To the east (although I didn’t know the direction at the time) a glow in the sky might have appeared to be a lingering sunset on a less cloudy day, but likely was light pollution, source unknown (Chicago Ridge Mall?). As the campfire burned and reignited, stars began to appear, mostly overhead and to the west. At some point it dawned on me that gaps must have opened in the oppressive cloud cover of the day.
October 7, 2018
After the evening sugar high, next morning we went to Maple -N- Jams Café, a small storefront restaurant with a big menu and a wait. You can’t go wrong with a name like Maple -N- Jams (except grammatically).
Next we stopped at Strange Brew Café.
As it turned out, our visit to the area coincided with the 53rd annual arts and crafts fair at Little Red Schoolhouse Nature Center. You can judge an event’s popularity by the number of LEOs required to direct traffic. We were sent around the corner, so to speak, to the Pioneer Woods parking lot, where we caught one of the circulating school buses hired to shuttle folks back and forth. I must note that school buses today have a lot less leg room than they did in, say, 1976.
When we arrived at last we found artists spread out in and around the schoolhouse and the nature center, along with folk musicians, a couple of food trucks, and the surprisingly ubiquitous St. Roger Abbey bakery display. The nuns speak perfect English with a strong unmistakeable French accent. A woman looking over the goods asked if they are Catholic. “Yes, yes,” said the nun. The woman seemed to indicate skepticism or doubt. “When you see a nun with a habit and cross, what else would we be?” She realized instantly that this may have seemed a bit combative and apologized repeatedly. The woman didn’t seem to know what to think. “What kind of accent is that?” she asked. I escaped with a loaf of rustic bread and my sarcastic tongue held firmly in cheek, with difficulty.
Before we got to St. Roger Abbey’s temptations, we’d walked through the schoolhouse, down the path to and along Longjohn Slough, and through various levels of the nature center, crowded with artists’ booths among the fossils and wildlife displays. I’m not even sure I’d ever been on the topmost level before, or maybe I didn’t recognized it in the hubbub. I ended up with candles and a couple of bookmarks that are “great for kids” (I didn’t mention they’re for me).
After listening to the final song of the day while we ate vendor fare, we headed to the little pond (slough?) off one of the trails where I’d seen a belted kingfisher once before. The last of the hayrides, which we’d found out about too late, was about to leave from the clearing across the way.
With that, we squeezed into the next bus, then wended our way to Saganashkee Slough. There we found the REI Boathouse, essentially a container housing kayaks and other equipment for rent for those who want a paddle around the slough. It’s an interesting idea; I wonder how popular it is during the season. I’m impressed by the size of Saganashkee Slough, which to me looks like a real lake but is part of the Cal-Sag Channel somehow (“Saganashkee” is the “Sag” part of the Cal-Sag name). According to the FPDCC website, “A slough — pronounced ‘slew’ — is a somewhat colloquial name for a shallow wetland or pond.” Many of the lakes and sloughs in the area have helpful depth maps, and ice fishing is allowed at some.
For a moment I felt like I could be in northeastern Minnesota.
We also made an unplanned stop at Sag Quarries.
For dinner we picked Ashbary Coffee House at the Old Willow Shopping Center. I couldn’t do this justice in a photograph. It’s a series of house-like buildings set against a wooded hillside in a way that makes the roofs appear to be slightly stepped. The effect is magnitudes more interesting than your typical strip shopping center.
The chili and panini were great on a grim, gray day, but the slot machines, while not in use, detracted from the charm. They seem to be a big thing in the southern and southwestern suburbs.
And so back to Camp Bullfrog Lake, where we bought a bundle of wood for $5. Again it took a while to get a fire going, then it had to be resuscitated several times. Next door outside Cabin 7. a horde of teenage girls was celebrating a birthday with a fire, song, and dance, and, as we saw the next morning, Silly String.
Alas, there were no breaks in the clouds this evening, and at about the time I had roasted my last marshmallow I started to see telltale flashes, soon followed by rumbling. Yes, just as I was confident the fire had finally taken hold in the wood, it began to pour.
From inside, however, we watched the fire burn survive a few outright downpours in addition to the steady rain for at least another 30 to 45 minutes. It didn’t just smolder and throw sparks. It flamed. Perhaps it did better for lack of our nurturing attentions, aka interference.
October 8, 2018
For breakfast we sent to Spring Forest 2, which had been closed the evening before. Like Jen’s Guesthouse, the Irish Legend, and Ashbary Coffee House, Spring Forest 2 is on a stretch of Archer Avenue, but on the opposite side. While the breakfast menu is very limited, a $2.50 breakfast burrito was just the thing. We ate on the porch, where the seats and tables were dry, but behind the house is a descending series of garden seating. Even wet from the overnight rain, it’s an interesting, charming setup. I love the multiple levels and again couldn’t do them justice in photos.
We stopped at Ashbary House, which wasn’t open, so we went to Kirsten’s Danish Bakery for coffee and something pumpkin.
Having fueled ourselves, we turned to Black Partridge Woods on Bluff Road, a gem of a nature preserve with a lively stream bubbling underneath a stone arch bridge. Here, bluebells bloom among the trees in spring. It would be idyllic — except someone decided to run an extension of I-355 over Bluff Road about a quarter mile away. It’s hard to appreciate the bubbling of the brook over the near-constant roar of the interstate. Bluff Road is hilly, twisty, and rustic away from its intersections. Now at one intersection a massive concrete warehouse-style building is materializing across from what may have been once peaceful houses on a country lane. I should be content that Black Partridge Woods with its spring-fed stream hasn’t been paved over.
Next we headed to nearby Waterfall Glen, named for Seymour “Bud” Waterfall, not for the picturesque CCC-built low-head dam on Sawmill Creek. Waterfall Glen surrounds Argonne National Laboratory, and it usually takes me a while to figure out I have to search for “Rocky Glen Trail” to get to the right parking area. Otherwise I find myself trying not to look guilty at one of Argonne’s guard houses as I did now.
After Google helpfully suggested “Rocky Glen,” we found ourselves on familiar ground—a roadway closed off to cars, a left-hand turn on a trail, then a walk along Sawmill Creek to the low dam. There often seems to be hordes of people here, including this day. I’d forgotten that it was a school holiday, Columbus Day, so there were lots of people milling about and walking in the water.
I’d read that a trail runs along the creek and thought I’d seen it, so we started down its muddy spots. It passes through trees for a short distance before it opens onto a length of even stepping stones below a shored-up hillside. At the point where the creek turns south, you see the dam in one direction and a part of the creek you can imagine to be somewhat wild in the other. I could have stayed there all day if my body would let me. For a short time we were the only people around, but soon people and pets started to appear — almost like we’d been followed.
I think I could be happy living near a stream like the one at Black Partridge Woods or Sawmill Creek at Waterfall Glen — as long as no one thought to build an interstate extension or highway or concrete block nearby.
Our next stop was another favorite, the Plush Horse in Palos Park, a “venerable ice cream shop” in a house located in an area that seems more developed than I remember. Sigh. The inside was raucous with children and teenagers, so I sought refuge outside on a comfy Adirondack chair that made eating an ice cream cone a challenge, accompanied by yellow jackets — it’s that time of year. Not content with buzzing us, one decided to take a long stroll on my mouth, where its little feet tickled my lips and the threat of its stinger ensured I would do nothing about it. It’s amazing how long a minute or two can seem.
After dessert at the Plush Horse, I found Mediterranean cuisine at a new place, Simple Taste, in a fading strip shopping center. We were the only diners in the late afternoon/early evening hours. I had baba ghanoush and zucchini noodles — both of which hit the spot not taken up by Plush Horse ice cream.
And so another camping adventure ends, with a full heart and belly.
J. and I headed to the Calumet area, specifically Deadstick Pond near Lake Calumet. There’s no public access I can see, and a fence separates the area around Lake Calumet from the frontage road parallel to I-94, Doty Avenue. Collected against the fence is trash — tons of trash. I envision hordes of high school students and adult volunteers spending a few hours a few weekends cleaning up the accumulated trash along the fences at Lake Calumet and Deadstick Pond. The area seems so little traveled that no one may notice, but it’d be a small step toward restoring a semblance of beauty to the area — as long as it isn’t trashed again.
The Calumet area, for many years the center of Chicago’s steel industry, carries an eerie air of a transition zone. Stony Island, a broad, heavily traveled avenue through Hyde Park, South Shore, and other communities, turns into a two-lane, potholed, unmaintained road flanked by tall grasses, nascent parks like Big Marsh, landfills, and the occasional industrial-style building and parking lot. There’s not a house to be seen, nor any sign of a neighborhood.
Eventually, the avenue that further north boasts restaurants, stores, churches, hospitals, and other urban fixtures dwindles down to a cracked, littered pavement that ends abruptly short of a curve of the Calumet River. Traveling down Stony Island can feel like a ride on a time machine toward a future apocalypse, when industry’s mark is visible but faded, and nature is slowly creeping back through the piles of plastic bags and bottles. It’s like the end and beginning of the world.
As J. carefully navigated the potholes, a few cars and trucks sped past at speed — in a hurry to get to who knows where. We stopped on the roadside at Deadstick Pond and peered through the vegetation and fence for a peek at some ducks bobbing along among gray snags. There may have been swans, or plastic bags masquerading as swans.
Next we found Hegewisch Marsh, where he parked by the rail bridge and we wandered down a rough road parallel to the tracks. Many ducks floated on the open water while their passerine counterparts flitted about the bare trees. Along the way I found a lot of scat, most loaded with fur. The open areas connected by the river, rail lines, streets and bridges, along with wildlife-rich marshes, must be coyote havens. I hoped one was following us with its amber eyes as we tread on its territory.
We stopped at Flatfoot Lake in Beaubien Woods, also off I-94, which roars over the otherwise serene setting.
On a satellite map, Lake Calumet, the largest lake within Chicago, looks artificial. I couldn’t guess its original contours. It’s surrounded by nearly empty, decaying streets, the occasional vast building, the ceaseless noise of a busy interstate, and other trappings of modern dreams. There are other dreams, though. The Lake Calumet Vision Committee has a dream for the Calumet region that includes biking, jogging, paddling, and sailing, along with a trail connecting the Pullman National Monument to the young Big Marsh Park — potentially 500 acres of new habitat. It’s going to take time, and it can’t happen fast enough for me.
Now if we could only do something about the roar of I-94.
I don’t see signs about wildlife very often, although this one at Windigo, Isle Royale National Park, warns unsuspecting visitors about the island’s less famous, thieving canine. What do the red foxes of Isle Royale do with the car keys and hiking boots they purloin?
This sign, at Hidden Lake Forest Preserve near Morton Arboretum, exhorts you not to panic if Wild Fido follows you. He’s simply giving you an escort through his domain. If this task makes him snappish, simply throw clumps of dirt at the ground by his feet. I’m having visions of Monty Python and “Confuse-A-Cat.”
Other signs warn you about smaller wildlife, especially the kind that hops aboard. This one, at Michigan’s Grand Mère State Park, tells what to wear to help stave off the dreaded tick. By the time you’re at the park, however, you may not have clothing alternatives handy. The tick shown is terrifyingly big, but the ticks that can share Lyme disease with you may be little larger than a pinhead.
Pro tip: At Shawnee National Forest, which is tick heaven, I thought wearing a hat would keep them off my head at least. Not so. After a delightful morning at Pomona Natural Bridge, I felt movement in my hair and found a couple strutting under my hat on top of my scalp. This is one of those times when baldness would be an advantage.
Located at a town park near Grand Mère, this sign is not so much a warning as a caution. If you aren’t careful and you spread the emerald ash borer, this will happen to your ash trees. I can attest to the lethal behavior of the well-named emerald ash borer—both tall, mature trees in front of The Flamingo, plus the mature tree that shaded my bedroom at 55th and Dorchester, succumbed to these little green scourges.
At Hidden Lake Forest Preserve, we’re told it’s too late to keep out another horror, the dreaded zebra mussel. You can be a hero, however, by cleaning your boat and equipment properly so you don’t transplant them to a body of water where they haven’t taken hold. The use of “infest” is a great touch. It reinforces the nearby “No swimming” sign nicely. Swimming in infested waters just doesn’t appeal to me, even if I could swim.
If you’re about my age, you recall that “only you can prevent forest fires (that aren’t caused by lightning strikes, volcanoes, and other natural hazards). Many parks post the current risk of wildfire danger based on conditions like drought and wind. At Lyman Run State Park in the Pennsylvania Wilds, Smokey Bear can’t seem to make up his mind.
This version of Smokey opted for words instead of visuals, which makes his message less ambiguous (no broken pointer). No doubt that snow on the ground helps to keep risk low.
Taking shape on Stony Island Avenue in the remnant heart of Chicago’s steel industry, Big Marsh Park features a bike park (built on slag too expensive to remove), natural areas, and occasional bald eagle sightings. An enticing hill nearby forms a lovely backdrop for a walk at Big Marsh, which is still in its infancy. When you get closer, however, and read the signs, you learn it’s a steaming, seething landfill that’s being “remediated.” There’s no happily running up and down this slope. How I miss the Industrial Revolution.
It’s not every day you’re warned about lurking unexploded bombs, but for me this was no ordinary day. It was my first visit to Old Fort Niagara in nearly 40 years, which coincided with Memorial Day weekend. Most of the time, the fort is manned by soldiers in 1700s military fashions, but in honor of the holiday other conflicts were represented. I kept my distance from the bomb. Just in case.
This is one of the odder warning signs I’ve seen. I left the chef alone—after all, he works with sharp objects.
Slow down. Chicago is under a budget crunch, but do they send out a lone fireman like this? A lone fireman without a steering wheel? Or arms?
Here’s a warning sign you can ignore. It’s outside Riley’s Railhouse, a train car bed and breakfast in Chesterton, Indiana, that’s a treasure trove of signs.
From the exterior of the car I slept in:
At Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore’s West Beach, it looks like the National Park Service is testing which sign or message is most effective at keeping visitors off the dunes. This one shows bare tootsies with the universal “No” slash, helpfully pointing out the dunes are ours.
A less friendly, sterner, more wordy one admonishes you to “KEEP OFF THE DUNES” and appeals to your desire to “Please help protect and preserve our fragile dune systems!”
At the beach, this slash through a barely visible hiker shuns wordiness (or words) for directness and simplicity without justification or explanation.
It’s sandwiched between even more minimalistic signs with a slash, planted where the dunes start ascending. Don’t. Just don’t.
Years ago when a landfill near my cousin’s house became a Superfund site (just what you want in your backyard), it was surrounded by an electrified fence complete with warning signs. Noticing there were no insulators, I dared to touch it. In this case, however, I’m certain the area behind the fence is dangerous, and this is as far as I got.
Normal weathering or resentment over the weapons message?
Waterfall Glen, a DuPage County Forest Preserve, forms a ring around Argonne National Laboratory, “born out of the University of Chicago’s work on the Manhattan Project in the 1940s.” Naturally, the immediate area around the lab is secured. While I was baffled by this sign about “lock installation” and “any unauthorized lock,” it was the 10 or so locks on the chain that got my attention. Why do people need to add locks to that chain? Why do they need authorization? From whom do they get authorization? Why are unauthorized locks removed? What does it all mean?
Remember when lead was thought to be safe? I don’t, either. This sign is on an old pump at the remnants of an old general store in the western part of Shawnee National Forest.
Warning: If you leave expensive stuff lying around, even at an exclusive university, it will walk off. You can bank on it.
Now that I know what they are, I’m finding sycamore leaves everywhere in parks and forest preserves. These beauties are from Sand Ridge Nature Center in South Holland, Illinois. Although they’re turning brittle, they look like shiny leather.
I’d have spent more time on this photo if I’d known how it would turn out. I like the vignetted background visible through the tree’s crotch leading to the moss cascade.
Saturday J. and I walked the path through the Chicago Portage National Historic Site area. The last time we were there, we volunteered to help the Cook County Forest Preserve District clear out invasive plants, a hot, sweaty, satisfying task.
This time, we took a leisurely stroll and enjoyed beautiful, mosquito-free weather. Afterward, we visited Riverside Public Library, walked along the river, dined at The Chew Chew, and topped off dinner with ice cream at Grumpy’s Café. I did run out of steam thanks to my latest issues, but not before relishing a perfect day. I need more of these.
Last Friday a Thorn Creek Woods Nature Center volunteer left me a voicemail that that evening’s Owl Prowl was off due to rain, postponed to the 16th. As we talked to our guide and others, we learned it wasn’t the rain so much as the result of it — muddy, slippery trail conditions, especially as part of the trail passes through a floodplain.
The volunteers had quite a spread of materials, from handouts to illustrated bird books open to pages about the species we were to hope to hear and/or see — the eastern screech owl, the barred owl, and the great horned owl.
We waited a while for latecomers and no shows. As we were about to set off, a couple with a teenage daughter said she wasn’t feeling well and they’d have to drop out. From the look of her, either she had cramps (I know the feeling), or she’d watched one too many gory horror movies set in the woods and didn’t think setting out on a hike at twilight with a bunch of strangers was a good idea. With our leader and trailer, there were about 14 of us. Surely only the most observant of owls would notice us!
It was past sunset when we did set out. Our guide tried to teach us to use our peripheral vision to look ahead, yet spot trail obstacles like tree roots, fallen trunks or branches, and steps, as well as to look beyond the most prominent foreground objects in the waning light, to use three-dimensional vision to see in the distance in the growing darkness. That I could do, but I couldn’t keep my head and my eyes directed up. Even with looking down in daylight and seeing everything clearly, I tend to walk trippingly — and I’m still plagued by a fear of falling while walking. I did try, though.
At a second stop, our guide tried to show us how to walk more quietly {“stalk” Native American style) by putting the outside ball of the foot down first rather than the heel and rolling the foot in. I tried this, too, slightly more successfully if not consistently. It’s tiring if you’re not used to it, as she pointed out. I also found it’s hard to coordinate all these different ways of doing things — stalking with head up, using peripheral vision, looking into the distance while being aware of the immediate surroundings and obstacles. I’m afraid I lapsed quickly into my usual head-down shuffle. No matter — neither the owls nor anyone else in the woods was fooled.
At one point, most of us heard a branch snap to the right, which we agreed must have been a deer. J. began whispering that there’d been news about eight escaped convicted killers — as though that would make me nervous.
At one point, J. and I are certain we heard a “hoo hoo” or something similar in the distance, although our leader had not. I looked up and around and took in the tangle of branches, leaves, and mysterious shapes against the sky, which seemed brighter than I would have expected, but didn’t see any owl shapes or movements. When we stopped, our leader would do a fair impression of owl calls, but if any owls were about they weren’t fooled into giving up what they were doing to return the calls. I was reminded of a visit to Starved Rock State Park earlier this year. While I was waiting along the trail for J., out of the near silence a great horned owl (I think) began to call from a spot not far off. After several calls, spaced widely apart, they ended as abruptly as they’d begun. I couldn’t have told you the distance or direction; they seemed to be disembodied in the stillness.
As we walked I noticed my night vision is not as good as I remember — but then my memory could be faulty. At a few points, not always in the thickest or darkest patches of woods, I began to be overcome by a feeling of panic because I couldn’t see anything and of vertigo, that the world was tilting and that I was going to lose my balance. Blind and unbalanced — just what you want to be when walking in the woods and over narrow boardwalks and bridges in the dark.
We had been asked not to bring flashlights, which would disrupt our night vision. Our leader and trailer each carried one for emergency use only. That’s why I was surprised when now and then I seemed to see a bit of light coming from behind me, just a flash, enough to help me get or keep my bearings or to see the person in front of me. At times these flashes or hints of light seemed like the disorienting visual tricks that sometimes accompany a migraine, and they made me feel almost queasy.
We walked back relatively quickly and noisily, with many calls of “step!” and “tree root!” for the benefit of those behind. Despite the difficulty I had seeing at times and the resulting disorientation, I was amazed by how bright the sky remained nearly two hours after sunset but before moonrise, which would have been obscured by the cloud cover anyway.
After coffee and cookies and just as we were about to leave, we learned what had really happened to the preserve’s north bridge, which is out and is being rebuilt. I’d assumed that it had become rickety and precarious with time and weather; even now, the remaining south bridge exhibits unevenness and a disturbing tilt. It came up in conversation that the north bridge had been in better shape than its sibling and was being replaced only because someone using tools had systematically dismantled it. One young woman with blue-streaked hair exclaimed grimly, “They’re lucky I didn’t see them because I’d have killed them.” That seemed to be the universal sentiment. I’m trying to imagine what nasty impulse could have prompted such a destructive outburst of energy, which had to have been carefully planned, coordinated, and executed. The perpetrators haven’t been identified.
If only the owls, deer, coyotes, and other animals could talk. I assume they can’t use tools.
After running a quick errand in Park Forest, we settled down to a late dinner at the Chicago Dough Company — not pizza this time, just sandwiches. What a relief. I’m ashamed to say I could not have taken one more step.