Making trades

I'm having motivational issues today.  This is the second day of rain, with a third still ahead of us.  Normal (a truly relative term here in Illinois) temps are 60 ° but today the weather people are calling for 50°.   That would be fine except that yesterday was cold and raining and tomorrow will be cold and raining as well.  This sucks all the joy of spring right out of me.   The world is definitely greening up though; the grass has picked up that weird glow which comes this time of year, and every tree (with the exception of the bur oak, which looks positively dead without closer inspection) has tiny green fingertips.  So things are happening, albeit slowly.   I forget every spring that one day of nice always leads to two days of miserable....it was over 70° on Saturday, but the price for that is what we have now.  By this weekend temps are supposed to be 80°, so maybe we've reached the tipping point.  Enough about the weather--weather is like the dream you had last night; interesting only to the one who experiences it.

I am grateful that I didn't waste a minute of the beautiful day on Saturday--I was up at 5:30 and at the river by 6:30.  I would have been there earlier but here in Illinois, public land is only public between 6:30 am and sunset.  This rule would have been ignored had there not been a gate barring my pre-6:30 am entrance.  We have so little public land here that what we do have must be marked, gated, bisected by gravel trails, signed, and have all manner of municipal buildings on site.   Our total land holdings add to about 836,000 acres, which amounts to 2.35% of the state and ranks us 44th in the nation.   I can't even find a map online of the holdings within the state, but I would bet my life at least half are located in the southern portion.  There are 26,000 acres in Lake County, which admittedly sounds like a lot of land, but looking at the county map reveals that the portions are tiny and really only pockets within the sprawl.  The largest local public land holding (2600 acres)  is close, only about 12 miles from here, but I cannot call it any kind of wilderness and don't bother visiting.  It is littered with picnic sites, trash cans, playgrounds, paved trails, and an interpretive center.    Apparently, the residents of Illinois need someone in a building to show them what is out in the woods.  I don't get it.

Rollins Savanna, just a mile from our house, has become a conundrum to me.  It is 1600 acres of  savanna, which technically speaking is a relatively flat grassland filled with native forbs and communities of White and Red Oak.  I think of it as amped-up prairie.   It is home to all the plants found on the prairie, but has the bonus of all those sprawling oaks providing some windbreak in the spring and winter and shade in the summer.  My love/hate relationship with this parcel results from this: when Mike and I discovered it not long after we moved here, there were no trails except those left by the deer, no little building with "naturalists" inside to tell me about what is outside, no sign announcing its name,  no bathrooms, no bike racks, and my Lord, there was no paved parking lot.  It was lovely.  It was the place we plowed through the snow together late in my pregnancy in an attempt to bring on the birth of our son, and later, the destination of our first hike with him, three weeks old and bundled into a backpack in February.  We walked there for years with our children and dogs, undisturbed by anyone and unbothered by the lack of facilities.  We parked along the side of the road and utilized the privacy of an oak tree when we drank too much tea.  There was a creek that ran through the property which, as our children grew, allowed them and the dogs to get good and wet, and there were apple and pear trees left over from the land's days as a farm.  We flushed woodcock in the spring and Mike once nearly stepped on a fawn, bedded down for the day and waiting for his mother.  We didn't have to stay on any trails and we rarely saw another human being.  In the event we did see another person, he was usually as intent on avoiding us an we were him.  It was our secret place.

Until the Lake County Forest Preserve District decided to "improve" the area.  They added the trails, native nursery, uniformed employees, countless signs, bathrooms, picnic tables, and ridiculous limestone overlook from which to see the birds on the wetland ---all the hallmarks of our county and state's municipally driven land ethic.  In Illinois, it can't be public land unless there is a sign proclaiming the fact or a parking lot providing an asphalt invitation.

Yet, I must admit that they did make one positive change at the Savanna.  The the drain tiles which had kept the land farmable for so many years were dug up and taken away.   This meant that the places which should have been filled with water became so again--and it happened within a single season.   The acres of sad, nutritionally depleted soil were covered by each year's  snowmelt and spring rain, resulting in bird paradise.   In the first year of the new landscape I saw a number of Yellow-Headed Blackbirds, which are endangered in Illinois, as well as countless waterfowl, shorebirds, Sandhill Cranes, warblers, and bird species I have yet to identify.

In the end a lot was given up, but the land and wildlife were healthier for it.   We relinquished the privacy and feeling of wildness but gained biodiversity.  As much as I detest the human imprint it was worth it to know there are creatures living there who would never have appeared otherwise.  It's very difficult to find a day or time when there aren't any cars, but as I have a strict policy of ignoring any and all  trails provided for me and follow those the deer made, I am usually able to hide from the runners and bicyclists, and disappear into the heart of the savanna.   Kola and I did just that yesterday, and were rewarded handsomely.  I was sure the rain, wind, and 40° temperatures would keep us safe from seeing any other cars in the lot but as usual, I was wrong.  In the end, it didn't matter.  Kola told me about a coyote I would have missed while fiddling with camera equipment and waited patiently while I took countless shots of the mist on the water.  We found a squirrel skull, abandoned Canada goose egg, a dismembered Garter snake, and an empty turtle shell.  We never did see any of those people, either. Maybe they were hiding as well, cursing my presence and praying they wouldn't have to abide the sight of another human being, if only for a few hours.