We had only lived in our small town Macomb neighborhood for just over four years when, on a drive through the country, we noticed a “For Sale” sign in front of a modest home with acreage. Off and on we had thought about moving back to a rural setting, but there was always something not quite right about whatever available home appealed to us: too expensive, too close to a highway or neighbors, no natural habitat, too remote, not remote enough. But this house was set far back from the county road near a wooded ravine and surrounded by mature white oaks with shagbark hickories and white pine. As we stopped in the middle of the road, Julie and I looked at each other and, without saying a word, knew that this home hit many of our priority criteria. Two days later, the owner accepted our offer, and a month later we were in, and I was finally able to sit back and fully appreciate my new surroundings.
Our new backyard with white oak trees.
I recalled our initial visit, as the white oaks kept drawing my attention like no other aspect of the property. They created a diversion from looking too closely at the house, which I eventually discovered had quite a few makeshift repairs that would require attention (as the realtor led us around, the deck stairway almost giving way underfoot should have been a hint). Outside of both the living room and kitchen sliding glass doors, the oaks—with their wide trunks, gnarled canopies, furrowed bark, and smoothly lobed leaves—immediately took me back to the mid-1960s, hiking trails with my father and brother in the Palos Hills Forest Preserves near Chicago.
Even at that time, completely lacking in knowledge of forests, I easily noticed that every aspect of those rolling moraine hills was very different from what I saw in my flat city neighborhood with its densely packed houses on small lots. My city block had silver maple, catalpa, a few Lombardy poplar, and most likely elm (I don’t remember any oaks); and, of course, they were evenly spaced and centered in front and backyards on black soil with a hard pan not too far below the surface (I knew this from digging holes in the backyard). In the oak forests, however, the soil was light brown and crumbly, and the randomness of the trees and understory communicated an obvious wildness. Returning home after an afternoon in the Palos Hills, I soon felt constrained, boxed in, controlled. So the oak forests came to mean freedom, stepping outside of the accepted norms. Even after growing up and moving away, I never lost that association.
Many years later I would learn that some of those oak woodlands that I tramped around in were true remnants from an Illinois landscape long since converted to modern agriculture, roads, and developments; somehow those areas had escaped being cut, perhaps being used as shaded pastures for cattle. I also discovered that the oak woodlands once shared the Illinois landscape with boundless prairies, where trees were entirely absent or present in a mixture of grassland and widely spaced oaks called savannas. Some of those remnant habitats can be visited in protected Illinois Nature Preserves. Two of the better examples are Hopewell Hill Prairies in Marshall County and Argyle Hollow Barrens in McDonough County.
Hopewell Hill Prairies Nature Preserve.
Argyle Hollow Barrens Nature Preserve.
And today, with my home nestled within a small grove of white oaks, I cannot look at these trees without imagining myself as an eight-year-old boy running ahead of his father on a shaded trail through towering white, red, and black oaks; or as a young man in his twenties, bushwhacking across the woods and prairies of Palos Hills and finding a massive lone white oak in the classic mushroom shape, judging it to be close to 300 years old as compared to a similar nearby tree of known age; or as a middle-aged man leading a controlled fire designed to help maintain a small prairie in Tazewell County.
White oak (referenced above) at Spear Woods Forest Preserve in the late 1980s.
We’ve been in our new home just over a month and have not yet had time to think about what to do with our 3.5 acres. The previous owners clearly valued the trees, but much of the rest of the property, except the steep-sided ravine, has been closely mowed. Should we continue the mowing, as our new neighbors in the subdivision—far away though they may be—would undoubtedly suggest? Should we simply let it all go natural, wherever that may lead? Or should we section off areas for restoration of natural habitats such as prairie and wetland? Or maybe some aspects of all three scenarios?
Winter is between us and the next growing season, so we have time to make our decision. In the meantime, the white oaks allow me to feel younger than my 66 years, even as the hills foster the opposite feeling. But I think the white oaks are winning. We’re here after all.
Related essays on The River Landing:
Chapter 23 in the book Side Channels: Eulogy for an Oak
An Illinois River Hill Prairie Fire
Julie's blog post about our moving experience: