The River Landing

The Fate of Trees

 

To endure in place what the environment can deliver until it can endure no longer, that is the fate of a tree left to its own devices.  Unless the ending is determined by a decision followed by a screaming chainsaw.  The older trees, wide in girth and well above 50 feet tall, are the ones that draw most of my attention; and there are many of these in Macomb, my adopted town of three years.  It takes a long time, comparable to an average human life span, to reach such a size (an obvious point, but one that cannot be stated often enough).  And that is why it is such a sad event when one of the old ones in town is pushed over by a wind storm, even sadder if it is cut, and especially lamentable when the loss is not replaced by a sapling, but becomes part of a mowed lawn.  

          During each of the years that I have lived in Macomb, quite a few large trees in my neighborhood have been lost.  The derecho of June 29^th—which charged across parts of Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana, with its 80- to 100-mile-per-hour straight-line winds—directly felled many, which blocked city streets and brought down power lines.  During the same storm, a much greater number of trees lost small branches, large limbs, or whole sections.  Some have remained as scarred veterans, but work crews would eventually take down the worst of the damaged ones.

          In a city, it’s understandable when large trees that pose a threat to buildings are either greatly trimmed to reduce the threat or removed completely without haste.  Ash trees have been targeted for complete removal because of infestations by the emerald ash borer, which eventually will kill any large ash.  It will not be long before Macomb will be completely free of ash trees.  Large elms have long ago been decimated by Dutch elm disease; but surprisingly, there are at least two healthy large individuals in my small neighborhood and maybe others elsewhere.

          Being oriented toward numbers, I sometimes wonder what my town will look like in so many years with the current rate of tree loss.  Within just one city block of my home, as far as I recall, ten medium- to large-sized trees were taken down in the last three years:  two sugar maples, two oaks, three ashes, one Bradford pear, one river birch, one honey locust.  Of these, nine were purposely felled.  How many of these have been replaced with a sapling?  None, as far as I can tell.  This, of course, says nothing about areas farther than one block from my home, and the rate of 3.3 trees lost per year may not continue.  But two ashes on my block are struggling with the ash borer and will soon be dead, at which point they will be completely removed and disposed of, probably next year.  And I have my eye on two nearby sugar maples with more dead branches than would seem healthy.

          As I travel around town on daily errands or for walks or bike rides, I look forward to seeing specific trees on my routes, like waving at an elderly friend relaxing on his front porch.  They give me a good feeling.  But I also see their problems and struggles:  the massive eastern cottonwood on the west side with  some of its large limbs hanging over a neighboring building; the white ash near the town center, with its base pushing against the sidewalk and curb; a pin oak that has long outgrown its small allotted space between the sidewalk and the street; the beech tree around the corner still free of beech bark disease, which is on its way to Illinois from the East; the eastern hemlock at Compton Park that always causes me to think of Michigan’s north woods and the hemlock woolly adelgid that has caused widespread death of hemlocks within the eastern states.

 

Pin oak growing over the curb, Macomb, Illinois.

 

          The old trees struggling with the effects of age are reminders that the fate of every living thing is to die.  It’s a message I can’t ignore, one that makes me appreciate them that much more and forces me to turn some of my attention toward the next generation.  I’m keeping track of three saplings (pawpaw, red mulberry, redbud) on my personal property that I hope to see some day as medium-sized trees, if the next three decades go well— but not much more beyond that even with a best-case scenario.  My three grandkids, though, have a better chance; they might even see those saplings become trees that reach a mature height.  That scene I see in the only way possible, within my mind’s eye.

 

Dead tree with a honeybee hive inside, Glenwood Park, Macomb, Illinois.

 

A few related posts on The River Landing:

The Last Old Oak

The Acorn Year

Eulogy for an Oak

 

 

Shelter on the Porch

“The …[sky] was angry that day my friends.”—George Costanza

 

It was one of those August days in central Illinois where, weather-wise, anything might happen, except possibly a snowstorm.  The recent heat wave seemed to be officially over, but there was lingering humidity with definite warmth still in the atmosphere that radiated a sort of unstable uneasiness.

          I sat on the edge of Quiver Lake, an Illinois River backwater, that was half mud flats because of low river levels, a normal August condition.  There were shorebirds out there on migration from the high Arctic, replenishing energy levels, resting, and preening—staging for the next big push southward.  I searched the birds for rarities, then gradually noticed the atmosphere toward the northwest, across the river valley, becoming a thicker bluish-gray.  It looked like it might rain, but I didn’t recall rain in the forecast.

 

Quiver Lake bottoms with mud flats, seeps, and open water.

 

          After a while, the gray clouds rather quickly changed to a darker shade, and far off in the distance, maybe five miles, rain fell in a curtain advancing in my direction.  The radar app on my smartphone showed a small, fast-moving system, denoted by red, barreling toward me from the northwest, and I calculated that it would be directly overhead in ten minutes or less.  So without haste, I grabbed my backpack of books, spotting scope, and binoculars, then climbed the bluff side to our cabin’s screened-in front porch.

          Within minutes, the storm abruptly hit in all its fury:  rain pouring from the sky and blasting in with the wind straight off the lake, lightning, thunder, twisting trees, falling leaves, twigs, and branches.  Quite a bit of water shot through the screens onto the carpet and some of the furniture.  I retreated further back from the spray and managed to stay dry, being in the storm and sheltered from it in the same instant.  But within a short time, the wind visibly lessened and the rain became a light dribble, more water falling from the trees than new rain from the sky.  And soon the sun was out again, then hidden again, then out again within the patchy sky. I walked out to the road to watch the isolated storm race eastward, away from the river valley and across the landscape, still dumping rain all the way.

 

The described storm on August 9, 2023, moving eastward.

 

          Steam rose from the road’s surface, adding to the air’s rising humidity, also giving off the unique odor of cool water dropped on warm pavement.  And I was transported back in time almost 60 years as I recalled the exact same smell rising from my Chicago neighborhood’s streets after a short, heavy rain when the sun again reclaimed the day.  We lived in a brick bungalow with a small front porch that was sheltered under the same roof as the rest of the house.  When a storm hit, I enjoyed being on the porch, but if the wind blew toward the house, the porch was no shelter at all.  In any case, I would eventually hear my Czech-born grandmother calling, “Tomáš, come in the house.”  But she would prevail only sometimes.

 

The author's childhood home on Chicago's west side, the mid-1960s.

 

*        *        *

In the city, with so many buildings and sometimes tall trees blocking distances, a storm could be on top of you without warning.  But at the cabin, along the shores of Quiver Lake, or out at the county road, you can see for miles unobstructed.  I once watched a slow-moving system drifting in from the west when everywhere else, the skies were clear.  I could see the rain falling straight down below the storm clouds; there was almost no wind and no lighting or thunder.  It was a friendly rainstorm, bringing needed water for plants struggling in the usual mid-summer drought, but only within its narrow pathway.  When the storm advanced over the lake, I began to see the moving front where raindrops made contact with the lake’s calm surface, and I sat on a log and watched until the rain began to fall around me.  For a moment, I thought, Why leave?  It’s summer after all.  What’s a little water?  If I were a kid, I might have stayed, but the adult in me said, Go back inside to the cabin.  (It’s not the first time I realized that kids can get away with so much more than adults as far as indulging in unusual behavior.)

          Many times I’ve been caught in the rain while hiking on a woodland trail, and I don’t recall ever being in a panic to seek shelter.  Water falling on trees, moistening the ground, flowing down ravine slopes; it’s all part of a vast cycle; and being within it seems like the most natural thing in the world.  Even with a hard rain and thunder.  As for the lightning, if a shelter is nearby, I might be better off following my grandmother’s cautious ways.         

Who Needs Privacy?

We could tell by the number of cars parked outside the Black Dog Bar and Grill that seating would be either limited or unavailable.  “Let’s go.  We’ll never get a booth, let alone a table,” said Julie.

        “We can’t really know unless we try,” I replied.  As we entered, I was immediately disheartened by the large number of people standing around with all of the booths occupied. 

        “Come on,” I said.  “There’s a table in back.”

        As we sat and waited for the waitress to bring menus, the door to the men’s room, about five feet away, flung wide open, providing an unobstructed view of the toilet and urinal.  How appetizing, I thought.  The man who had been in there then proceeded to wash his hands at a sink that was located within the dining area along the wall between the men’s and women’s restrooms.  After he was finished washing, he pulled a plastic lever several times on the overhead paper towel dispenser, dried his hands, and then walked away.

        “Well,” I said, “I guess we’ll know who doesn’t wash his hands.”

        “Gross.  Can we change the subject?”

        It would have been so easy for the owners to install a tall partition in front of the restroom area so the entire establishment would not get a full view each and every time the door opens.  And I knew it was just a matter of time before someone forgot to lock the door while inside taking care of business (it happens all the time).  The sound of the towel dispenser actually made me feel as if I were inside the restroom.  Sometimes I wonder:  Am I wrong?  Do other people notice these things?

        “Is it just me?”  I asked Julie.

        “Well, not really.  It’s a bad design.  But, yes, it’s partly you.”

        “Should I say something?”

        “No.”

 

The Black Dog experience reminded me of a summer writing workshop I attended two decades ago in Washington’s Cascade Mountains.  The workshop was held at a rustic off-season ski lodge with a warning that there would be no frills.  I slept five nights in a sleeping bag on the floor in a crowded dorm room.  Fine.  I’m tough.  Sleep on the floor?  No problem.  I was even prepared to eat on the floor and not complain.

        After checking in and claiming a sleeping area in a remote corner, the first thing I did was to satisfy my curiosity about the bathroom situation.  I wasn’t expecting much, but what I saw in the long, narrow room stopped me cold.  Near the doorway there were several sinks side by side; a single shower was at the far end; and in between the shower and sinks were four toilets in a row separated only by a couple feet of open space!  The shower at least had a curtain.  I imagined trying to use one of those toilets and all that that might involve along with other men brushing their teeth, drying off in the shower, shaving, and casually conversing.  “Anyone get the score on last night’s Yankee game?”

        The workshop included three excellent meals each day as part of the package.  And the chef was not simply a fry cook; he was a highly trained artisan who prepared a variety of unusual dishes with an international flair.  It was all so delicious; at every meal, served buffet style, I left the dining area like a giant swollen tick.  But after two days, with my lower abdominal region basically on strike, I began to wonder:  Where is all this food going? 

        All of it didn’t just dissipate into nothing.  The human intestine might be around 15 feet long, so it could store quite a bit of…uh…material.  But I knew at that moment, a reckoning would soon be upon me, like piles of driftwood building up beneath a bridge on a flooding river.  The river would win and take out the bridge at the same time.  And when it happened, I didn’t want to be three feet away from some guy brushing his teeth.     

        On the third day with no action below the equator, I took the matter into my own hands, traveled to a drugstore at a nearby town, and made a strategically timed visit to a gas station that I had scouted out earlier:  it had a single occupancy restroom with a locking door.  And thus unburdened, I was able to enjoy the rest of the workshop without a care.    

 

Those responsible for the ski lodge must not have thought anyone would have a problem with their restroom layout.  Or maybe they were laughing the whole time about their joke that would be a gift that would keep on giving.  But why be embarrassed about a natural body function that all animals for millions of years have dealt with every day of their lives?  Suddenly, one person (me) has an issue.

        Look at dogs:  they have no shame:  anywhere, anytime, and they’ll look you in the eye, maybe even dog-smiling, as they’re “doing it.”  Pure honesty and guilelessness on full display.  Dogs have many other admirable qualities, and who are we humans to think we are so superior with our pumped up egos and fancy restrooms?  In fact, maybe taking a hint from the dogs is not a bad move.  Mark Twain, a keen observer of humankind and dogs once said: “I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the "lower animals" (so called) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me.”

        I might have to think about this from time to time when I am in a philosophical mood.  The meaning of life, the extent of the universe…whatever.  But I would not want to take it too far.  Julie loves dogs.  But even she has her limits.

 

Big City Compassion

 

After scanning in my beer and bag of potato chips, the cashier at the local convenience store said, “That’ll be $9.97.  Would you like to round it up for a donation to the Children’s Cancer Fund?”

          I thought, Three cents?  That would be a pretty chintzy donation.  I can’t do that.   But the fact is, with high inflation and broken supply chains, I haven’t been feeling so generous in recent years. 

          “Not today,” I replied.  Although she never uttered a sound in response, I could almost hear her thoughts:  What a cheap son of a bitch.

          When she handed me the three cents in change, I grabbed my groceries and waited for the customary “Thank you.”  But after several uncomfortable seconds, her silence told me there would be no “Thank you,” no “Have a nice day.”  So I said, “Thanks,” and left.  Thanks? I asked myself.  For What?  Giving me my change?  Why did I thank her?  I never used to be such a sensitive person.  Could it be that a Post-Pandemic Stress Syndrome let this situation get to me, past my normally thick defensive walls?

           Those protective walls, with an added aura of detachment, are a survival strategy that I attribute to growing up in Chicago.  I’ve seen it in other folks from big cities; it’s what we use to fend off scam artists and other predators.  For example, on any trip to downtown, a person is likely to be approached at least once by someone asking for money:  “Can you loan me a dollar?”  When this happens, you don’t slow down, and you definitely do not stop or engage the person in conversation.  You simply keep walking, eyes facing forward.  A firm “No!” might be allowed, but you’re better off not saying anything.  Any hesitation will be viewed as weakness.  As the late Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of Defense, once said, “Weakness is provocative.”  Now, this may seem crass, but the alternative would be to “loan” out money willy-nilly with absolutely no hope of ever seeing it again. 

           How far should this attitude be taken?  I once saw a man crawling along the sidewalk during a typical busy downtown Chicago morning; over and over he shouted, “Help me, help, someone help!”  Every person who passed, and there were many, stepped around him and kept on walking, not even slackening their pace; and this made me wonder if he was a daily fixture in the neighborhood.  Maybe he was not really in dire need of assistance; maybe he was only waiting for a person soft-hearted enough to “lend” him money.  Eventually, that person would come along, and he knew it.  I once read an article about street people begging for money; in one example, the article told of a street person who actually lived in a nice suburban home; the “job” he commuted to every day was begging for money in the streets of downtown.  One must always be wary of scam artists, especially in a big city.  And so, you walk on, so does everyone else, and you’re an invisible, anonymous part of the compassionless crowd.

          Now, take that same person with the hard exterior shell out of Chicago and place him in a small town.  Suddenly, he doesn’t blend in as well.  Just one example may suffice.  Over fifteen years ago, my newly-wed wife Julie and I were walking from a parking area toward a venue to hear a lecture— on birds and nature, I believe—at a small Sangamon River town in central Illinois.  As we walked along, I could see further ahead at one of the building’s entrances that an old woman was lying on the ground near the door.  I quietly said to Julie, motioning with my hand, “Go around to the other door.”  Julie, who grew up in a small town, looked at me with shock and maybe a bit of derision, saying, “No, we have to help her!”  And she quickly left my side to help the old woman, who by now had two other folks about to help.  So the situation’s being taken care of, I thought.  But Julie proceeded onward, with me reluctantly following.  And wouldn’t you know it, Julie actually knew the woman!  Later I tried to explain how I had been conditioned in the big city to avoid scam artists who fake illnesses, and if you get involved with someone else’s accident, you’re opening up yourself to a lawsuit.  Yes, I’m a victim.  But Julie just responded by saying, “She wasn’t scamming anyone for money; she’s an old woman who fell and needed help!  They took her to Emergency at the hospital.”  I remember thinking at the time that it was a good thing we were married and not simply engaged to be married.

           Although I have been away from Chicago for over three decades, and I worry about softening, I believe at least the foundations of my social interaction skills have remained intact, despite occasionally questioning my own reactions to certain situations.  For instance, there was the time I witnessed a man’s car running out of gas in the center of a major intersection in Murphysboro in southern Illinois.  I stood observing the situation from inside a nearby corner gas station, about 200 feet from the stranded car, with a few people ahead of me in line.  The twenty-something driver, a Pillsbury Doughboy sort of man with baggy sweatpants, ran with two large empty gas containers to the pumps and then entered the station in a panic after seeing the long line of customers waiting to pay.  He begged and pleaded to be allowed to cut in line.  Of course, the cashier let him go ahead of everyone else.  No one complained.  I briefly wondered why he had two gas cans, where one, with just a bit of gas, would have been sufficient to get his car moving, at which point he could have then driven to a gas pump for more.  I began to think this man was a bit lacking in some common sense.

           After he paid for his fuel, he quickly ran for his car, struggling all the while with the obviously heavy containers of fuel, one in each hand.  It was at that point I noticed his sweatpants were quite a bit lower on his waist than when I first saw him.  And as he ran, just as I thought his pants might fall down, they did, indeed, give way to the earth’s gravitational pull:  to his ankles, entangling his feet, and abruptly and quickly tripping him up.  The gas containers went flying as he lurched forward, all the way to the ground, face forward.  I thought, Good thing he was wearing underwear.

           As I stood in line, the thought occurred to me that maybe I should have offered to help him carry the gas back to his car.  Since no one else in this small-town gas station offered help, on that point my conscious remained clear.  This man, I remember thinking at the time, was more than just unlucky; he probably had that kind of thing happen to him all the time (maybe minus the pants falling down), going through life, as he was, without much common sense.  I simply could not feel sorry for him, even if he was Jesus in disguise.  And if I had helped him, I would have lost my place in line.  And for what?  To be his enabler, so he would never learn common sense.  But at least I became undetached enough to think about helping. 

           Maybe on my next visit to a convenience store, I’ll donate three cents to whatever charity they’re promoting.  No, let’s round it up to a nickel.

 

When to Give Up: Chronicle of a Cormorant Colony

 

“…there’s no success like failure, and…failure’s no success at all”—from the song Love Minus Zero/No Limit by Bob Dylan

 

On a mid-April visit to our cabin at Quiver Lake, near Chautauqua National Wildlife Refuge, I was looking for signs of the advancing season, such as flowering plants and bird sightings.  Then, over the brisk winds blowing off the lake, there came, from the flooded black willow forest across the lake, the unmistakable guttural sounds of double-crested cormorants.  They were re-establishing their nesting colony of the previous year, which had failed for unknown reasons by early May; they simply left, all of the nests abandoned.

      This year I vowed to keep better track of the situation.  I was not sure when the colony became active again, but it was definitely not active two weeks before this recent cabin visit.  So, with eight weeks or more for egg incubation and time to fledge, I was expecting to see and hear a lot of cormorant activity this year.  When conditions were right, I would canoe over to the colony for a closer look.

      But by my next visit on May 4^th, the cormorants had already abandoned the colony!  I kept hoping that I was wrong and that they were all out foraging for fish, but if that were the case, I should have seen cormorants coming and going.  During the intervening days since the last cabin visit, the Illinois River had dropped quite a bit, and since the river is connected to Quiver Lake, the lake level had also fallen.  I wondered if the dry ground under the colony had given predators, such as raccoons, easy access to the nests.  Was that the reason the cormorants abandoned their colony?  I wanted to take a closer look, but time and opportunity did not converge until twelve days later.

 

***

Cottonwood seeds floated in the air like a light snow flurry and this year’s crop of silver maple seedlings grew well during the longer days of mid-May, in some areas forming lines parallel to the lakeshore, marking a previous high-water level.  The river itself had probably already hit its peak spring flood, and would be slowly falling toward its normal summer low period, but that would only be an average expectation; another big flood would not really be surprising.

      At the lake’s shoreline, I was surrounded by vigorous bird songs and calls from house wrens, warbling vireos, Carolina wrens, Baltimore orioles, rose-breasted grosbeaks, and bobwhite quail.  Yellow-billed cuckoos had already arrived, which for me signaled the end of the spring migration, but there were still some Tennessee warblers passing through on their way to the boreal forests of Canada.  Buffalo gnats were becoming annoying—as they always are in May—but to endure them, I reminded myself of the fact that insects of all kinds are the protein source needed to grow healthy nestlings that must be ready to fly before too long.  All of these environmental cues together formed the backdrop to the advancing bird breeding season, and I imagined those cues to be a strong reinforcement of the drive to reproduce.  And yet, the cormorants abandoned their colony.  I launched my canoe with little delay, and in the time it took for only a few strokes of the paddle, I was on the far side of the lake, heading for the failed cormorant colony.

      It was almost like a dystopian scene, with all of the abandoned nests in surrounding trees appearing newly rehabilitated but completely unused.  An active colony would be chaotic, with tree branches and leaves covered in bird droppings and messes.  It seemed like such a waste, after going through all of the trouble to migrate to Illinois and then assemble at this particular location, to engage in numerous flights back and forth to gather so much nesting material of twigs and larger sticks, and then, somehow collectively to make the decision to give up and leave.  How would they even communicate such a decision throughout the colony?  I can imagine some individual birds giving up and moving on for whatever reason, and some birds staying, but for all of them to leave, there must have been a compelling reason.

 

Abandoned double-crested cormorant colony at Quiver Lake, 16 May 2023

 

      Was it, in fact, predation?  Or could they have been somehow harassed into leaving?  In some circles, the fish-eating double-crested cormorant is not a popular bird.  It’s curious that the colony was abandoned two years in a row.  And a similar sequence of events happened in 2019:  There was an active cormorant colony by the third week of April, and it was abandoned sometime between then and the middle of May.  Before that, since 2011 when we acquired our cabin, either there was not a colony at Quiver Lake bottoms or I never noticed one if it was there.

      In the end, double-crested cormorant colonies will succeed somewhere and fail elsewhere, maybe more failures than successes.  Otherwise, the population might grow exponentially to the point where we would have so many cormorants (individuals live for six years on average), a population crash— related to an increase in diseases and overexploitation of habitat and food resources—would be inevitable.  Their reproductive drive accounts for failure.  That’s why each pair usually raises three or four young each year, sometimes with two broods.  As another example:  Why does a cottonwood tree produce so many seeds, when most of them never germinate?  How many years must go by before even one makes it into a tree?  What would the landscape look like if all of the seeds each year grew into trees?  At any rate, it seems that the Quiver Lake cormorant colony might be due for success.  For this year, though, they’ve apparently run out of time.

 

References

Dorr, B.S., K.L. Sullivan, P.D. Curtis, R.B. Chipman, and R.D. McCullough.  2016.  Double-crested cormorants.  Wildlife Damage Management Technical Series.  U.S. Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Wildlife Services.

Kleen, V.M., L. Cordle, and R.A. Montgomery.  2004.  The Illinois breeding bird atlas.  Illinois Natural History Survey Special Publication No. 26.  xviii + 459 pp.

From a Mississippi River Island

“Shiftin' lands, broken farms around me, muddy water's changin' all I know”—from the song Muddy Waters by Phil Rosenthal

 

Under billowing clouds imperceptibly changing shape in the rising warm air, the Mississippi River gently flowed past Credit Island.  I stood on the river bank looking toward Illinois and the mouth of the Rock River.  Over the millennia, so much life and history had passed this way with the river’s flow.  Though little was revealed by a casual glance, I knew there was much more here than a scenic view.

            Credit Island, now part of the Davenport park system, just happens to be a place where detailed history has been recorded or reconstructed:  an early trading post where credit was offered to Native Americans to provide animal hides; site of a War of 1812 battle that involved the future president Zachery Taylor and the Sauk Chief Blackhawk; part natural area and part recreational retreat for city dwellers for over a century.  And yet, I thought, what about times or places where events may not have been significant enough to be recorded?  Or where there were no witnesses to see a flood, tornado, or wildfire.  Or, over deep time, as a river island gradually erodes away, with new islands forming, and the river changes course.

 

Credit Island on the Mississippi River opposite the Rock River Confluence.

 

            Some clues to the past remain.  But how does one link an old, rusted square nail, still embedded within a weathered fragment of ancient lumber, to an actual event?  Was that nail part of a shanty boat that sank or a pier taken out in a flood long ago?  What of an old whisky bottle, out of sight for decades before erosion brought it once again to the light of day?  Was there a drunken brawl late one evening along the riverbank?  Did someone throw the bottle overboard from a steamboat bound for New Orleans?  There could still be stories left to be told, but they likely have already been lost, or could still remain hidden memories for a time in an anonymous mind, inevitably to dissipate into the infinity of time.

            Within piles of natural woody debris that gather along the river bottoms, there are more hidden links to real events, if only those links could be followed; each piece with its unique history; untraceable; the result of storms that felled trees, ripped branches, or created floods of such magnitude that bottomland forests died by summer’s end, their remnants gradually carried away over the years.  Logs, branches, twigs, bark, leaves, and seeds eventually rotting to nothing or becoming smoothed over and pulverized into ever smaller sizes from scraping and moving about with the current and waves; and as a river flood recedes, some of this is left behind as a kind of “river mulch” in a layer over the ground, almost like a narrow carpet parallel to the river bank marking the high water level.

 

                                River mulch.

            The island itself, though, has its own story, that of originally being scraped from bedrock, grain by grain, carried across the land embedded within a continental-sized glacier more than ten thousand years ago, then drained away within torrential meltwaters as the climate warmed and the glaciers melted, finally deposited here and there within the river’s floodplain.  The Mississippi and Rock River valleys were two such drainage ways, transporting floods of glacial meltwaters, carrying various loads of clay, silt, sand, and gravel, all set down at different times and locations as the current slowed.  At some point, vegetation was able to anchor some of the shapeless alluvium into an island.

            Standing on the river bank, I could not help being drawn to the Rock River; I kept pivoting in that direction, no matter what else was happening.  And so, I gave in to the pull, and in my mind’s eye, left the Island, crossed the Mississippi, and followed the Rock River through north-central Illinois and further north to its headwaters in Wisconsin beyond the great Horicon Marsh, a gathering place each fall for thousands upon thousands of sandhill cranes, Canada geese, and other water birds.  Several times in my life I have watched this wildlife spectacle, each time marveling how so many large birds in flight never collide; they never even seem to come close. 

            The Rock holds many of my special memories, all coming to the foreground simply from gazing toward the river’s mouth.  I imagined a young man zooming along on his first long motorcycle trip over forty years ago, exiting the Illinois Tollway at Dixon, following the Rock River highway to the small town of Oregon and beyond: a big city kid, frustrated with crowds and city congestion, completely taken by the charming small river towns, making a mental note to return one day.

            As I began to move along the island’s shoreline, my attention was once again drawn downward, to comb the sand for artifacts—perhaps from the old battle—or ancient potsherds or items carved from rock (anchor stones, arrowheads, grinding stones), left behind from vanished cultures who built mounds to their honored dead and effigies of spirit creatures.  Alas, I found nothing, but also knew that if I had stumbled upon something, it would have to be left in place, forever to be a part of Credit Island’s history.

            Yet even a mountain erodes away given enough eons.  Forever is a long time; however great a span one might imagine, forever is longer.  So the river and patience will wear it all away.  Credit Island will not last forever. 

            For now, we can still find bits and pieces of the past, put them together to construct plausible scenarios, and then carefully surmise the rest; we have our stories in this way, and we let them become as real as our thoughts.  As far as Credit Island, how different a visit would be without archaeologist Christopher Espenshade’s words hovering around:  “At first light on September 5, a number of Native Americans had waded to Pelican Island from Credit Island, and an American sentry was shot and killed. The Americans disembarked a force and cleared the Native Americans from Pelican Island. At about this same time, the few British with a 3-pounder and two swivel guns abandoned their position watching the Rock Island rapids, and moved downstream to the western bank of the Mississippi….”

 

References

Espenshade , C.T.  2013.  Archaeological/historical research and military terrain analysis of the Credit Island Battlefield (War of 1812), Iowa and Illinois.  Prepared for City of Davenport, Iowa and American Battlefield Protection Program, Washington, D.C., Grant GA-2287-12-002.  Prepared by Commonwealth Cultural Resources Group, Inc. 2530 Spring Arbor Road, Jackson, Michigan 49203-3602. 

Killey, M.M.  1998.  Illinois’ ice age legacy.  Geoscience education series 14.  Illinois State Geological Survey, Champaign, Illinois. 

Theler, J.L. and R.F. Boszhardt.  2003.  Twelve millennia:  archaeology of the upper Mississippi River Valley.  University of Iowa Press, Iowa City.

Wikipedia.  Credit Island.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_Island.  Referenced on September 8, 2021.

 

Serious Business

It was a classic mid-winter morning, with a dull, light grayness reflecting off the cloudy sky and the neighborhood scene unenthusiastic in its muted colors.  Though last night’s dusting of snow had already melted on the streets, most of it held on tightly to the dormant lawns.  With temperatures barely above freezing, the damp air seemed much colder, capable of snuffing out a fire, easily dissipating a body’s life.  But I had already spent too much time in the house this winter.  So, to see truly what the world had to offer, I ventured out.

          Soon a train’s whistle loudly rang out from the north part of town, and in my mind’s eye, I could see its massive engines pulling a string of graffiti-covered cars past Macomb’s downtown depot and Forgottonia Brewing.  A semi-truck along East Jackson Street roared and grunted its complaints as its driver shifted through the gears.  Distant crows called and a momentary Carolina wren’s song caught my attention.  What was it doing, singing on such a day?  But after walking a block to Killjordan Creek and Macomb’s Compton Park, a chill remained, with any new internal warmth quickly lost to the wind.  There were few hikers and dog walkers on this particular morning, and I liked it better that way.  Still, I picked up the pace, even as I wished to linger.

          At the far end of the park, I crossed the creek at South Pearl Street, and, much too soon, began heading toward home.  But here I took special notice of the creek’s natural meanders, with repeating patterns of curved collapsing banks opposite areas of alluvial deposition, which park managers attempt to limit—this inevitable tendency of all flowing waters.  But this is what I look for on my walks:  the unmanaged, natural processes, behaviors, and interactions, even the smallest examples.

 

 Killjordan Creek at Compton Park, Macomb, Illinois.

 

          At a private birdfeeder near the park, I saw a black-capped chickadee cautiously dart in on a flash, grab a seed, and then quickly fly off to shelter within a neatly trimmed ornamental shrub.  All in seconds.  They are fast and wary.  The feeder and seeds were, of course, provided by the homeowner; but as a species, the chickadee’s essential behaviors are innate, successfully honed over the millennia by trial and error—even, but especially, the wariness.  For the survivors, that is.

          As my block came within sight, a quick movement caught my eye:  a Cooper’s hawk, predator of birds, landing on a lower branch of a pin oak tree.  And then I noticed all other birds were scarce, keeping a low profile, quiet.  A few days before, this very hawk, most likely, aggressively pursued and caught a dark-eyed junco that sought refuge in our backyard quince bush…next to the birdfeeder.  The hawk kept grabbing into the bush with its powerful talons.  Then, a slightly misjudged countermovement, and the junco was no more.

          Serious business in the neighborhood.  Parents driving their kids to school and special events, bringing them back home; folks going to work and back, on shopping trips to the grocery store; the regular house-to-house mail delivery; a UPS truck, a FedEx truck; garbage collection every Thursday; clearing snow from roads, driveways, and sidewalks; walkers with their dogs; a chattering fox squirrel as I walk past; keeping bird feeders filled.  The routines of everyday living.

 

Birding for the Crested Caracara and Reexamining Priorities

 

Immediately after the car’s engine started, The Eels’ song “I Like Birds” came over the stereo.  This is one of the signature songs from my favorite movie, The Big Year.  My wife Julie and I were off on a quest:  to find a bird called the crested caracara that had recently been seen (February 10, 2023) at the Emiquon National Wildlife Refuge, about an hour east of our home.

        Julie recognized the song from the movie that we had seen at least five times over the last couple of years.   She smiled and asked, “Did you purposely put on this song?” 

        “Well, yeah, it seemed appropriate.  We’re kind of doing a Bostick-like thing today.” 

        Kenny Bostick is one of the main characters in The Big Year.  He gives up nearly everything in his life, including his marriage, in a competition with other serious birders to see who can find the highest number of bird species within a calendar year.  In order to accomplish this goal, he has to chase after rarities all over the U.S., especially when a rarity is reported by other birders on rare bird hotlines.  If he wasn’t just a movie character, Bostick would be traveling to the Emiquon Refuge to seek out the crested caracara, a large falcon that is typically found in the U.S. only in parts of Texas, Florida, the Gulf Coast, and far southern Arizona.  Seeing one in Illinois is a big deal, a sighting not likely to happen again for a long time.

        On our way to the Emiquon area, we saw thousands upon thousands of snow geese all over the skies of Fulton County.  And just east of Table Grove, an entire farm field of corn stubble was covered by a dense flock of snow geese that extended for what seemed like a half mile and that came almost right up to the highway.

        “You know, if we stopped to take a picture, they would all fly,” said Julie.  She knew what I was thinking.

        “Yeah, they’re very jittery.  Just about anything can make them all take flight at once, screaming their heads off the whole time.  And then they’ll circle around several times in a giant cloud, and all come back down to the same place where they started out from.  It seems to me that they waste a lot of energy.  So what does that say about 'optimal foraging theory?'”  Julie just looked at me, about to roll her eyes, as I struggled against entering “lecture mode.”

        As we passed through Lewistown, I tried to drive slower and pay more attention to any large birds in flight or perching in treetops.  We were close to the Illinois River valley and the Emiquon Refuge and Nature Preserve.  I was fairly confident of seeing the caracara when we started out on our trip, but as I witnessed the vastness of the river valley before me, I knew that we were looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.

        “This place is so big,” I said.  “Where should we look first?  I know, look for the birders.  When you see a big group of them, you’ll be able to tell by their behavior if they’ve found the caracara.  If they’re all intensely looking in the same direction through spotting scopes, they’ve got something good; if they’re all standing around talking, with each birder looking in a different direction, they haven’t found it.”

        “Or we can just ask,” replied Julie. 

        “Yeah, well…we could do that too.”

        Then we saw several cars parked along a gravel lane not far from the main highway.  “Look! Birders!” I nearly shouted.  “I’ll drive past them, and all you have to do is roll down your window, look them straight in the eyes, and say ‘crested caracara’ like it’s a secret password.  But realize, in any other context, you would look like a lunatic.”  To our disappointment, though, none of the birders had yet seen the caracara.  But the previous day, it was sighted in that exact spot, which is why the birders were gathered there.  So we drove onward, thinking that we had as much chance of seeing the bird there as anywhere.

        Further away on another gravel road, a car came toward us from the opposite direction.  I slowed to a crawl, opened the window, and made a sign for the other car to stop, which it obligingly did.  And I simply said, “caracara?”  The driver kind of smirked, but said “no” in a suspicious sort of way, as if he actually had seen the bird but did not wish to reveal that fact, keeping the information to himself so that he and only he could count the bird, and thereby beat out his birding competitors by one species on the 2023 list of elite Illinois birders.  But no, that’s crazy talk, I thought.  Or was it?

        At the Emiquon Nature Preserve observatory, a quite friendly, talkative older woman approached us while walking her three highly energetic, unleashed dogs.  I felt relief that she wasn’t angry, as one of her pets had just barely escaped being run over by my car. 

        “What’re you all lookin’ for?” she asked.

        “A crested caracara,” I curtly answered while adjusting my spotting scope.  “A crusted…what?  Wait, I’ll look it up on my phone,” she replied.

        “No, it’s crested, crested caracara,” said Julie.  “It’s rare around here.” 

        “Oh,” she replied. And then we heard quite a few details about her personal life and religious interests before she and the dogs went happily on their way.

        After that encounter, we drove around a bit more within the Emiquon area on the gravel backroads and on the state highway that sits on top of a narrow levee with no shoulder to speak of:  a very dangerous situation for birders who are prone to stop with no warning if they see a bird with even the slightest possibility of it being a rarity.  And I began to realize that we probably would not see the caracara.

        “You know,” I sadly said, “yesterday was really the day for seeing this bird.  Birders came from Chicago, and they saw it, according to the internet birding hotlines.” 

        Julie gave me a rather strange look.

        “I’m not making this up!  They’re the hotshot birders, though; they always see the rarities.  I guess we shouldn’t have waited, but I had to take my 96-year-old mother to the cardiologist!  You know, she does have an aortic aneurysm that’s about to explode.”

        Julie turned to face me and raised her eyebrows.

        “Still,” I continued, “I’ll bet we would have seen the bird if I had canceled her doctor’s appointment.  Next time…well, never mind.”  And we headed to Havana, across the Illinois River, for lunch.

 

Into the Wind

The essay Into the Wind appears in Shark Reef:  A Literary Magazine (Issue 41 Winter 2023) (click on the link).  It is a narrative about certain unusual life experiences with wind and relating those times to a recent move from rural surroundings in Mason County, Illinois, to the university town of Macomb, Illinois.  

We left our country home in good hands, as this video (click on this link) by the new owner demonstrates.

 

A tornado moving along the Illinois River valley on Dec. 1, 2018.

 

Windy day at Lake Michigan, Warren Dunes, Michigan.

  

With the Wind at My Back

 

If the wind is at your back and you never turn around
You may never know the wind is there
You may never hear the sound—from the song Ignorance and Privilege by John Gorka

Hey Woody Guthrie, where are you?  The big dogs are back at the door—from the song Woody Guthrie by Vince Herman (Leftover Salmon)

 

For more than a week, the Illinois River’s depth had been gradually falling toward its usual late summer low-water levels.  But in the last few days, it had risen somewhat, and so I took out the canoe across Quiver Lake to the river for what might have been my last chance for a while, before the lake would become unnavigable as a mosaic of shallow water and mud flats.  The weather was clear and warm, and with light early morning breezes, the trip out was easy.  Later in the day, winds would blow stronger.

          Where Quiver Lake connects with the river, I waited for a towboat-barge to pass, took a photograph with my smartphone, and posted it on Facebook.  The towboat’s wake could be dangerous; usually, though, the waves are not a cause for panic in a canoeist, only something to pay attention to.  High in the sky over the river, a large flock of American white pelicans soared in a tight, slowly winding and rising column, reminding me of the DNA molecule’s double helix; sometimes bald eagles and hawks join the pelicans.  But before I could get a better look, the canoe started bouncing in the towboat’s waves, and I realized it was time to get serious about crossing the river.

 

An Illinois River scene near the entrance to Quiver Lake, Mason County, Illinois.

 

          On the river’s opposite muddy bank, I beached the canoe and then pulled it onto higher ground, well out of range of any huge swells that would be created by a v-bottomed yacht, should one pass by.  Nearby was a large silver maple tree that leaned at about the same angle as my living room chair; so, here in the shade I placed two PFDs (personal floatation devices) from the canoe as a back rest.  And with my day campsite completed, I settled in for reading, journaling, observing life along the river, and, after a while, lunch.

          Birds were noticeably less vocal than they had been only a few weeks earlier, but just as I made a mental note of that fact, a Bell’s vireo sounded off from a thicket of willows and swamp privet only a few feet away; then I immediately saw the bird in clear view, even without binoculars.  And I thought that only a fellow birdwatcher would appreciate how unusual this easy sighting was, the Bell’s vireo being notoriously difficult to locate in its preferred thick, shrubby habitats, even while its song tauntingly rings out, almost like mocking the observer. 

          I have no idea what other birders might reflect upon at such times.  But my thoughts usually include recognition of how fortunate I have been to be able to do such things purely for my own pleasure and how life’s circumstances have led me to such a moment.

          If certain decisions had not been made years before I was born, my situation today could easily have been quite different—if, in fact, I would have existed at all.  What if my maternal grandparents had chosen not to leave Czechoslovakia in the early 1920s for America?  During the military occupation of that country during World War II, Nazis guards threw my grandfather’s brother, Jarda Zelizko, to his death from a speeding train.  Would my grandfather have had a similar fate if he had stayed?  Or maybe a version of me would have lived in Czechoslovakia or Poland under communist domination and oppression for decades until the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s.  I don’t imagine canoeing and birding would have been encouraged during those times. 

          In 1945, the man who would become my father was in the U.S. Navy on his way to the invasion of Imperial Japan, when the atomic bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima effectively ended the war, saving him from whatever fate might have awaited.  A few years later, in Chicago, he met the woman who would become my mother, and a few years after that, I came into this world—1957, the same year, in fact, that the Soviets successfully launched Sputnik I, the first artificial satellite, which further intensified the Cold War and set off the Space Race, rapidly increasing the pace of new developments in rocket and computer technology as well as their military applications.

          I remember in the 1980s, the scientist Carl Sagan musing about why we have not detected or been contacted by an advanced extraterrestrial civilization.  Maybe, he thought, we’re alone in the Universe.  On the other hand, he suggested it could be that many such civilizations get started, but none make it very far beyond the point of discovering how to harness the power in the atom:  they all soon blow themselves up in massive nuclear wars.  So far, we’ve survived only seventy-seven years with nuclear weapons; there have already been several close calls; and the world seems never to have a shortage of new tyrants just waiting to seize power, who would like nothing better than to acquire those same weapons of mass destruction.  In many ways, the world is more dangerous than ever before.  And the big dogs, never really vanquished, are, indeed, back at our door.

 

At this point, it may seem that the stream of consciousness beginning with a Bell’s vireo on a mid-summer canoe trip has meandered a long way off from that observation, but I think the distance is not at all far.  I am not ignorant of history, of why I am here and others are not; and I see no reason to feel guilty because of possessing that knowledge, that awareness of being privileged and where it came from.  Being aware of it is highly important; and thinking about it for a time is sufficient acknowledgement in my view, and that is why I do it.  And yet, others may feel the need to do something more, like raise awareness or give back somehow (usually with money), and that is fine.

         For my part, by the time I was ready to leave my comfortable shade tree for the river, the wind had picked up considerably, just as the forecast had predicted.  And it blew from the northwest, just as predicted, while I would be paddling to the southeast and then eastward back to my small cabin on the bluffs overlooking Quiver Lake.  A stiff wind would be at my back most of the way, making it an easy float trip, while still remaining alert to any sudden wind shifts or unpredictable gusts.

 

Return to a Hill Prairie

“When greenery goes out of the landscape in autumn, a haze of bright, ruddy color lies over most of the hills on the east side of the river…and over remnants of prairie which have resisted the plow.”—from the book River World by Virginia S. Eifert, 1959

 

Attorney and writer Edgar Lee Masters’ (1868-1950) relates in his book, The Sangamon, published in 1942, that when his grandmother first looked northward toward the Mason County Hills in the late 1840s, she was saddened.  This central Illinois landscape was wild and uncultivated, and she wanted to see a settled land with farmsteads, accented here and there with well-kept homes.  The hill prairies on high bluffs over the Sangamon River valley also might have conjured up visions of a not so distant past when the land was occupied by a native race of people, a culture alien to her that embraced those same hills as home and as a source of sustenance.  That same location today, though, might have her smile, as the land has become dominated by intensive row-crop agriculture, exuding prosperity; but she may also wonder why those hill prairies are still there.

 

 

          In The Sangamon, Masters often writes of Illinois’ prairies as expansive landscape features; he even writes a poem about prairies, but fails even once to explicitly mention the comparatively small hill prairies which his grandmother as well as he would have witnessed on the steep Sangamon River bluffs.  It would be 1955 before the state of Illinois would publish Robert A. Evers’ landmark study, Hill Prairies of Illinois.  So to be fair, probably not too many people were thinking about such things with the Great Depression tenaciously holding on while another world war seemed inevitable.  As far as The Sangamon is concerned, apparently more impressive to Masters than the hill prairies were certain eccentric personalities of the locality, who now seem to be of little consequence other than adding a bit of color to his narrative; and yet, he devotes considerable space in the book to such individuals.  But today, as one looks toward the Sangamon River bluffs, those hill prairies are the only original prairies left in view; it would be difficult not to notice them, even for a person uninterested in such things.

 

The Sangamon River, bottomlands, and distant Revis

Hill Prairie Nature Preserve on the Mason County Hills,2012.  

 

Just over three decades ago, I first visited Revis Hill Prairie Nature Preserve (422.8 acres), north of where Salt Creek enters the Sangamon River.  There were no trails that I could see, and maps were not offered; so I pushed through the brush at the prairie’s edge and began a steep 200-foot climb along a narrow ridge of prairie, with woods on either side, to the top of the bluff.  Here I found a place to sit and lean against the hillside, on what could only be referred to as a natural sofa, looking out upon the prairie ridges, surrounding forests, flatlands of the river bottoms, and southward toward the uplands of Menard County with modern no-nonsense farms.  These prairies, I thought, had been there for a long time, an original landscape that existed from well into the deep past. The thought held my attention; I felt as if I had stepped out of a time machine, and I looked closely around me at the loess soil, little bluestem, side oats grama, big bluestem, indiangrass, lead plant, and more.  A gentle breeze blew from the south, enabling turkey vultures and red-tailed hawks to soar on updrafts overhead, but sometimes at eye level.  With the wind blowing through nearby oak trees, the only sound I heard was rustling leaves, the nearest highway being far removed from this preserve in a remote part of a remote county.  I would return here many times over the next three decades, but that first visit will always stand out from the rest.

 

Revis Hill Prairie Nature Preserve, early 1990s.

 

Loess ridge at Revis Hill Prairie, early 1990s.

 

        For someone who grew up within the old neighborhoods of Chicago and Cicero—with its paved streets, concrete sidewalks, sewer systems, mowed front lawns, and blocks of bungalows, each small house separated from the next by only a few feet—a mindset was ingrained in me early on that most of what surrounded me had been put there by someone, designed and managed to look and function a certain way.  That may be why at an early age I was already drawn to what I perceived as unmanaged landscapes such as the Chicago area’s forest preserves, especially those along the Des Plaines River.  After being free in the forest preserves for an afternoon, returning to the rectangular blocks and sidewalks of our city neighborhood felt like being put into a cage.  That feeling is still with me every day, and I know that it is one of the reasons why I am still drawn to natural areas, particularly those within the Illinois Nature Preserve System.

        At some point, though, I became aware that natural areas had to be managed to maintain their characteristics, which, in a way, suggests a contradiction in terms.  Of course, there are many issues that require this to be necessary, including but not limited to invasive plants that can quickly overrun even a supposedly pristine area, successional changes in plant communities that evolved with frequent fire, decline of species due to habitat fragmentation, and species populations falling below some minimum viable size.  When I began working for the Illinois Nature Preserves Commission several years after my first visit to Revis Hill Prairie, I had long been aware that my precious natural areas were not unmanaged as I had once thought, but actually were among some of the most managed lands in the state, with activities such as prescribed fires, brush and tree removal from prairies and savannas, seed collection and distribution, herbicide treatment of invasive plants, and, in some cases, reintroductions of rare plants and animals.  Being actively involved in these activities on a professional level permanently altered the way I would view a natural area; and that became clear to me one day as I realized that instead of closely looking at a tree to admire its beauties in shape, color, and texture, I would be thinking of the best way to drop it safely using a chain saw—where to place the initial cut, how the tree was naturally leaning, and how it would fall and on what.

        Management at every natural area, though, seems to be always running behind the needs; at the same time, it is also important to monitor the effects of management or lack thereof.  Part of the monitoring process is simply to visit a preserve for a close look with a critical eye.  Was the natural area beginning to look the way it was originally envisioned when it was entered into the system?  Were we making progress or falling behind?  Were there any new challenges?  Eventually, even when visiting a preserve on my own time, purely for pleasure, I found it difficult not to make mental lists of issues that needed attention.  There were always issues, even at the best sites.  But even so, I always took a few moments to reflect upon the meaning behind these protected natural areas and to recall why it was that I was initially drawn to them.  If I had ever lost sight of that, then my tasks would have become routine and mechanical, like a musician merely playing the correct notes, but not feeling the music.

 

                                        *      *     *

This past September, I took advantage of an opportunity to visit Revis Hill Prairie with the Friends of Illinois Nature Preserves, a new group formed to help with the management of nature preserves, especially using volunteers.  It was my first visit to Revis since just after my retirement over four years before, and I was curious to see how the site had fared over the interim.  There were several folks from the Friends group on the field trip and also a few former colleagues.  We climbed the bluffs so well known to me and then gathered to discuss familiar management issues and the challenges of applying consistent follow-up.  As in past times, it’s still a matter of how to accomplish what everyone knows is necessary to preserve a natural area.  I listened closely, but said little, interested more in what others, especially the new folks, had to say.

Revis Hill Prairie Nature Preserve, 26 October 2022, looking

back toward the direction of the previous 1990s photograph. 

 

        A lot has happened since my first visit to Revis Hill Prairie, illustrating just how long a time it has been:  Thirty years ago, Seinfeld was a new program on network television, the Internet was not yet available to the public, George H.W. Bush was still struggling through the final years of what would be his only term as president, the Soviet Union was collapsing, the 911 terrorist attack was still a decade away and now is over two decades behind, and few spoke of the possibility of a deadly pandemic capable of touching every corner of our modern world.  And I now have the benefit of the type of long-term perspective that only an older person can truly possess, appreciate, and learn from.  Even three decades, though, is nothing compared to how long those prairies on the Mason County Hills have existed.  I have a good feeling about them.  For as Masters once wrote:

        To contemplate the prairie is

        To fathom time, to guess at infinite space,

        To find the Earth-spirit in a dreaming mood.

 

References

Evers. Robert A.  1955.  Hill Prairies of Illinois.  Illinois Natural History Survey Bulletin, Volume 26, Article 5.

Masters, Edgar Lee.  1988.  The Sangamon.  University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago.

Prairie State Conservation Coalition.  I-View (arcgis.com) accessed 11 October 2022.

 

Related Posts on The River Landing

Sand Prairie-Scrub Oak Nature Preserve:  A 30-year Perspective on Meanings and Change

Change and Comfort in Nature

Hill Prairie Photo Gallery

Protecting Hopewell Hill Prairies, Marshall County, Illinois

An Illinois River Hill Prairie Fire

 

 

Four Decades of Mark Twain and His River

 “The Mississippi River will always have its own way; no engineering skill can persuade it to do otherwise”—Mark Twain

“There was a time when my heart was free to wander.”—from The Hobo Song by John Prine

 

During the middle 1980s, while employed at a small college, I shared an office with a man named Bill Andrey.  We both had full teaching loads, but we rarely talked about our work.  Bill liked to reminisce about his life, which included a tour of duty in the Philippines during World War II, and discuss current events, sociology, politics, and literature.  Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) was one of his favorite authors.  When I mentioned to Bill that I had never read a book by Twain, he replied that my education was incomplete; and then he proceeded to tell me all that he knew about this individual.

 

 

        Up until that point in time, I had never thought about Mark Twain.  My only familiarity with him was from two old movies that I had seen as a child:  Tom Sawyer and The Prince and the Pauper.   Bill, though, enlightened me, and spoke of Twain’s extensive world traveling and the many jobs that he had tried before becoming a successful author, which included printer, riverboat pilot, silver miner, miller, and newspaper reporter.  Bill, who had been a devoted, domesticated family man for many decades, spoke with envy of Mark Twain’s life, which I interpreted as a regret that his life had never been and would never be as adventuresome.   He then pointed to a picture of Mark Twain on his bulletin board with a quote that read, “I never let my schooling interfere with my education.”  I was intrigued with this unconventional character, and I told Bill that I would look up Mark Twain the next time I was in a book store.  At the same time, being only in my late twenties, with a strong wanderlust daily pulling at me, hearing of Twain’s adventures made me feel as if I should have been doing a lot more with my life, such as going somewhere far away, taking chances, having those exciting experiences that I would one day want to look back upon and perhaps write about.  Maybe, I thought, Mark Twain was just what I needed.

        The Autobiography of Mark Twain (Charles Neider, editor) seemed a good place to start.  Here, I expected to read about all of his adventures, especially when he was a young man, before he became prosperous, married, and settled as a parent.  But I soon discovered that The Autobiography is not organized as a strictly chronological narrative; it is like a series of recollections, opinions, and observations, not always put into context, but presented in a stream-of-consciousness sort of way.  This made it difficult to trace a coherent path through the man’s life.  Also, Twain often simply refers to his adventures by pointing the reader toward his other books rather than re-telling stories.  So for a reader unfamiliar with the author’s life or books, The Autobiography leaves one with many gaps, questions, and some confusion about the order of events in his life.  Most of it was written while he was in his late sixties and early seventies with an old man’s perspective, which made it difficult for me to relate to.  I was young, and I wanted to look forward to my future and be inspired by adventure, not be drawn toward despair as if my life was about over.  Even so, Twain’s humor and unique talent at telling a story are quite intact throughout the book, and those were the qualities that kept me interested in pursuing more of his writings.

 

 

        Over the next couple of decades, I gradually read most of Twain’s major and minor works plus several biographies.  And by chance, at times my life truly crossed paths with his.  In 1985, I was on my way from the Missouri Ozarks to northwestern Illinois for a campout at Mississippi Palisades State Park.  While passing through Florida, Missouri, I saw a sign that announced a nearby visitor’s center with the actual birthplace cabin of Mark Twain.  The broken down, old cabin was not much to look at; but it was the authentic structure, so I was impressed by that.  Then realizing that I was not far from Hannibal, it was natural that I would stop to see Twain’s boyhood home and the scene for his famous books, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  A few years later, I was passing through Elmira, New York, on my way to Cornell University in Ithaca, when I saw a small sign beside the road directing the traveler to Mark Twain’s grave; of course, I followed the arrows and signs, and soon I was standing at his very gravesite.  And I thought how strange and coincidental it was that not long before I had stood at this man’s birthplace—both unplanned visits.

        I returned to the Mississippi River many times at various locations since first becoming interested in Mark Twain—from canoeing its wild backwater sloughs in the Driftless Area north of Savanna, Illinois; to wilderness camping alone on seven-mile-long Long Island, about 20 miles upriver from Hannibal, where in the dark of night I heard a pack of barking, marauding dogs not far away, and thought of how that sound would have invoked terror in an escaped slave, who might have used that exact island to make it to the free state of Illinois from slave-holding Missouri; to standing on the levee at New Madrid, in Missouri’s Bootheel region, where locals tell of frequently hearing loud bangs and “bombs” going off under the ground, reminders that the massive earthquake of 1812 was not really that long ago and could again occur; to a road trip from Lake Itasca, source of the Mississippi River in Minnesota, as far south as Nauvoo, Illinois, following as close to the river as decent roads would allow.  (This road trip we plan to pick up one day and follow the river the rest of its way to the Gulf of Mexico.)

        One year I was leading a research crew studying the effects of severe flooding on the forests along the Mississippi River.  In Life on the Mississippi, Twain had this to say of floods:  “A Mississippi inundation is the next most wasting and desolating infliction to a fire.”  In some of our study areas, so many trees died from being under water during the growing season that the scenes we witnessed seemed like winter, but with green ground cover.  To collect information for later analysis, we tramped through many of the larger islands across from Hannibal, the very islands, perhaps, explored by the real life Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer (who actually was the boy, Sam Clemens), or at least similar ones in similar locations.  By then I had read all of Twain’s travel books and most of his novels, so I kind of felt as if we were treading upon sacred ground for a Twain enthusiast.

        Eleven years later, my wife Julie and I were celebrating our first wedding anniversary in Hannibal at an old nineteenth century home renovated as a bed and breakfast.  The next morning we took a riverboat cruise from the Hannibal dock, and I was able to enjoy Mark Twain’s river as a tourist, without having to concern myself with collecting scientific data, leading a field crew, or watching out for shallow water or wing dams (piles of rock oriented perpendicular to the bank) just below the surface.

        This year (2022), on our sixteenth anniversary, we enjoyed a luncheon cruise on the same riverboat that floated off from the same Hannibal dock as on our first anniversary.  The river and its islands seemed to have not changed at all in the intervening years.  But I knew that that could really not be the case, because forests and rivers are always changing, although over the short term, change can be subtle.  Still, I’m not sure how much of today’s Mississippi River Mark Twain would recognize, especially with its lock and dam system and leveed floodplain.

 

The Mississippi River at Hannibal, Mo., from a riverboat, July 24, 2022.

 

The Mississippi River at Hannibal, Mo., blufftop view, July 24, 2022.

 

        While planning our recent anniversary visit to the Mississippi at Hannibal, I decided it was time to re-read The Autobiography of Mark Twain, now as an older man closer to the age of Twain when he dictated much of it.  And unlike my first time through, I immediately connected with its narrative, as I looked back on my life of 64 years along with Twain looking back on his.  And when he referred to one of his books, I easily recalled the book and the impressions it made upon me at the time that I read it.  That an autobiography could encompass an entire life of seventy plus years within 380 pages and take mere weeks to read, I found to be humbling; making the average human lifespan, including my own, seem as quick as the flash of a firefly on a warm summer’s evening.  Not surprisingly, there is profound sadness in that thought, especially for an older person, and I see that in Twain as he looked back on his life to craft his autobiography.

 

I’ve always enjoyed studying maps; and on ambitious days, increasingly rare I must admit, the maps inspire thoughts of international travel.  These days, however, given risks of terrorism, on-going wars, poverty’s misery and totalitarianism across much of the planet, and COVID fears resulting in travel restrictions without warning that could strand a person in a foreign land indefinitely, being a world traveler no longer seems like such a good idea.  And I have little faith that this situation will improve during my lifetime.  So I’m fairly confident that I will never see as much of the world as Mark Twain did, not even a small percentage.  But I can still re-read books such as The Innocents Abroad or Following the Equator and be content with that.  I think the late Bill Andrey would agree, and I hope he would say that I have made good progress at completing my education.

 

Statue of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, Hannibal, Missouri.

 

References

Anfinson, J.O.  2003.  The river we have wrought:  a history of the upper Mississippi.  University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis and London.

Feldman, J.  2005.  When the Mississippi ran backwards.  Free Press, New York, New York.

 

The Crow Must Die

        “Look!  There goes the Cooper’s hawk!” said Julie.  We had been seeing or hearing at least two all summer, probably a breeding pair with young.  But like most other observations, we again noticed only one hawk.

        “It landed on the bridge,” added Julie, referring to the small foot bridge over Killjordan Creek at Macomb’s Compton Park.  I couldn’t see the bird because of a tree that blocked my view.  But when I finally got a good look, what I saw was a crow on the bridge’s railing.

        “Oh, it was a crow, not a hawk,” I said.

        “No,” Julie adamantly stated, “I saw a Cooper’s hawk.”  So I think I may have offended her, suggesting that she mistook a crow for a hawk, the type of comment that would have caused some birders to draw blood—but not Julie, who understands a birder’s ingrained inability to not immediately correct another birder’s apparent incorrect species I.D.

        “There it is,” I nearly shouted, “and it’s after the crow!”  The two birds engaged in some rather complex aerial dynamics for what seemed like only a few seconds before each headed to separate trees, with the crow uttering low guttural sounds.  Otherwise, there was silence in the park, as its other wildlife residents waited to see what would unfold.  Meanwhile, a woman rode past on her bicycle, totally oblivious to predator and prey assessing each other, working on their next strategies of death and escape.

        Finally, apparently weary of the high drama, the crow took to the air, with the hawk immediately taking up the chase.

        “That hawk is determined to get the crow,” I said.

        “I feel sorry for the crow,” Julie countered, “but really, I don’t know if I feel sorrier for the hawk, which has to eat too.”

        “I think the hawk has the advantage here.  It has a much greater ability for quick and sharp maneuvering in flight than the crow, and its talons are deadly.  It’s really a great example of natural selection’s fine tuning.”  And here, I stopped talking while I was ahead (before the rolling eyes).  But I kept on thinking:  For accipiter hawks to have developed such outstanding flying abilities, so very many birds have had to die over deep time.  But their prey have developed counter tactics, also products of the same evolutionary process.

        “Hey,” I said, abruptly jolted back to the moment, “there are two more crows, and now they’re chasing the hawk!”  The crows worked together as a team, successfully driving the hawk out of the park.  That is, for now.  Before too long, though, I was confident, the hawk would also have its success.

 

A Time for Swallows

Immediately after pushing my canoe from Quiver Lake’s shoreline, I was joined by several tree swallows, each on a unique flight path back and forth over the lake.  Some came so close that I could almost feel the air breaking over their wings.  This late spring morning was cool and clear, with only barely perceptible breezes now and then.  So I drifted on a nearly frictionless glide to the opposite shore, lightly paddling once in a while to orient the canoe, feeling warmth from the sun’s rays on the side of my face, occasionally looking back at the familiar bluffs with our cabin.

 

Quiver Lake, with the Mason County bluffs on the right.

 

        The Illinois River was on the down side of its spring flood, but still high enough for much of the wooded bottomlands between the lake and the river to be under about a foot of water.  More than enough for my canoe.  So I paddled forward into the woods and soon found some black willow trees growing close enough together so that I could wedge the canoe between them and prevent it from drifting off.  I then carefully slid myself to the bottom of the canoe, leaned back, unpacked my books and breakfast sandwich, and settled in to memorize the scene for days when I would be compelled to do other things.

        Tree swallows were also busy in the flooded woods, chattering to each other as they returned to or left their tree-hole nests or while foraging for insects over open water between stands of willows.  The bird community^a here was highly active, engaged in the serious business of raising young.  I was especially pleased to count so many prothonotary warblers.  This species, also a tree-hole nester, does not inhabit upland areas, and so, to see one of these birds requires a trip to the bottomlands during the short songbird breeding season (at other times, they are either elusive or have migrated south); but logistics, weather, and other priorities may not always converge to allow for such a trip at the proper times.  Even as I heard their songs sounding from the trees around me, I realized that it could be a full year before I would see this species again.

        After reading a chapter in Larry McMurtry’s book Roads, I paddled through an extensive stand of willows that earlier in the spring supported a colony of double-crested cormorants.  On calm days in mid-April, I could hear sounds coming from the active colony, including the birds’ guttural communications, from over a third of a mile away at our cabin.  On this day, although the trees still held their stick nests, there were no cormorants nearby.  The young, I thought, had probably fledged not long before, dispersing throughout the river valley, as it seemed unlikely that the adults would have abandoned their nests before that could happen.  For this year anyway, preoccupied with certain of life’s unavoidable obligations, I had not been around enough to know of anything that might have happened at Quiver Lake.  On one day, the area was full of cormorants, and now it wasn’t.  Not much more could I say.

 

Black willow trees with double-crested cormorant nests, 11 June 2022.

 

        Tree swallows were with me all morning, up until I returned to our sandy beach to call it a day.  The next stage in the yearly cycle would have the river falling to its usual summer low-water levels; at the same time, Quiver Lake would drain into the river, and leave behind mud flats and water too shallow for a canoe.  And then the migrating shorebirds, some from the high Arctic, will show up to forage for invertebrates hidden in the mud.  I looked forward to following tree swallows, with my binoculars, flying over the bottoms, until they leave for the south in October.  And I know I will be thinking about those distant willows, across from the mud flats and patches of lake remnants, that once held nesting swallows and singing prothonotary warblers, fairly confident that we’ll all be back again next year.

 

^aBird list from the Quiver Lake area, Mason County, Illinois, 11 June 2022.

    Wood duck

    Double-crested cormorant

    Great blue heron

    Killdeer

    Mourning dove

    Yellow-billed cuckoo

    Red-headed woodpecker

    Red-bellied woodpecker

    Northern flicker

    Great crested flycatcher

    Eastern wood pewee

    Eastern kingbird

    Warbling vireo

    American crow

    Tree swallow

    Northern rough-winged swallow

    Tufted titmouse

    House wren

    Carolina wren

    American robin

    Wood thrush

    Gray catbird

    Prothonotary warbler

    Song sparrow

    Eurasian tree sparrow

    Northern cardinal

    Indigo bunting

    Common grackle

    Red-winged blackbird

    Baltimore oriole

 

 

Time to Get Out of Town

“Sometimes a house can seem like a prison…that’s the time you got to get away.”—from the song Get Up and Go by Leftover Salmon (Vince Herman)

 

        The Black Hills of South Dakota was our destination, roughly nine hundred miles from our home in western Illinois.  Before crossing the Mississippi River at Gulf Port, I looked directly into the mid-morning sun rising over the distant bluffs, for one last look at Illinois.  The air was humid, still, and hazy over the river’s six mile-wide bottomlands as a farmer plowed black dirt fields, getting ready for spring planting; songs of various migrating birds sounded out from a nearby patch of woods.  The scene was calming, but familiar; so I turned back to the car recalling the main reason we chose the Black Hills for our trip:  a road journey to fire our imaginations and breathe new life into a long dormant wanderlust.

         My wife Julie and I were going “out west.”  But where was the West?  And how would we know when we got there?  In a way, we already were in the West, as someone east of the Appalachian Mountains might say.  And yet, Illinois is widely known as being in the Midwest, which I’ve always thought was a boring term:  neither east nor west, inoffensive, not taking a stand; not hot or cold—lukewarm.  Illinois, though, or at least central Illinois, has strong ties to regions west of the Mississippi River, just as southern Illinois, with its cypress swamps, cottonmouths, and black vultures is the South; northern Illinois is the North with its remnant stands of white pines and paper birch; and eastern Illinois’ beech forests tie it to North America’s eastern deciduous forest community that reaches to the Atlantic coast.

        Illinois, in fact, is connected to the West through the vast grasslands of central North America, which are recognizable on a global scale (biome), roughly resembling a large triangle flipped on its side, with its base stretching from southern Saskatchewan to central Texas throughout the Great Plains, and its apex—the Prairie Peninsula—pointing eastward through the northern three fourths of Illinois with part of southwestern Wisconsin and northwestern Indiana.  This was how it stood for thousands of years, with the boundaries of the grassland triangle and degree of interspersed woodlands changing as the climate and interactions with fire and humans dictated.  Even though most of the original grasslands and savannas have long been converted to modern agriculture, pasture, and urban developments, I knew that remnant natural areas still exist, more so the further west we traveled.  And throughout our trip, I would pay close attention to the lay of 
land itself, for subtle clues that help explain what I would see in the context of what once was there.

 

(Image downloaded from the Internet)

 

Part of the Prairie Peninsula at Goose Lake Prairie Natural

Area in northeastern Illinois.

(Image downloaded from the Internet.)

 

        In Illinois, I learned to read the landscape based on how the land had been influenced or not by glaciation during the Pleistocene Epoch, which ended about 10,000 years ago.  Only small portions of southern and northwestern Illinois escaped being covered by glaciers at some point during the Ice Age, and these areas have much rougher topography then the rest of the state.  Western South Dakota, where the Black Hills are located, also escaped glaciation; and these rocky hills, mountains actually, rise above the surrounding grasslands as a forested island. 

        These thoughts combined with memories of several previous travels between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains fueled my imagination as we drove on the Great River Bridge crossing the Mississippi at Burlington, Iowa.  Then we were greeted with towering, rocky cliffs bordering the river valley, and I had a sense of being far from home, although we had logged only fifty miles at that point.  My mind began to fill with images from other trips west of the river:  southern Iowa’s rolling pasturelands with deep, wooded ravine systems, which escaped the last two major glacial advances (the Illinoian and the Wisconsinan); extensive prairies on high bluffs bordering the Missouri River valley in western Iowa’s Loess Hills; a large buffalo herd at Niobrara National Wildlife Refuge in Nebraska; prairie dog towns; golden eagles and Swainson’s hawks further west; treading water attempting to canoe upstream against the Missouri River’s current; eighty mile-per-hour speed limits on South Dakota’s interstate highways, a speed where the car handles much differently and demands a lighter touch than when driving on much slower rural two-lane highways near home.  I recalled that Native Americans are more of an obvious presence on the land west of the Mississippi than in Illinois, and I expected that we would talk about that quite a bit, especially in the Black Hills (Paha Sapa), considered sacred ground to the Lakota.

 

A lone bison grazing in the Black Hills, South Dakota.

 

Pronghorn at Badlands National Park, South Dakota.
.

 

        Well into my seventh decade now, I’ve begun to view traveling on long trips as a risky undertaking, not being as enthusiastic for adventures of the road as I once was, finding the safety of home more of a comfort than a restriction.  But that same comfort is an enabler to closing off and becoming set in ways of living and thinking.  Of course, dangers on the road far from home are real, unpredictable, and potentially deadly:  accidents that could result in multiple car pile-ups, tired semi drivers weaving back and forth over two lanes, road rage maniacs on the loose, criminals at rest stops, vehicle breakdowns in remote areas, and driving through severe weather.  So it comes down to a choice between accepting risk with its promise of new knowledge and experiences and giving in to fearfulness for the sake of being safe.  I wonder if feeling safe loses it meaning after a long time of low-risk living?  The answer is one I hope I am never up to pursuing.

 

References

Pielou, E.C.  1991.  After the ice age:  the return of life to North America.  The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London.

Taylor, C.A., J.B. Taft, and C.Warwick (editors).  2009.  Canaries in the catbird seat - the past, present, and future of biological resources in a changing environment.  Illinois Natural History Survey Special Publication 30.  Illinois Natural History Survey, Champaign, Illinois. 

 

Beginning with a Small Yellow Flower

 

“These days I seem to do a lot of dreaming…Just try to be in the here and now…These are the brand new good old days”—from the song Brand New Good Old Days by Leftover Salmon (Vince Herman)

 

This spring, I could not seem to get enough views of green lawns with yellow dandelions, especially on sunny mornings when the sun’s rays hit at just the right angle.  Along roadsides and lightly mowed lawns, the two contrasting colors stand out, even more than carefully tended tulip gardens.  The dandelions grow wild as chance may allow, despite being unwanted, perhaps even reviled, by most landowners.  And yet they survive.

          Maybe it’s the tenacity that also draws my attention, something to count on every year, along with the colors following winter’s grayness; standing tall and healthy in spite of the odds and the herbicides.  After two years of COVID fears, anger and frustration at posturing political leaders, and sorting useful information from misinformation, I had the feeling this spring of slowly emerging from an underground bunker, still quite unsure of the landscape, but with growing confidence.  For a long while, I have no longer felt that other customers at the grocery store are dangerous enemies, and it’s nice to see faces again, even though I have never been a “people” person.  Perhaps spring dandelions will become, for me at least, a symbol of COVID’s eventual final demise, but it’s probably too early to put much weight behind such thoughts.

          April has long competed with October as being my favorite time of year:  the songbird migration is in full motion; colorful male warblers are back from Central and South America for the breeding season; spring ephemeral wildflowers are in full bloom; and daytime high temperatures are still mostly cool, before the more frequent hot, humid days of May and June.  It is also a time when our honeybee hives become highly active, with the bees frantically gathering nectar and pollen to support a soon-emerging cohort of young bees. 

        One late April day I took a walk along the bluffs of Conner Creek to check on our hive at the Lakeview Nature Area’s apiary; I was worried that recent unpredictable temperature swings from day to day might have been hard on the bees.  Along the way, I was admiring the green grasses of the rolling bluffs with a generous scattering of dandelions, and when I looked downward near my feet, there stood a single, perfect yellow dandelion with a honeybee seriously focused on digging down far into the dense array of minute florets, which together actually make up what we see as the “flower.”  But paradoxically, this scene brought to mind an image from the previous winter:  heavy snow blowing and drifting, with more falling, and forecasts of 10 to 12 inches by the next day; a cup of hot tea in my hand, sweetened with honey from our Lakeview hives, a little taste of the previous season’s wildflowers; thoughts of the honeybees surviving the winter cold in a dense cluster of bees (around 68^oF), with warmth generated within their bodies and fueled by consumption of honey.

 

 

        What might this next year hold in store, I wondered, after the nectar this particular bee was collecting might have found its way, as honey, into my winter tea?  Would my optimistic thoughts that threats from COVID would finally be over this year prove true?  Yet even as I focus on my own struggles to cope, I know there are many other serious threats facing our world today.  But without any significant influence on how such matters might develop, I’m fine with putting it all aside—maybe for a while, but more likely longer, or maybe even indefinitely. 

        So far, I’ve survived.  And it’s a good life:  I’ve got a good wife; great new music coming out all the time, available with the click of a mouse; new good books to look forward to—so many talented writers, it’s hard to keep track; honey harvests coming up; and plenty of toilet paper.  Sometimes, though, the hives don’t make it through the winter.  I’ve learned that it’s best not to take the good times too much for granted.

 

Reference

Winston, M.L.  1987.  The biology of the honey bee.  Harvard University Press, Cambridge , Massachusetts.

Ten Essential Songs (One Man’s Opinion)

 

 

Music has been a continual focus and backdrop in my life ever since those first accordion lessons back in the mid-1960s and the acquisition of a hand-sized transistor radio (as opposed to a radio with vacuum tubes).  Of the many songs I’ve heard and enjoyed over the years, some have extra special meanings, each capable of bringing back specific memories or feelings from a certain time period or an experience, much like smells can accurately conjure up recollections in the smallest details; I’ll envision scenes and can sometimes recall what my thoughts were, my worries, frustrations, and what brought joy, inspiration, or sadness.  So I thought it would be interesting to create an annotated list of these songs.  But realizing that listing hundreds of songs and explanations of why each is important to me would be impractical and probably boring, I decided to whittle the list down to ten, for no other reason than humans have ten fingers. 

        The list would consist of only songs that I have considered essential, but essential only for myself, as someone else would probably develop a completely different list.  They would not necessarily be the best I have ever heard, just the ten that I would never want to do without.  Or, if I had music playing at my funeral, these would be the ten songs playing in the background (although, I might make an exception to the limit of ten and add Rock of Ages and Amazing Grace).  Each song would have to fit several criteria:  strong ties to personal meanings or experiences, compelling story and/or emotion, clear mental images, instrumentation, overall sound, and tune.  I tried to weigh all of these factors in deciding which songs to include.  In doing so, I had to leave off some truly great music. 

        But this necessarily begs the question of why anyone, other than my wife Julie, would care about any of this?  If I were famous or influential, there would likely be widespread interest in the minutia of my life.  And yet, I still have likes, dislikes, and opinions.  So for what it’s worth, I made the list anyway, even if it matters to no one else.  The songs are not listed in order of importance (such as the best being first), but rather, they are listed in terms of where they fit into the chronology of my life, from the high school years in the 1970s up through recent times.

 

Ten Essential Songs

Sunday Morning Coming Down (Kris Kristofferson).  This song brings me back to my high school years, to a time when I first truly latched onto the type of music that moved me.  And it was the lyrics that did it.  Although certain songs, like The Weight by The Band, stood out for years, it was when I discovered artists like Kris Kristofferson and paid closer attention to Johnny Cash’s music that I really began to relate to the music in a personal way.  Kristofferson’s lines about waking up on a Sunday morning, fumbling through his closet for the cleanest dirty shirt, and then stumbling down the stairs for a walk alone through a city park appealed to my sense of being an outsider.  In high school, I never belonged to a popular clique, didn’t attend sporting events, didn’t belong to clubs or the band, and had few close friends.  I was also drawn to songs with more mature themes than the average teenager probably would have been, although it would be years before I would try a beer for breakfast, let alone having a second beer for dessert.  (Link to YouTube Sunday Morning Coming Down)

Big River (Johnny Cash).  This is definitely not a kid’s type of song.  It’s about a man trying to track down his wayward girlfriend along the Mississippi River.  The song is full of river scenes that made me want to be just about any place other than in high school, especially not in a gym class surrounded by a bunch of kids yelling and throwing a ball around.  One friend of mine kind of liked Johnny Cash, but other than that friend, my new musical tastes set me apart.  When music was a topic of discussion with other high schoolers, names like Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and Aerosmith were bandied about with pride, but mentioning Johnny Cash as a favorite never came up…except by me, and that was usually followed by some strange looks and sometimes laughter.  I saw musical preference as just a simple matter of what sounds good to the particular individual and what strikes a chord because of personal meanings.  But in high school, the music you listened to took on much more importance; it was a kind of status symbol to some, and it had to be the same as what was popular with others.  I could never see their point.  (Link to YouTube Big River)

Boots of Spanish Leather (Bob Dylan).  Part of my sadness in high school and the reason why the mood of songs like Sunday Morning Coming Down appealed to me was the lack of a girlfriend and the real feeling that it could never happen.  Being easily intimidated by the opposite sex and then turning into a bumbling, stammering fool while asking for a date didn’t help.

          At any rate, after hearing Bob Dylan’s song Watching the River Flow in 1971, I became an instant Dylan follower, and I soon became familiar with most of his music.  Some of his lyrics were and still are difficult to follow (for example, Desolation Row), but Boots of Spanish Leather really tugged at my heart for its story of a lost love sailing away across the ocean, unlikely to return for a long time, and the reluctant acceptance of that fact.  I may not have had a girlfriend to lose, but over the high school years there were several females, the objects of my pathetic infatuations, who ignored me completely (to clarify, however, a girl once actually did notice me walking down the sidewalk when she yelled out her open window, “Hey Tommy, you walk like a deadbeat”—mentioned here just to keep the record straight).  So I imagined that unrequited love, which I had a lot of experience with, and being dumped must have felt about the same, which is why Boots of Spanish Leather resonated.  Nanci Griffith’s version of this song is the best.  (Link to YouTube Boots of Spanish Leather)

Paradise (John Prine).  I wrote about this song at length in a recent blog post called “Paradise over the Years.” Here is a link to that post:  Paradise over the Years.  (Link to YouTube Paradise)

Homecoming (Tom T. Hall).   I was born in Buffalo, New York, and lived there just past the toddler stage when my parents divorced.   My mother, brother, and I then moved to Chicago to live with my maternal grandparents.  Although dad soon followed us to Chicago, my parents never reconciled.  Seeing dad was then referred to as a “visitation,” only on Sunday, from eleven o’clock in the morning until precisely five-thirty in the afternoon.  This pattern was by decree until I turned eighteen, but continued well into my early twenties, until I left home for college.  After that, I saw my dad less often.  When I moved further away from Chicago, visits were down to about twice a year.  At the time, I never thought about the sacrifices he went through because of the divorce or that he left a good job, his hometown, and his close family network in Buffalo so that he could be near his sons (my mother has always painted a highly negative picture of him, which continues to the present day, even though he died in 2009).  Soon I became pre-occupied with my own life, and never much considered his struggles or went too far out of my way to see him more often.  My view was that offspring move out and away; parents stay behind; and all go on about their lives, demanding little from each other.  Tom T. Hall’s song Homecoming is right on target as it illustrates a son’s regret—in the end, however, easily pushed aside—at being neglectful of his aging father.  (Link to YouTube Homecoming)

The Orchard (Kevin Evans).   A few years ago, I wrote a blog post about my longtime fascination with Irish folk music.  Here is a link to that post:  The Highlands.  (Link to YouTube The Orchard)

Oh, Abraham (John Gorka).  Well before Julie and I were married, she introduced me to the music of John Gorka, encouraging me to listen to his CD, The Company You Keep.  It’s an overall excellent album, but the song Oh, Abraham stands out.  It is a serious, complex song, but also has some of Gorka’s unique humor here and there.  In my interpretation, the song is a commentary on our society: its inequities, the growing partisan divide in our country, and the question of whether or not the original dream of the country’s founders has been lost.  The song reminds me of a well-crafted literary essay, of the type that invokes deep thought; may be a bit difficult to truly define; and at the same time, is relevant in a variety of situations.  And, with every listen, it makes me think of Julie.   (Link to YouTube Oh, Abraham)

Long Way (Antje Duvekot).  Antje Duvekot is another Julie-inspired addition to my music library.  Early in our marriage, I was frequently listening to the Irish folk band, Solas, which I had only just discovered.  On their live album, Reunion:  A Decade of Solas, Duvekot joined the band on stage when they played one of her songs.  Julie picked out Antje Duvekot’s voice from the crowded stage and encouraged me to listen more closely; she was simply drawn to Duvekot’s voice and stage presence, but it was also a good song (Reasonland), with abstract lyrics reminiscent of Dylan.  The following year, we attended Duvekot’s concert at Macomb’s Tri States Public Radio station, where I first heard Long Way.  Later, while listening to John Gorka’s Oh, Abraham, I picked up on what I thought was a connection to Long Way; and then I remembered that at the radio concert, Duvekot mentioned her admiration for John Gorka.  So there might be a connection.  Both songs mention Jack Kerouac, and both are about traveling around the country—although Oh, Abraham is less about that.  Long Way is essentially about the freedom of the road and being young without serious responsibilities.  The song speaks directly to the wanderlust that I felt so strongly when I was younger, and so it makes me feel young again.  (Link to YouTube Long Way)

Firefly (Edward David Anderson).  I came upon this song during the pandemic year of 2020.  Julie and I were in the process of selling our country home in Mason County and moving to the small western Illinois town of Macomb.  Upon learning the names of the prospective buyers, Kim and Ed Anderson, we naturally looked them up on Facebook.  We saw that Ed was a well-established, working musician with several CDs, YouTube videos, and an extensive touring resume as a solo performer and with a band called Backyard Tire Fire.  I liked the idea of our old house being occupied by another musician (Ed calls it his “new old house”).  In his song Firefly, I recognized several parallels to my own life during my early twenties:  being directionless; not yet meeting the one special woman that would be my wife and feeling hopeless on that topic; and making my own way, not bending to convention or to what others were telling me I should do.  I could have really used this song back in 1977, when I was depressed, going nowhere, and working at a dirty paper warehouse.  (Link to YouTube Firefly)

Pachelbel’s Canon in D (Johann Pachelbel).  This tune stands apart from all the others on the list because it is an instrumental.  So its meaning to me is purely from the circumstances surrounding it rather than a personal connection that could be made by anyone relating to lyrics.  When Julie handed me a list of songs to put together as a playlist for my stepdaughter Kate’s wedding in 2019, Pachelbel’s Canon was on the list.  But being only familiar with the tune and not its name, I did not recognize it as a song that I knew until playing the mp3 download as a test.  I also didn’t realize that it is well known and very popular at weddings.  In the world of classical music, I am still fairly ignorant.  So I try not to embarrass Julie, like the time we attended the Illinois Symphony, and I said, loud enough for others to hear, “Do they really need this guy waving his arms all over the place?” referring to the conductor.  “I mean, all the musicians have the music in front of them, and they’ve all probably practiced it hundreds of times.”  A woman sitting to Julie’s left leaned forward, and she and Julie gave me “a look.”  I pretty much remained quiet for the rest of the evening.  (Link to YouTube Pachelbel's Canon in D)

 

        So, will this list of ten essential songs change as time goes on?  Probably, as long as I decide to restrict the list to ten.  I’m always searching for new music, and one day there might be a song that makes such a strong personal connection that I’ll have to bump one of the current ten off the list.  But I guess it really doesn’t matter.

 

A Big Dark Bird on the Wind

 

“…as for every other man alive, all passes, all is lost, all melts before our grasp like smoke…youth is gone before we know it, and that, like every other man, we must grow old and die. —from Of Time and the River by Thomas Wolfe, 1935

“If you could do anything, what would you do?” asked ten-year-old Jaycie.  “Fly,” I replied without hesitation. —A recent conversation between the author and his granddaughter

 

Against the cloudless sky, a big, dark bird soared effortlessly over our western Illinois town on the steady afternoon breeze.  Black as a crow, but obviously much larger, with wings held at a shallow angle, the bird, at first, seemed to float aimlessly wherever the air currents meandered, unsteadily teetering like an unsure tightrope walker.  But after watching for a time, I could see that it actually had a rather loose yet definite command of its direction and altitude.  So without even using binoculars, I knew by its size, color, and distinctive flight pattern that this was a turkey vulture. 

        And instantly, as with every sighting of this species, I was pulled back in my mind’s eye to the 1970s.  It was on a limestone cliff high above the Mississippi River and its vast bottomlands that I, as a young man, first saw a turkey vulture.  Unaware of the bird’s presence perching on a nearby tree, I approached the cliff edge, just as the vulture jumped into the air and sailed away.  I later described the bird to one of the staff at Mississippi Palisades State Park, who was not at all surprised, assuring me in my naïve enthusiasm that this was not a rare bird, and that they were actually quite common.

 

The described turkey vulture sighting over the Mississippi

River bottomlands in 1978.

 

        All of the countless sightings I have made of this species over the next four and a half decades would be anchored to that day.  Some, though, stand out from the many:  from the hot, dry skies over the Southwest’s Sonoran Desert to Hawk Ridge over Lake Superior to Pennsylvania’s Little Grand Canyon, viewing the birds from above as they rode the valley’s contours over the Allegheny River.  And at every closer observation, being quite taken by their graceful beauty, but at the same time repulsed by their bare skin heads lacking feathers—bare apparently to avoid having soiled feathers after intimate contact with carcasses.

        The strangest and closest encounter was along the bluffs bordering the Illinois River’s floodplain when I sighted a turkey vulture far away over a field; it seemed to be pacing my vehicle along the bluff road in speed and direction, moving all the while closer and closer until…hitting my windshield full force, as if it were guided by a military-grade GPS to make a precise impact.  Why didn’t this bird make even a minimal effort to shift its wings and tail feathers, thereby gaining the necessary altitude to avoid a fatal collision?  This vulture seemed bound and determined to make a direct hit.  But why?  To what end other than its own demise on a cracked windshield?

        While small birds seem always jittery and worried about life, and larger ones have a seriousness about them, kind of a calculated efficiency, turkey vultures exude a rather lackadaisical nature:  light wing loading allows them to become aloft and soaring with only the slightest of air movements; they drift on the winds, rarely needing to flap their wings; and feed on the margins of the more respectable members of bird society that hunt live prey, glean livelihood from seeds and berries, or both.  They can be a familiar sight on any back country road of the Midwest, feeding on a cornucopia of roadkill, even on lightly traveled routes; and when a vehicle approaches, they cumbersomely fly off in slow, wide arcs, eventually returning to feed—until the next vehicle appears, and then the cycle repeats.  Annoying disturbances these must be, but part of the lifestyle they seem to accept with grace and patience, almost as if they know that everything must die, and all they need to do is to wait.

 

Turkey vultures routinely form night roosts on cell towers.

Photo by Vic Berardi posted by permission.

 

        In fact, they seem to have adapted to the modern rural landscape very well.  And it’s not difficult to imagine that road kills will continue to remain in steady supply for the foreseeable future.  Still, their habitat, although simplified in its present agricultural setting compared to the pre-Columbian state, is really quite complex with known and unknown unpredictable factors.  For now at least, though, life is good for a bird that searches for death.

        So might a turkey vulture be considered the quintessential bird of death?  These days, with my hazy self-image each year imperceptibly morphing closer to that of an “old man,” I find it difficult not to think of death as I observe a soaring vulture dispassionately looking down upon me, its dark plumage and demeanor suggestive of the great abyss:  a profound nothingness, from my perspective, that existed before I was born and will exist after this life has finished its pitifully brief sojourn within the infinity of time and space.  An afterlife I have not much considered, not being drawn to unscientific notions.  Yet who am I to scoff when so many individuals wiser than I have embraced the concept?  As for turkey vultures, I’ll be looking for and observing them until the very end.  Now if I could only convince my wife to agree to dump my dead body into a remote field….

 

Reference

del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A., and Sargatal, J., editors.  1994.  Handbook of the birds of the world, volume 2.  New World vultures to guineafowl.  Lynx Edicions, Barcelona.

  

Tending the Beast

 

“Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”—Physicist Robert Oppenheimer quoting Hindu scripture on witnessing detonation of the first atomic bomb in 1945.

 

During cool days of late summer, when I’m fairly confident the Illinois River will not rise appreciably for several weeks, I begin to gather driftwood that has accumulated on the Quiver Lake shoreline and stack it into piles.  (Without doing this once in a while, the lakefront would eventually become nearly buried in debris from the flooding river.)  Then in a few weeks, on a breezy, warmish day, after the wood has had a chance to dry out, I’ll light the piles, which quickly grow into infernos that make short work of the dry cottonwood branches.

          Soon, enough heat has built up to light the larger logs.  Once a deep core of intensely hot embers has been established, just about anything thrown onto the flames ignites without delay and is readily consumed.  But manipulating the fire so that everything burns requires more than haphazardly heaving on branches and big logs.  Even so, at this stage, it’s difficult even to get near the blaze to shift the direction of burning or add more wood in just the right place.

 

Woody debris floating toward our lakeshore during an

Illinois River flood.

 

 

Burning piles of driftwood at Quiver Lake, Mason Co., Illinois

 

          The bonfires can get as large as I allow, conflagrations roaring four or five feet high before I stop adding fuel, lest the canopies of nearby trees ignite.  And I’ve planned these fires with wide, clear buffers so the flames cannot spread, no matter how high they reach. These techniques I learned while leading controlled burns on woodlands and prairies, experiences I often reflect upon.

          On warm fall days with a good breeze, I have seen prairie grasses like big bluestem light up like gasoline, flames moving across the landscape with the wind, easily reaching to my height, and advancing to a line of backfire that was earlier set burning against the wind; the two lines of moving flames eventually meet in a dramatic crescendo, but then quickly die, smoldering blackness in their wake.

          One of those prairie fires stands out in my memory for a frightening reason:  the local winds and topography combined in just the right set of conditions to produce a tall, swirling vortex of smoke and blowing embers; I watched helpless in awe as the tornadic column grew in height and intensity; then it began emitting a loud rumbling sound, very much like a freight train or jet engine, and flames started shooting upward within the vortex itself.  Did I see the face of the Devil in those hideously beautiful rising flames?  What have I unleashed?  I asked myself.  Of this monster, I had no control, but it was slowly moving toward the backfire, which had left behind a wide, blackened, burned-off area only minutes before.  When the fire tornado moved over the black area it quickly died, just as if an invisible plug had been pulled.  The beast vanquished.

          Such elemental power in those flames, begun with a single match, controlled with pre-planning, and, once in motion, chaotic as any wildfire—for a short time at least.  But these days that type of activity has been left far behind me, after retiring and then moving into town, leaving behind the small prairie that I planted and tended for two decades.  I miss the excitement of those burns, but not the anxiety and midnight dreams of fires out of control.  These days I prefer a tame fire pit in the back yard, burning twigs that fall from the few trees around our town lot.

 

The author and his wife conducting a controlled burn at 

their former Mason County home.

 

A line of moving flames across the prairie.

 

          At the same time, there is a commonality to all of these fires, no matter the size, something primitive:  that of watching the motion of how, from the smallest leaf to the largest log, it is all consumed; feeling the heat of flames on cold days; feeding more fuel to keep it going, and scrounging up more when necessary; the sweet smell of wood smoke.  For all of our technological advances, it is unlikely that the task of keeping a campfire burning has changed at all since someone once discovered that fire could be contained and made to serve a master.  No other creature has learned to do this; it sets us apart as a species, very far apart, in fact. 

          We can place another piece of wood on a burning stack, travel the solar system, or blow up the world.  Just what, I sometimes wonder, have we unleashed?

 

[Click on this link to see and learn about fire tornados.]

  

Town Walking

 

“He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in a good sense, is no more vagrant then a meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea.”— from Walking, by Henry David Thoreau, 1862

 

As I stepped off our driveway for a walk around town, I instantly felt conspicuous.  Within any one of the closely packed homes on our street, someone, without a doubt, must have been watching out the window, much as I myself have done occasionally. 

        It was a feeling that I had not yet been able to shake, ever since moving from the country ten months before.  I continued down the street at a brisk pace and a constant cadence, as if being timed with a metronome, as if I had serious business to attend to, keeping my eyes forward.

        My business, such as it might be called, was connecting with the natural world in whatever small way I could.  After nearly thirty years of living in the country, amid farmlands and wild areas, finding and observing wildlife was now a different kind of experience from what I had been used to, and I was still adjusting my expectations. 

        At the end of our block, four-acre Compton Park came into view, with Killjordan Creek meandering through its mowed and manicured landscape.  I kept up my pace, listening for bird sounds.  I left my binoculars at home, as my gut feeling was that using binoculars to view birds in someone’s yard or even in trees along the street would be looked upon as eccentric, maybe worthy of calling the police.

 

Killjordan Creek and Compton Park, Macomb.

 

        How different from being in a remote natural area, where I could stop and examine birds or plants at my leisure, even choosing a convenient tree leaning at just the right angle for a short afternoon nap.  But doing this at Compton Park would surely draw the attention of residents whose homes face the park, and then probably the authorities; best to do all of my napping at home from now on.

        At the park, there were other folks walking for exercise and people with dogs, both of which legitimized my activity, as long as I kept moving.  So I marched along, one foot after the other, no nonsense, attempting to blend into the landscape.  My wife Julie claims that at nearly six feet four inches in height, it is impossible for me to keep a low profile, which recalls an incident where I failed to remain under the radar even on a crowded downtown Chicago avenue.  A friend and I were having a few beers at a sidewalk café and tavern when a man nervously came up to our table and asked us about popcorn.  I innocently replied that there was free popcorn at the bar inside, but you probably had to buy a drink to get it.  The man looked at me as if I were deranged, his eyes darting back and forth, and then he quickly walked away. 

        Later, we were walking along, looking for a place to eat, another nervous man walked to us and said, “Popcorn.  You want popcorn?”   “No,” we replied, shaking our heads. We eventually deduced that “popcorn” is a type of illegal street drug and were surprised at the boldness of these peddlers.  In the city, it may be possible to melt into the crowd, but people are still watching.  The watchers were somewhere, predators secretly observing the street scene. 

        On hikes around Compton Park, I’m just one of many walkers.  But when I hiked the roads near our former country home, I stood out even more than I apparently do in town, because, from my observations, folks living in the rural countryside rarely, if ever, hike for pleasure, for exercise, or to view wildlife.  A lone hiker on a country road is a curiosity, probably assumed to have a vehicle breakdown, a DUI, or to be a vagrant generally up to no good.  I was out on a remote country road one day when an old farmer in a pickup truck stopped to ask if I needed a lift somewhere. 

        “No, just out for a walk,” I said. 

        “Really,” he replied with not a little skepticism. “Well I never heard of such a thing.”  He slowly drove away, shaking his head with disbelief and probably thinking I was a strange individual. 

        I have noticed that walking with a small child removes all suspicion.  As at Compton Park, when hiking with my nine-year-old granddaughter, we can linger anywhere for any length of time to look at plants, dirt, fish in the creek, and even stare into the clouds; people simply smile and probably think, What a nice old guy, teaching his grandchild about nature.  I could probably get away with robbing a bank if I had a little kid…well maybe not.

        Sometimes on my walks around the neighborhood, I’ll try to imagine what the area looked like before the 1800s, when prairie, savanna, and forests occupied the land.  Killjordan Creek was there, as well as the gently sloping hillsides bordering the creek corridor, but not much else of the present scene.  There may have been many trees bordering the creek, as there are today, but most of the level land upon which our town was built was likely grassland.  Prairie fires would have swept across the land, pushed by high winds, mostly unhindered by deep ravine systems; those fires would have kept trees from expanding very far from the creek.  Some of the birds that I hear and see along the modern-day creek would have been part of that original Illinois landscape, but those requiring large grasslands have long been gone and will never return.  White-tailed deer still follow the creek through town from the surrounding countryside. Sometimes they stray from the creek and we find them lounging in our backyard, munching on our flower and vegetable gardens.  It’s the price we pay for the gift of wildness remaining.

        Without the town, I would use Killjordan Creek and its connecting streams to navigate the land, following the easiest slopes into and out of ravines systems, crossing the flat uplands perhaps with a distant large bur oak in sight as a landmark, using a compass in combination with the sun and time of day to fix my position and determine the route.  That is what I might have done in a former time, and what I still sometimes do when hiking through a trackless natural area.  But these days, I mostly follow neighborhood streets oriented on north-south or east-west lines along rectangular city blocks.  I turn corners at ninety degree angles and look both ways before crossing a street.

        Though I walk at an unwavering pace through town, my senses are heightened and I am keenly aware of my surroundings.  I notice details I miss when driving the same routes:  a crumbling curb; cracks in the sidewalk and streets; the identities and unique shapes of trees; pieces of sidewalk uplifted by tree roots; manhole covers made a century ago by the Neenah Foundry Company of Neenah, Wisconsin. So many different styles of homes, front yards and their fixtures, the miscellany of numerous lives laid open to the outside world. 

        So let the barking dogs from living room windows and calling crows announce my presence as they are wont to do.  They may think to drive me away, but I will return on another day, for walking is a key to staying grounded and maintaining some aspect of an elusive balance during these turbulent times.

 

Another walker from another time:  Cermak Road and 57^th Avenue,

Cicero, Illinois 1971 (Photo by Thomas V. Lerczak).

 

This essay first appeared in the anthology These Interesting Times:  Surviving 2020 in the Quad Cities, published in 2021 by the Midwest Writing Center, Rock Island, Illinois.  Click on the image below to expand.

On April 10, 2022, I was interviewed by Don Wooten and Rebecca Wee on WVIK's NPR program Scribble about Town Walking, other writings, and the adjustments of moving from the country into town.  To hear the interview, click on this link:  Interview.