Goodbye Illinois

Due to my move to NYC, I have decided to discontinue this blog and begin a new one at some point down the road. Moving brings change in more ways than just physical location. It also makes one take stock of where they have been going in life, what has been learned along the way, and what new direction one would like to head.

I have learned much during my time here in Illinois. That a warm sense of community can be found in the independent shops and restaurants of small towns. That environmental stewardship can be a rewarding way to forge relationships with like minded people. That old true friendships never die, and that some new untested ones may. That much can be enjoyed from the seat of a bike, along a forest preserve path, by taking a stroll in town or just sitting on the patio.

A week from now, I will be living in a new place with new adventures to take me further along on this path of discovery. Not sure where it will take me just yet but I am sure it will be interesting.

A more accurate depiction

My last post about the barns within a mile of my house, gives the feeling that I live in a rural hamlet somewhere when in reality I don't.

My town, perched precariously on the westernmost edge of Chicago's sprawl, does have many remnants of its agricultural roots. But sadly, these rural images are slowly giving way to views of strip malls, subdivisions, and traffic.

One Mile Barn Project

Standing on a busy corner near my son's middle school, the barn above most reminds me of the barns I played in as a child. Slowly deteriorating, fading, not long for this world. My childhood barns are long gone, victims of urban sprawl as I suppose this barn will soon be too.

It makes me sad to think of losing barns because I have a special fondness for them due to my many years playing in barns as a child. They remind me of a connectedness to not only the land I knew growing up but also to those people I shared those times with. My parents and siblings, my friends, grandparents, and cousins. A time so obviously gone by, but also still very much here in the memories I retrieve each time I pass a barn in my life today.

Because of the connections and memories that barns invoke for many people, I believe that they are a valuable resource that should be protected. One day last week I decided to see exactly how many barns there were in a one mile radius of my home and I was surprised to discover there were thirteen. Upon further investigation, I discovered a fantastic book called "Built for Farming: A Guide to the Historic Rural Architecture of Kane County" which is a survey of all the rural structures in my county conducted as part of the county's historic preservation plan.

Obviously I am not alone in wanting to preserve my rural heritage. Kane County recognizes the pressures development is putting on rural structures and has a historic preservation plan in place that will hopefully minimize the negative impacts of growth upon them. So that not only I, but future generations can continue to find connections to this land we now live on.

Rural Transformations

I just finished reading Gina Olszowski’s book “Now Coming To A Town Near You” http://www.atownnearyou.com/ which gives voice to the changes that urban sprawl brings to small rural towns here in the Midwest. Her book is filled with the images of subdivisions filled with row upon row of identical house boxes containing a single tree in the parkway, flat lawn stretching out to a stark white curb, newly paved streets beyond.

I am immediately struck by the sterile qualities of these subdivisions and find myself comparing them to older more established neighborhoods full of charm and character. Today's developers seem to lack imagination, or maybe they, like many others in our culture, are too profit driven to care about aesthetics. These newly built home boxes, called that by me because they contain few windows and tend to look more like a box than a home, seem to rise up out of the ground, unconnected to their surroundings, an ugly bump on the landscape.

I can’t help but think of what has been taken away in the creation of these subdivisions. The farm fields with their red barns and white farmhouses, or the woodlots with their many animal inhabitants. Prairies filled with grasses and forbs blowing in the wind, butterflies and birds circling overhead.

I am also struck by how this development comes to be in the first place. Unfortunately, when new businesses first come to a rural town, they are welcomed. Living for so long without big box stores and their huge supply of goods, rural town residents are excited about the possibility of not having to drive many miles to the grocery or hardware store. What they may not think about until it is too late, is how these stores are going to change the feel of their town. In the blink of an eye, development steamrolls into town and rips out its character.

Gina’s book is a wake up call to small towns that have not been bulldozed over yet and a call to reclaim those towns that have already been transformed by urban sprawl. Intact rural towns need to be aware of what may be coming and to take steps to advert the changes now. For those towns that have been harmed by sprawl, Gina asks that you think about how you personally contribute to the sprawl lifestyle. When you buy from a corporate owned hardware store rather than a mom and pop operation, you contribute to the economy that supports sprawl.

As Gina says in her book, “As we pave over nature, our pavement becomes more of a reality to us than what lies beneath it”. Her words encourage me to continue on my path of knowing and protecting the natural word while teaching my children about it. I certainly don’t want my children to see pavement as their reality. But as I think about the pavement filled shopping centers and roadways with multiple lanes near my home, maybe they already do.

River Cleanup

A few weeks ago, our town's Natural Resources Committee, of which I am a member, had our 3rd annual River Cleanup. As always, I was most impressed with the youth that participated. Members of our high school football team and a girl scout troop worked many hours hauling debris out of the river and trash from along its banks. It is a credit to their coach and troop leaders that these kids were encouraged to give something back to their community. By working together, we hauled pop cans, plastic bottles, old tires, wood, etc...from the site which went a long ways toward improving the health of the river that runs through our town.

If you don't like the results, consider your actions

Every Thursday morning since October of last year, my son has been taking archery lessons from a wonderful man named Bill. On the first day of class, Bill told all of the kids about how to hunt for mushrooms in the wild and how to

prepare them. Subsequent classes brought more stories about Bill's life, all of which were colorful and entertaining.

Using sound effects and a smile, he told the kids about getting shot just above the eye with an arrow when he was young. Another time he explained what it was like to sleep in bunk beds at his aunt's house right next to the railroad tracks. He would be tucked into bed on one side of the room but by morning, the rumbling of the trains all night would have made the beds bump bump all the way to the other side. My favorite story was about this friend of his that picked up a dead deer alongside the road and put it in his van. It appears that the deer, rather than being dead, was just stunned and it came awake while the guy was driving down the road and began to thrash about trying to kill the driver or get out of the van, whichever came first. Of course Bill's animation and gestures while telling the story, made it especially entertaining.

Bill is also an avid outdoors man and is brimming with hunting stories, how to keep ticks off of you when in the woods, explanations about how to catch fish and clean them, and what types of natural insect repellents are available. The kids in the archery class are mesmerized when Bill tells his stories. They are not the typical stories that kids hear in today's world where many conversations center around shopping and what is on TV. They are stories of a life that my son would know little of if it were not for Bill.

Bill's favorite motto is, "if you don't like the results, consider your actions" and he uses it constantly. He says this motto applies to archery as well as everything in life. In archery, he says if you don't like where your arrow hit the target, consider how you held the bow before you shot. In regard to life, he gives the example, "If you don't like how a person responds to you, consider what you said to them."

Bill has been voicing many varieties of this motto since October and today I finally understood its relevance in terms of environmental stewardship. If I don't like the world I see around me, filled with lack of respect for the environment, I need to consider my own actions and do what I can to enact change. A great motto from a truly amazing and wonderful man.