Every now and then I get an email updating me on my Google Maps photo statistics. As of today, these photos have 10,000+ views. The surprises? The chicken and the nondescript view of Lincoln Park Zoo’s south lagoon. That so many people are looking at Beaubien Woods. And that the photo of the Rainbow Bridge at Niagara Falls didn’t make the cut as of today. Not looking like it will for a long time.
Finally, at six figures:
Whenever I think I’m going to run out of forest preserves to explore, there always seem to be more. Sunday I spotted Whistler Woods on the Little Calumet River, but then my eye was drawn northward to Dan Ryan Woods and a single word on the map: Aqueduct. That sounded promising. I was torn, but Dan Ryan Woods is slightly closer, and who wouldn’t want to check out an aqueduct?
At 257 acres, Dan Ryan Woods is big and is one of the few forest preserves within Chicago. We stopped at the first entrance we came to on 87th, where I used the necessary and J. took videos of noisy remote-controlled racing cars.
At the next entrance, we found a visitor center (closed), a sledding hill, fitness steps based on the same principle as those at Swallow Cliff Woods, a fancy playground (relatively new, I found out later), and a monument “dedicated by Gold Star mothers in loving memory of our sons who gave their lives in the world war (1914–1918),” which had been been relocated to Dan Ryan Woods.
Dan Ryan Woods is also known for its view overlooking downtown Chicago. According to graphics by the visitor center, Dan Ryan Woods is the tip of an island once in ancient Lake Chicago, 14,000 years ago. This area is one part of Chicago that isn’t relatively flat.
We took the pedestrian underpass beneath 87th Street, where a sidewalk leads to a trail into the woods and to the limestone aqueducts that wind through them. According to the Forest Preserves of Cook County:
The limestone aqueducts at Dan Ryan Woods were constructed by the CCC to prevent water from washing away soil on the steep ridges. . . The CCC built limestone stairways in the 1930s for visitors to more easily access the ridges surrounding the aqueducts — and to admire the land below.
Time, and substantial restoration work, have turned a trip up these stairs into an awe inspiring climb through a mature woodland. Oak and hickory trees arch high overhead, while redbud and ironwood trees stand tall under the canopy. Native grasses and wildflowers carpet the woodland floor.
It’s an amazing walk, even in September, and I recommend climbing the stairs and looking down. The aqueducts were bone dry, and a few joggers ran in them. I was content to walk along them and enjoy the feeling of being deep in the woods, lost in time and space — and Chicago.
More here about Dan Ryan Woods.
1 Later I found a 1991 article that said Whistler Woods had become a dumping ground for bodies. I hope that’s well in the past.
A few years ago I met local writer Pat Camalliere at Sand Ridge Nature Center’s Settlers Day. I bought her first two books and this year read The Mystery at Sag Bridge. This passage caught my eye:
In the center of the clearing was a large stone slab, a cube of about four feet. Like 2001: A Space Odyssey, in miniature. The rock appeared to be a monument, and the clearing man-made. Fascinated, she approached the granite monolith and read the words carved on it: CAUTION—DO NOT DIG. BURIED IN THIS AREA IS RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL FROM NUCLEAR RESEARCH CONDUCTED HERE IN 1943–1949.
A memory of something she read, somewhere, sometime: Cora put it together. The old road led to Argonne Laboratory, a large national research facility that was hidden in the woods in these Forest Preserves during the Manhattan Project. It was an ideal location, for then, as now, one could walk for miles in these woods and remain unseen. She pictured Enrico Fermi and Albert Einstein walking this very ground, although she was only guessing.
This, then, was the secret hidden behind the trees that Cora had come looking for. She had no idea anything was left of the Manhattan Project and was surprised the waste was buried near the old site, as the present location of Argonne was across the valley two miles away—in fact, she would have been able to see it, were it not for the trees. She felt the same sense of history and being in another time and place as she had when she visited Saint James, just a short distance from here.
The Mystery at Sag Bridge by Pat Camalliere
Because other places Camalliere uses are real, for example, St. James at Sag Bridge Catholic Church, I assumed there may be a marker over buried radioactive waste in the forest preserves. On Sunday, J. and I went to Sagawau Canyon to watch the birds. Afterward, we had a little time, so I did some quick research and found what’s known as “Site A/Plot M” located at Red Gate Woods, just a few minutes away.
When we arrived at Red Gate Woods, I knew we were headed in the right direction when I saw this sign by a rough trailhead.
The point where we started is densely wooded, with an eroded trail marked by bike tire tracks and horseshoe prints. Soon it opened up onto what may have been a paved road at one time. I had to follow my location on Google Maps because there were several branch trails and a few splits in the paved road.
it was quiet along the way, with little traffic noise except for the occasional motorcycle or truck engine being revved.
Google Maps says this trail is “mostly flat”; my eyeballs and legs say it’s mostly uphill. We saw some bikers in the woods and on the paved road, along with a few people walking.
After another sign . . .
. . . and a few bends in the road we came to the Site A marker. The text wasn’t what Camalliere quoted in her book. Later I found out she quoted the Plot M marker, where nuclear waste is buried (“DO NOT DIG”). Site A is where the two nuclear piles (reactors), part of the Manhattan Project, are buried (I wouldn’t dig there, either). According to the Forest Preserves of Cook County website, “The area surrounding Site A and Plot M continue [sic] to undergo annual monitoring and remain [sic] safe by all measurements.”
For now.
Here’s I hoping I can make it someday to Plot M. Assuming I can find it.
Time for another look at Doctor Atomic.
Added June 5, 2022: PDF from the Department of Energy about Plot A/Site M.
Made it to “Butterflies and Blooms” at Chicago Botanic Garden on Sunday, the 16th. Given the limits on visitors, I thought it might be sold out for the day, but no. Ended up with a hitchhiker, a clipper native to Asia.
A property owner in Tennessee found what he thought was a litter of stray puppies in a drainpipe and raised them, then took them to a shelter. Later, a veterinarian said, “Hmmm. These are coyotes.” Apparently coyote pups look like dog pups.
This one ended up at River Trail Nature Center, part of the Cook County Forest Preserves. He’s too imprinted and tame to survive on his own. Our guide reminded us that typical coyotes avoid humans. The incidents of aggressive coyotes usually can be traced to injury or to the coyote being fed and losing its natural fear of people. Don’t feed the wildlife (except birds, of course).
Our guide also told us Cook County’s many coyotes are the most studied in the country. Many sport radio collars. When the collar stops moving, the researchers look for what they assume is a dead coyote. Often they find a chewed-up radio collar. Even with their long snouts, they can’t reach the collar, so they buddy up and chew each other’s collars off.
Wily indeed.
I told J this Will County Forest Preserve District program at Monee Reservoir sounded crunchy; I don’t think he quite got it.
I met him at the University Park Metra station, which is not that far north from Monee. For me, it was brutally sunny and hot, but at least I made it through the first part of the program. I had to pass on the second half, a jaunt to another bridge that wasn’t even that far away. At the first, the kids found enough dragonfly and damselfly larvae and other pond critters to keep them engaged for an hour or more, and I wandered off to see what was on the other side (dragonflies, damselflies, butterflies, one elusive Hemaris thysbe moth).
Despite my dropping out partway through, the leader was kind enough to give us ice cream sandwiches. He spent a lot of time answering my questions and showing me illustrative photos. By the time we left the building, where the air conditioning had failed a couple of days earlier, clouds had gathered and the temperature had dropped.
Monee’s not a big town but we found a great cheese and fruit plate, beer, and a light dinner at Labas Latte & Vino. And so back to reality . . . but at least I don’t have to live on 300 mosquitoes an hour.