Chicago EXPLORING NATURE & CULTURE WWINITLERD 20E01 RNEchicagowiS ldernessmSag.org WILEY NEIGHBOR • B ORN AGAIN RIVER What is ChicagoWilderness? Chicago Wilderness is some of the finest and most significant nature in the temperate world, with a core of roughly 200,000 acres of protected natural lands harboring native plant and animal communities that are more rare–and their survival more globally threat - ened–than the tropical rain forests. CHICAGO WILDERNESS is an unprecedented alliance of 124 public and private organizations working together to study and restore, protect and manage the precious natural ecosystems of the Chicago region for the benefit of the public. www.chicagowilderness.org Chicago WILDERNES S is a quarterly magazine that celebrates the rich natural heritage of this region and tells the inspiring stories of the people and organizations working to heal and protect local nature. www.chicagowildernessmag.org CHICAGO WILDERNESS A Regional Nature Reserve Looking In Both Directions O P P O o be human is to want to make things, to con - Asa Gray herbarium at Harvard. He also tried the S I T struct and build, to shape and mold. We do this Internet. Typing in “Vasey” to conduct a search, Ed E : Twith sand and snow for play. “Look, Mom,” says found a “very famous George Vasey who was an S u n young Sonia Pollock in the photo here, “look what I’ve Australian general in World War II.” Ha. Wrong turn. s e made.” We do this with homes and schools, churches Gradually Ed found the real Dr. Vasey. “There’s a very t o n and entire landscapes for human society. The history of poignant letter written in 1863 before Vasey learned o our efforts is writ large upon the land, how we have that his younger brother, who was in the Union Army, a k sculpted from wild places the shape of our hopes and had been killed in the battle of Fredericksburg,” Ed l e a v dreams, our farms and cities. recalls. “It’s like looking e s But equally human with through a lace curtain, or a a n our passion to build is a shade on a window–it’s misty d w yearning for knowledge, and veiled but you can see the i n d beauty, and excellence. We shapes of the past. Vasey b l o are a curious and imagina - arrived in Ringwood eight w n tive species, endlessly years after the invention of s n inventive, sometimes irre - the plow, so there was very lit - o w sponsible, sometimes even tle ground that had been d r i wise. The humbling lessons plowed then. The prairies and f t b we have learned in the cen - barrens were still original. He y W tury just ended are that we lived in the twilight of the i l l do not, despite our clever - prairie wilderness. To read his a r d ness, know all. We have letters is to see that world C l a learned that changing the through the eyes of a 28 year- y . land is not always right, or old botanist who’s in love good. We have learned that with plants.” changing the land can mean To read the story of Ed’s losing our selves and our search for Dr. Vasey is to see P h place in the world. o the world through the eyes of t o : This issue is full of good M a passionate and hungry i k e news, small and large. The M sleuth, to celebrate with him a c story of the born-again river D the joys of discovery. But Ed is o n a in McHenry County (page l also the kind of historian d 8) shows that we, as groups who’s looking for the future, of people working together, can make amends, can re- here in the Middle West, by shuffling mussels, ungirdling shape the landscape to provide better habitat for scores rivers, planting the seeds of ancient plants along the of species–and better places for humans to enjoy. The sides of modern streams. “We’ve learned how to take poem by Mona van Duyn on page 28 illustrates the things apart and reduce them to the smallest piece, but transforming power of the world outside our windows. when we do, we lose how they’re connected and it And Ed Collins’s search for Dr. Vasey demonstrates in leaves us, in the end, empty,” Ed says. Stewardship–car - moving fashion the transforming power of curiosity. ing for the land and restoring it–gives us that chance, he Ed’s search for Dr. Vasey, a 19th century physician says, to be re-connected. To be a part, not apart. and botanist who arrived in McHenry County in 1848 Chicago Wilderness offers all of us this priceless and settled at Ringwood, spanned two continents and opportunity to re-connect our semi-urban selves with took him to the archives of numerous universities. Ed wild nature, to shape the land wisely and well, to build a found a plant species list for McHenry County in the meaningful future. I am so proud to be a part of this. Debra Shore EDITOR W INTER 2001 P h CONTENTS o t o : P a t W a d FEATURES e c k i / R o o t WILEY NEIGHBOR R e s by Chris Hardman . .4 o u r c 4 e Burgeoning coyotes–they make folks nervous but help the ecosystem. s BORN AGAIN RIVER . .8 Bringing the Nippersink back to nature, backhoe-style. SEARCHING FOR DR. V ASEY by Ed Collins . .10 Finding the future by researching the past. P h o t o D E PA RTMENTS : P a t W a d Into the Wild . .17 e c 8 k Wintry destinations for making tracks–and following them. i Natural Events Calendar. Working the Wilderness: The Herbicide Helper . .18 By Joe Neumann Meet Your Neighbors . .25 Seeding the Snow , a women’s nature journal. Northern shrike. Greg P h o t o LeFevre, restoration veteran at age 14. : K a n a Letter From a Father, a poem by Mona Van Duyn . .28 e H i r a b a Feeding Birds: A Primer . .30 y a 31 s h by Bob and Karen Fisher. i Snowy! . .31 Kanae Hirabayashi and an Arctic owl. Chicago The Chicago River : A Book Review . .32 WILDERNES S Volume IV, Number 2 News from Chicago Wilderness . .33 BOARD OF DIRECTORS: President : Dr. George Rabb Reading Pictures . .40 Vice-President : Dan Griffin Secretary : Laura Gates True Progress. Treasurer : Barbara Whitney Carr Jerry Adelmann, Laura Hohnhold, John Rogner, Ron Wolk EDITOR . Debra Shore SENIOR EDITOR . Stephen Packard ASSISTANT EDITOR . Sheryl De Vore NEWS EDITOR . Alison Carney Brown ART DIRECTOR . Carol Freeman/Freeman Design WEBMASTER/DESIGNER . Jennifer Dees SUBSCRIPTIONS MANAGER . Lisa Phillips www.chicagowildernessmag.org Chicago WILDERNESS is published quarterly. Subscriptions are $14/yr. Please address all subscription correspondence to Chicago WILDERNESS , P.O. Box 5054, Skokie, IL 60076-5054. (847) 965-9253. [email protected] Please direct editorial inquiries and correspondence to Editor, Chicago WILDERNESS , 5225 Old Orchard Road, Suite 37, Skokie, IL 60077. (847) 965-9275. 28 e-mail: [email protected] Chicago WILDERNESS is printed on recycled paper. ABOVE: The spirit of a bird can warm a winter heart. And in a poem of Mona Van Duyn (see Chicago WILDERNESS is endorsed by the Chicago Region page 28), it can do much more. Photo by Robert Shaw. Biodiversity Council. The opinions expressed in these OPPOSITE: Thorn Creek, Jurgensen Woods, Cook County Forest Preserves. Photo by Joe Nowak. pages, however, are the authors’ own. COVER: Coyotes’ electrifying howls enrich the night for people living near forest preserves. © by Chicago Wilderness Magazine , Inc. Photo by Alan G. Nelson/Root Resources. ISSN 1097-8917. Postmaster, address service requested to Chicago WILDERNESS , P.O. Box 5054, Skokie, IL 60076 W INTER 2001 All rights reserved. WILEY NEIGHBOR by Chris Hardman A lone coyote crosses a frozen slough in western Cook County. he North American coyote has long been a symbol Chicago residents were taken by surprise in March of of the wilderness. Snout pointed toward the evening 1999 when the Chicago Tribune publicized the capture of a Tsky with a full moon at his back, the coyote reminds coyote that was hiding under a taxi on Michigan Avenue. us of what is truly wild in this country. Or does it? These That was no surprise to Chris Anchor, a wildlife biologist days, the coyote can be found anywhere in Chicago with the Forest Preserve District of Cook County charged Wilderness–from the bustling streets of Chicago to cultivat - with capturing and releasing the urban coyote. According ed suburban neighborhoods to the natural wilds. to his studies, all coyote habitat in Cook County is occu - Coyotes were roaming Chicago Wilderness forests and pied and spoken for. The coyotes have been living among prairies long before Europeans immigrated here in the us for several decades. 1800s. Journals kept by early explorers indicate that coyotes “One of the reasons they have been so successful is that were abundant in Illinois in the 1800s but their popula - they are rather plastic in their feeding habits, are oppor - tions declined dramatically in the latter part of the century. tunistic, and take advantage of a wide variety of food It wasn’t until almost 100 years later that their numbers sources,” says Frank Drummond, a wildlife biologist for the increased, starting in west-central Illinois in the early 1970s Lake County Forest Preserves.