Good timing

I can't get over the amount of open space on the west side of Dick Young Forest Preserve these days. Just so grateful that the referendum in Kane County passed in time for the forest preserve district to buy up all those acres extending west to Bliss Road. I'll say it loud: It would have been horrid to have 1000 houses built on that land. Now it's open space for a straight mile west. Awesome at twilight with hundreds of flowers backlit by the sun.

There aren't any mowed trails out there (which is fine) that I have found as yet even though they show up on the preserve maps. No matter. Some day the county will figure out what it wants to do with that property. But in the mean time, there are awesome walking and running trails circling and bisecting the preserve.

I decided to conduct a little test by inviting my wife to walk straight from the north parking lot through the prairie to meet me at the walking bridge. I planned to run around the loop past the east entrance. Figured it would take about the same time for me to run those miles as it would for her to walk the distance she would cover.

We met exactly where I predicted. "You're a freak," she laughed. "How did you know that would happen."

30 years' experience with running, I told her. Some strange algorithm in my head figured it out. I hadn't analyzed. It was strange to have it work that well.

The breeze was blowing fresh and clean as we walked the westernmost gravel trail back to the parking lot together. "This is wonderful," she told me.

All along the trail the voices of grassland birds could be heard. My wife noted the call of a pair of sandhill cranes in the distance as well. We passed meadowlarks (and those little meadowlarks, she told me, what are those called? "Dickcissels," I smiled) and sedge wrens, yellowthroats and savannah sparrows. No bobolinks this year? The grass might have grown too high too quickly. Now the county is whaling around with its mowers, clearing out sections of grassland for some purpose or another.

When we reach the rise in the gravel trail I look northwest and realize there is an even bigger hill blocking the setting sun. Behind that hill is a big gravel pit. You can see it on the Google map. If there was just a touch more gravel to be mined under this old farmland it probably would have succumbed to the shovels and trucks long ago. As it stands, the mini-sized prairie kame is still here for us to enjoy. It survived 100+ years of farming, but not all the soil around it fared so well. You can see from the rise of the old farm fenceline that the original soil was at least two feet deeper than it is today. Hard to calculate just how much dirt that really represents when you stop to think about 1000 acres of land. Or a million acres. Or 10 million. Because that's what has happened across the entire midwest. Huge amounts of dirt tilled for agriculture blew and washed away somewhere, probably into the Gulf of Mexico by way of the Fox River, the Illinois, the Mississippi. The evidence is clear in that rise of fenceline running like a spine below the gravel hill laid down by glaciers 10,000 years ago.

Now the prairie is growing back on the tired out soil. Grain by grain the organic material will come back to these fields and these hills. It's a matter of time and decay.

It all had to fit together for this to happen. The county getting funding at the right time. The old farm family passing away and selling the land. Fending off the builders. Letting the corn and beans fade away. Breaking the tiles and raising the water table. Planting prairie. We've come full circle. We're meeting up with the past almost as if we had it planned. We had the instinct and made it happen. When it comes to Dick Young Forest Preserve and Nelson Lake Marsh, that is some very good timing.