A Day in Unbroken America

by Christos Economou

Saturday, March 7, 2020.  6:30 a.m.

Any alarm clock ringing at 6:30 on a typical Saturday would find itself on the other side of the room, in pieces.  But today is different.  Today I'm on a mission to discover what renowned naturalist Ray Schulenberg once famously called “America" – a piece of ancient and unbroken nature.  

Goose Lake Prairie, photo by Dan Kirk

I'm headed to Goose Lake Prairie, an Illinois Nature Preserve 50 miles southwest of Chicago.  I speed towards it on I-294, and the America of my every day, strip malls and corporate parks, "lollipop trees and poodle shrubs", flies by. I get to pondering Schulenberg's definition of 'America'.  What do I know of his America?  How much of it have I ever seen?

I'd seen prairie in the occasional picture, coneflowers or silphiums reaching for the blue sky.  I'd seen it in museum dioramas, where motionless bison roam a perennial autumn landscape that ends on a painted wall.  

But how many real prairies?  

One. Despite growing up in the Prairie State, I had only ever seen real prairie on an elementary school trip to the James Woodworth Preserve. Fuzzy memories surrounded by a chain-link fence, next to a McDonald's. That's all I knew of prairie – until recently.  

I always loved nature, a feeling that had taken root in my mother's garden, in documentaries, classrooms, and picnics at local Forest Preserves.  But my experience of it increasingly came to feel superficial. True "wildness" was something that seemed far away, so I hadn’t bothered to seek it out.  However, in light of near-daily reports of the environment's degradation all over the globe, each passing year in our everyday America made me yearn for a deeper connection. Increasingly too, I felt the urge to help care for it.

When I moved back to Chicago a little over a year ago, I suddenly found myself with weekends off and lots of extra time. I resolved to use it to fulfill this yearning, and help preserve the wonders of nature if I could. I connected with the North Branch Restoration Project, a group of volunteers who have been working to steward the glorious wilderness of the Forest Preserves for over four decades. From my first “workday” with them, I knew that this is what I was after. It was hands-on and immersive, surrounded by passionate people with a story about every plant and animal. Around their efforts, nature blossomed.

Dr. Robert Betz publicizes a prairie burn. News has impact.

At one workday, I stepped into a remnant prairie again for the first time since my youth.  Witnessing this relic was an awakening: a new dimension. I feel now that we have to keep these last remaining wild places thriving, not just for the unique flora and fauna with as much right to exist as we do, but for the very health of our own souls and those of future generations.

Recently, stewards I met on the North Branch have joined an awe-inspiring roster of environmentalists to extend this mission to all of Illinois. The initiative, called Friends of Illinois Nature Preserves, seeks to foster a statewide network of volunteer stewardship groups and lend decades of accumulated expertise in wildland rehabilitation to any Illinoisan interested in working to preserve our natural heritage.  

The 596 Illinois Nature Preserves have long been considered a model of conservancy around the country. Goose Lake was one of the earliest preserves to be established. It’s only because of some farsighted, proactive civic leaders – people like George Fell, May Theilgaard Watts, Robert F. Betz, Floyd Swink, and Bill Beecher – that Goose Lake isn't currently an abandoned clay pit. But in the past few decades, hundreds of preserves are declining in quality, due to bureaucratic bottlenecks, decreased funding for upkeep, and lack of needed friends. The plants and animals that made these places special are increasingly threatened by invasive species, despite heroic efforts on the part of local conservation agency staff.  Unfortunately Goose Lake Prairie, after decades of neglect, is no exception.  

Learning about all this made me anxious, then sad, then angry, then finally excited. I decided this was how to get more involved. Friends of the Illinois Nature Preserves' kickoff workday is today, at Goose Lake. This is the reason for my early Saturday morning. I'm going to make America a little greener.  

Invasive autumn olive in one of the highest quality areas of Goose Lake. Without our intervention, this species and similar shrubs would proliferate and shade out the rare native plant community.

I finally arrive and spot a tall man in a hunting cap and glasses up ahead, waiting for a last volunteer – me. Stephen Packard, the longtime volunteer steward of Somme Prairie Grove, is one of the founders of this new Friends group. He guides me to the highest-quality prairie remnant where twenty other volunteers, mostly local, are already hard at work. He himself is a living encyclopedia. As we walk he gestures, and around him switchgrass and rattlesnake master, prairie dropseed and evening primrose, spring from his fingertips.

When I stumble on a boulder, there is even a story about that. The boulders here are glacial erratics, transported by the ice-sheets that flattened Illinois in their advance and retreat. These boulders, and the wetness of the site, perhaps explain why the prairie was never plowed. Under my breath, I bless the glacier that left them 18,000 years ago.  

Chaotic prairie beauty is visible here. I'm starting to be able to distinguish little bluestem (golden grass), prairie dropseed (beige grass), cream false indigo (brown seed pods), and wild quinine (grey leaves).

We approach, and notice the early-bird volunteers already cutting back woody invaders in transects, one painstaking step at a time, "making haste, slowly" to rescue the leadplant, wild quinine, and cream false indigo that grow in profusion here. Every one saved will in turn support an incredibly diverse array of animal life. A smile is irrepressible each time I come across one of their pale skeletons.  

Later, we sit for lunch in a patch of dropseed and mountain mint. I begin to take it all in. Early March, brisk and sunny, the prairie is still a sea of beige, yet even in its slumber, wonderous.  Matt Evans, researcher at the Chicago Botanic Garden, volunteer steward at South Brook Woods, and another founder of Friends, suggests we might be settling down in centuries-old bison dung. Given the beaming faces all around, no one seems to mind. Then partway through lunch, I notice half the crew disappear. An hour or so later, I glance at the blue skies downwind and learn why. Smoke.

Volunteers working (and snacking…) at Goose Lake; then Short Cemetery after the burn

Two of our crew, regional ecologists Kim Roman and Dan Kirk (with the Illinois Nature Preserve Commission and Department of Natural Resources, respectively) had planned to take advantage of a few extra, trained volunteers for a prescribed burn. Fires were frequent in the time before Illinois became the nation's breadbasket and were an integral part of the state's ecosystems. In the past, they were mostly set intentionally by Native Americans. Fire set back woody vegetation, keeping prairies as prairies, and oak woods as oak woods.  Today, lack of fire is one of the biggest challenges facing native species in Illinois. Without fire there is simply no preserving fire-dependent ecosystems.

The weather today is perfect for a burn: brisk, dry, and sunny, with a slight wind blowing toward a natural firebreak, Heidecke Lake.  We watch the smoke grow in patches here and there in the distance – the back-fire – then billow furiously all at once as the head fire is lit. We wrap up our brush cutting and rush over to see if we can catch the fire's last moments, but disappointingly arrive in time only to see its aftermath: smoke, ash, and charred hummocks. Suddenly, the burn crew bursts forth from behind the rising plumes of smoke, riding towards us like conquering soldiers on ATVs, flappers aloft. Their enthusiasm is palpable and infectious.  We congratulate them on the battle they've won. 

Matt poses in apparent desolation at Goose Lake…

A spark then kindles in Kim's eyes. Short Cemetery Prairie, another nearby Nature Preserve adopted by the Friends, hasn't been burned in years. The weather is perfect, the forces are deployed, there is light still in the day. Are any of us in for another burn? Quick looks communicate the obvious. We leave our morning’s destruction behind, certain that verdure will rise again soon at Goose Lake.

Dan lighting the head-fire at Short Cemetery Prairie.

At the cemetery, rakes and flappers are passed around. After a pre-burn huddle, we furiously rake grass and leaves to make a firebreak around the perimeter.  Before I know it, fire is on the ground, and armed with my flapper, I tail Somme steward Eriko Kojima like a baby duckling after she graciously agrees to coach me.  

The Short Pioneer Cemetery Nature Preserve is only about one acre, and though the whole was originally prairie, today it is hemmed in by shady trees and brush.  Since a lot of the fuel here is leaf litter, which doesn't burn as well as dry thatch, this wouldn't be considered a large fire – nothing compared to the one at Goose Lake. But the take-away today is how hot even 'small' fires are. Really damn hot, is how hot. As I flap out spot fires that have jumped the firebreak, I feel about to burst into flames myself, and at times the smoke is so unbearable I need to step away just to breathe.  

After about ten minutes, the back-fire is burned in and the head-fire is lit. Flames race forward with the wind, but our work now consists mostly of watching and taking pictures. The flames advance unevenly, in some places six inches high while in others six feet. In 15 glorious minutes, the head-fire has reached the back-fire, and it’s all over.  

As the sun sets, we assess the burn. The smoke disperses quickly, revealing blackened brambles with denuded stalks sprawled about like spiders' legs, and small patches of grass that have not burned at all – welcome refuge for the dormant insects that will provide the prairie's soundtrack in the summer. Katie Kucera, master's student in plant biology at Northwestern, then points out some flattened, leathery growths amongst the singed grass. Prickly pear! Once just a word in my vocabulary, now given shape and substance by this day and this fire. Elsewhere, segmented shoots poke out of the sandy soil: horsetails, dinosaur-age survivors in the story of evolution, surviving this fire as well. Just as I head toward the exit, I notice a bluebird – my first ever – eyeing us curiously.

Prickly pear cactus observed after the burn. Another first in a day of firsts.

Back on the road, for a few triumphant minutes Schulenberg's America recedes in my rearview mirror. Soon another emerges, unreal and dreamlike, concrete and headlights. The soot and smoke clinging to my clothes – and the broad smile on my face – remind me which one I spent my day in.

Many thanks to Stephen Packard, Kathleen Garness, and Eriko Kojima for guidance and proofreading.