Out fishing yesterday on the DesPlaines River, one of the nicer spots to get back to nature in ChicagoLand. Lake Country Forest Preserves have done a great job of restoring this urban watershed's natural ecology. Civilization, by default is still close by but as far as urban wilds go, this is as good as it gets.

Funny thing is when we first snuck out of Chicago looking for fishing spots that didn't involve piers full of people jostling for a square foot on Lake Michigan and leaving behind piles of trash(bait containers, line, pop bottles,diapers (!) Shame on those yahoos for being too stupid selfish or plain ignorant to realize they are crapping in their own mouths, too bad that's not literally what happens when they litter! Its a wonder we haven't been in a knock down drag out because neither one of us shies away from pointing out the mess to the morons responsible and asking them to clean it up- actually, we should all do that; if more did, more would learn...Or at least we can hope so. Sigh), this watershed looked wild and wonderful. And in fact it is, once you canoe away from the highway boat landing the waters clear and noise subsides, except for the lowing of the freight trains southbound.

But now, after having spent many weekends in the remote Wisconsin hills, DesPlains yesterday, at first, seemed positively noisy and dirty, until we got a mile upriver. Even then, the rumble of trucks on the highway never quite went away. (Photos above are DesPlaines watershed and a big Channel Catfish who jumped on an artificial lure!)

The point of this long digression being that we are so far removed from real wilderness and inured to the constant noise and dirt of human "civilization", that we are on (maybe over) the verge of realizing how far far far away we are from nature, and how benumbed our senses, and sense of wild places, have become.


It's both alarming and sad. How difficult will it become to teach our children and remind each other to be stewards of this amazing planet if we are aware only of the shadows of the daylight gleaming beind us?
Wisconsin Sunset, Grant County