Twelve feet at a time

“I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.” — American naturalist and nature essayist John Burroughs (1837-1921)

Exploring the great outdoors has always been a foundational piece of my identity.

I have my late Nana to thank for that happy state of affairs. Among the reading always at hand in her living room was famed American ecologist, forester and environmentalist Aldo Leopold’s Wisconsin-inspired 1949 non-fiction book “A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There,” which shared the coffee table with multiple birding books, National Geographic, Smithsonian and Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos.”

Not surprisingly, her expansive half-acre yard was lush with greenery and something of a bird haven for a variety of feathered friends singing their melodic hearts out. Few things in life filled her with joy more than watching the procession of colorful birds at the feeders and bird bath outside her dinette window.

For me, wandering Nana’s yard as a child was adventuring in a natural wonderland, thrilling at the twirling helicopter seeds of the sugar maples, the majestic vase-like canopy of the elms, the curling paper-white birch bark, and the velvety bark of the stag horn sumac.

Fostering my budding wonder and awe of the natural world, Nana provided me with a variety of magazine subscriptions over the years, first to the National Wildlife Federation’s Ranger Rick’s Nature Magazine — the tales of a cartoon raccoon park ranger and his Deep Green Wood compatriots in their adventures to preserve the environment — and then later a rite of passage to more scholarly adult publications like National Geographic.

At 60, I may not always remember the online password for my 401K plan, but I can still remember lo these many decades later Ranger Rick’s Pledge: “As a member of Ranger Rick’s Nature Club, I promise to explore the wonders of nature all around me, to learn the importance of every living being, to live every day as Earth’s best friend, and to help others do the same.”

Thanks to those foundational roots in nature — and many others — I still delight in the natural world.

Thus it was that I found myself out and about on my e-bike last Saturday, the thrill of nature intermingling with the gentle hum of adventure as the wheels turned beneath me on the paved 2.3-mile bike-and-hike recreation path through flower-filled prairies and cool shady woodlands along the winding Kishwaukee River that cuts through limestone bluffs at 629.9-acre Blackhawk Springs, one of 44 county forest preserves where I live. And yes, truth in advertising, there is a bubbly namesake, Blackhawk Spring, along the route.

The Aventon e-bike, a high-tech replacement for my 10-speed Schwinn that was stolen in Minocqua several years back, was a get-well post-hospital rehab gift from my daughter and her boyfriend after the warranty expired on my appendix last fall.

My love for exploring the outdoors has reached a new zenith with the addition of the e-bike to my life. While I once scoffed at the notion of an electric bicycle, I now readily admit that it not only promises ease for my creaky knees on long rides and steep grades but also urges me to push my limits with long-distance rides with a little added e-boost.

My e-bike adventures last Saturday began under peek-a-boo sunshine, rays periodically filtering through a patchwork of clouds that danced across the horizon. After crossing the river on an old railroad trestle, I hit the trail with a sense of buoyancy, the gentle whirring of the tires softly kissing the pavement of the winding forest preserve trail as my nose was met by the fragrant welcome of spring and songbirds flitted around me, singing a melodic symphony.

Like Leopold in Wisconsin’s Central Sands region and “Father of the National Parks” John Muir and author Henry David Thoreau at Walden Pond before him, I felt palpably alive, more connected to the world around me than I had in ages.

As I ventured deeper into the Blackhawk Springs preserve, traversing the occasional picturesque bridge and the beckoning trail curves beyond, I passed colorful thickets of blooms along the trail — Philadelphia fleabane, wild parsnip, dame’s rocket, amur honeysuckle, wild perennial lupine, Ohio spiderwort, golden ragwort, white campion, Allegheny blackberry, yellow sweet clover, yarrow, butterweed, creeping yellowcress, field pennycress, giant chickweed, orchard grass, while blue phlox, Virginia waterleaf, and prairie rose among them.

The bumblebee-friendly Virginia waterleaf — hydrophyllum virginianum — also known as eastern waterleaf and Shawnee salad — is quite striking.

If I perhaps sound like Leopold, with an encyclopedic knowledge of flora, native and invasive, appearances can sometimes be deceiving. Where Leopold likely dragged heavy volumes of books and journals into the field and perhaps a sketchbook for new discoveries, I have a smartphone with a camera and the PictureThis plant identifier app.
Suffice to say, the 2.3-mile trip from one trailhead to the other was slow going on the way in, riding a whole dozen feet at a time before stopping to snap a wondrous scene, before riding another dozen feet to another vista more spectacular than the last. And that pace was meant to be. The bubbling Blackhawk Spring was quite the sight as it made its way downstream to the Kishwaukee.

My ride was a bit faster on the return leg but no less wondrous as the landscape unfolded around me.

On my adventure on the e-bike, I encountered the occasional fellow adventurer on the trail — couples young and old, solo hikers, families out for a stroll, folks walking their dogs, anglers along the river. With a nod and a friendly smile, I echoed their wonder, reinforcing the sense of community — common unity — among nature lovers.

As Leopold wrote, “Some paintings become famous because, being durable, they are viewed by successive generations, in each of which are likely to be found a few appreciative eyes. I know a painting so evanescent that it is seldom viewed at all except by some wandering deer. It is a river who wields the brush, and it is the same river who, before I can bring my friends to view his work, erases it forever.”

Those of us on the trail, like Leopold’s deer, were privileged to see nature’s evanescent painting, thanks to the land ethic of the forest preserve.

News-Review freelance columnist Eric Johnson can be reached at eric@fyinorthwoods.com.