Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie, located just north of Wilmington IL in Will County, is seeking a full-time Assistant Volunteer Coordinator. This position is possible because of a partnership between the U.S. Forest Service and The Nature Conservancy.
To view this job posting and apply, please visit www.nature.org/careers. You can search by using the job ID #41231. All applicants must apply online; Midewin does not accept emailed resumes. Submit your resume and cover letter as one document. All applications must be submitted in the system prior to 11:59 pm Eastern Time on July 16, 2013.
Allison Cisneros – Volunteer Coordinator
The Nature Conservancy @ U.S. Forest Service
Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie
30239 South IL State Route 53, Wilmington IL 60481
Work: 815.423.2149 Cell: 815.474.3808 acisneros@tnc.org
Turning the soil in the Farm’s west planting beds, 24 April 2013
Many of the writing and research assignments I give my students at RU are fairly straightforward and prescriptive. I give them a lot of concrete guidelines and freedom to choose a topic; they crank out the work; and then I grade it and give it back with feedback. That’s how it works for the most part in academia.
This spring semester, in addition to their weekly work on the farm watering plants, building compost bins, turning over soil, constructing greenhouse grow tables, etc., my 15 undergrad students were tasked with a collaborative “Action Research” project, in which they’d work in pairs or trios to develop real-world projects meant to extend and enhance the mission and work of this extraordinary half-acre urban farm.
Having never led quite such a research project before, I wasn’t exactly sure how to instruct them in this process — consequently, I just didn’t have the procedure or the finished project all scripted out like I usually do. Instead, I offered some rough guidelines (see project guidelines here [pdf]), moral and logistical support (likewise provided by the farm’s director, Natasha Holbert), and a lot of room for creativity.
Boy, did I learn something. Give motivated, smart, and engaged students a chance to do creative applied research for a place that they respect and appreciate, and they are capable of doing terrific work. (Note to self: do this again.) Here’s what they came up with. All of these Action Research Projects are designed to be implemented, expanded, and/or revised by the Farm staff and workers — and some may be taken up and extended by future SUST 350 students here at Roosevelt.
Our last workday, 1 May 2013, at the farm. Pictured here are RU students, CLUF staff, and Growing Power / Chicago Lights “Youth Corps” interns.
Community Empowerment and Youth Enrichment (CEYE) Program
Allison Breeding, Scott Rogers, and Troy Withers
The CEYE Program is comprised of three branches—Community Service, Food Access and Engagement, and Roosevelt Credit—which collectively aim to benefit the lives and futures of Chicago Lights Urban Farm (CLUF) volunteers, at-risk urban youths, and Cabrini seniors. CEYE seeks to take teens out of a path of trouble and into a path of service, volunteerism, and eventually college and career. The program also seeks to empower and assist local seniors by improving their food access and strengthening their community connections. (CEYE Proposal pdf)
Community Gardeners’ Guide
Jordan Ewbank, Kristen Johnson, and Ana Molledo
A practical how-to resource for people wishing to start their own community garden, based on the knowledge and practices of the CLUF community garden, established in 2002. Discusses land preparation, garden organization and design, raised beds vs. in-ground gardening, soil quality, compost, and what kinds of vegetables to grow. (Gardeners’ Guide pdf)
Troy and his son, working together on our 24 April 2013 workday
Farm Education Lessons and Activities
Bob Basile, Christian Cameron, and Molly Connor
Educational lessons and activities for K through Grade 6 students on composting, planting, and nutrition meant to be used at the CLUF to connect urban farm education with sustainability. May be expanded by future students for 7-12 grade levels on these and additional topics. (Farm Curriculum pdf)
Knowing Your Neighborhood: Community Assets Brochure and Map
Mike Miller and Ken Schmidt
Brochure (pdf)and interactive Google map designed to highlight resources and assets with a one-mile radius of the Chicago Lights Urban Farm.
Rainwater Harvesting Plan
Michael Magdongon and Lore Mmutle
A concrete proposal for the installation of a rainwater harvesting system on one of the Farm’s hoop houses. Would provide a sustainable supply of water to decrease dependence upon usage of the street hydrant on Chicago Ave., now the Farm’s main water source. Projected return on investment within one year.
(Rainwater Proposal pdf)
Self-Guided Tour and Farm Map
Bryan McAlister and Lauren Winkler
This beautifully designed one-page, double-sided guided tour information sheet and map is ideal for first-time visitors to the Farm who would like a brief and fun introduction to all of the spaces and growing areas within its half-acre footprint. Includes information of selected vegetables and several recipes for cooking them.
(Guided Tour and Map Brochure pdf)
Question: What do the northeastern Illinois communities of Arlington Heights, Batavia, Chicago, Downers Grove, Evanston, Hoffman Estates, Naperville, Northbrook, Oak Park, Plainfield, and St. Charles have in common with Cincinnati, OH; Nashville, TN; Pittsburgh, PA; Sioux City, IA; and Topeka, KS?
Answer: All of them allow city residents to keep backyard chickens for egg production.
Here in Joliet, there’s a grassroots movement aflutter to legalize residential chicken-keeping, a plucky proposal I enthusiastically support.
The virtues of city and suburban backyard hens are many and various. As noted by the local advocacy organization J-Hens (Joliet Healthy Eggs in Neighborhoods), urban chickens:
provide fresh and nutritious eggs that are far superior to most purchased in supermarkets (I know; I’ve tasted ’em);
recycle food waste by consuming kitchen scraps and producing valuable compost for gardens;
are fun family pets that provide our technology-distracted children with animal companionship, healthy outdoor activity, and instructive caretaking chores.
To be sure, uninformed naysayers wrongly assume that backyard chickens are dirty, noisy, and detrimental to local property values. I do know many so-called humans who fit such a description, and I bet you do, too. But not our dirt-scratching, bug-eating feathered friends. (Yes, folks — chickens love to eat bugs. What’s not to like about that?)
Let’s start with the property value myth. First of all, the irresponsible wrongdoings of many American financial institutions have wreaked exponentially more havoc upon the local housing economy the last five years than anything a few little hens down the alley could ever do.
Secondly, just look again at the list of cities above: does anyone really believe that the affluent communities of Arlington Heights, Evanston, Naperville, and the regulation-obsessed Oak Park — all cities with far higher average home values than Joliet — would’ve approved their backyard hen ordinances if property values were truly at risk? I rest my case.
What about the chicken poop? you ask. Won’t it be stinky? Of course it will — IF YOU DON’T CLEAN IT UP. Again, let’s get real. Our present-day urban landscape is constantly bombarded with doggy doo-doo from the tens of thousands of dogs slobbering along in our midst and treating our lawns and parkways as their personal bathrooms. These putrescent pooch piles are large, stinky, and messy — I know because I’ve cleaned a lot of them up in my 45 years. But do we outlaw the keeping of dogs as household/backyard pets because of their daily defecations? No — we simply expect their owners to deal with the waste properly.
Don’t you wish?
And as for alleged noise problems: we’re not talking roosters here. Hens are quiet and unaggressive compared to those preening and caterwauling males of the species, not to mention yappy canines and loudmouth people. (You know who you are.)
If Joliet really wants to deal with urban noise issues, I suggest the Council turn its attention to the bass-thumping car stereos that rattle my teeth and jiggle my liver as I sit in my vehicle waiting for the stoplight to change. How about an ordinance against those aural abominations?
More backyard chickens. Less liver-jiggling noise pollution. Now that would be progress!
I encourage all forms of urban gardening and farming, especially in my hometown, and recommend the J-Hens website to readers near and far. I also love doggies and my fellow man, contrary to what this article might imply. A version of this essay appears in the 5 June 2013 edition of the Joliet Herald-News as the creatively-titled “Backyard Chickens in Joliet.”
This week I’m discussing transportation with my Roosevelt University students in my online SUST 210 Sustainable Future class. Today I used three modes of transportation by 8:30am here in my hometown of Joliet, IL.
First, I drove my daughter Esmé and her school chum Claudia to kindergarten at our neighborhood elementary school, which is 1.1 miles from our house. But because it wasn’t raining, we parked a few blocks away and walked up to the door, so we could get a little exercise and some fresh air. Amazingly, the girls skipped along the sidewalk, even though it was a cold and blustery Friday and they had to wear their winter coats. Kid energy at 7:45am — it’s truly impressive.
After walking back to my car, I considered my options: drive henceforth to my favorite coffee shop in downtown Joliet, about two miles east? Or zip home first and ride my bike? I chose the latter, because my 45-year-old body desperately needs exercise, any exercise, and it would take me only a couple more minutes to get to my destination. (I’m way too cheap to get a health club membership, so I get my sporadic workouts away way I can.)
So I pumped up the tires on my 1972 Schwinn Varsity and rode down the long hill to the Des Plaines River, crossed the Ruby Street bridge and waved to the I & M Canal as I did so, locked up my bike in front of Jitters, and fired up the laptop, a steaming mug of excellent java close at hand.
It is a particular privilege of an academic like myself to perform this series of tasks and call it “work.” Plus, I can take pleasure in supporting the local economy, and anticipate additional (free) exercise on my strenuous uphill ride back home later this morning.
Last Saturday, Feb. 23, my SUST 220 Water students (both past and present) joined me at a wonderful annual event here in the Windy City: the Chicago River Student Congress, convened by the environmental conservation organization Friends of the Chicago River. This 2013 celebration of river conservation and environmental education was held at Marie Curie Metro High School on Chicago’s SW Side, and featured yours truly as the “special guest speaker,” a designation that made me proud and humble at the same time, for I still consider myself a student of rather than an expert about the Chicago River.
The Chicago River: Transformed, Exploited, and Abused — but Still Alive
Chicago River Student Congress Special Guest Presentation (pdf version)
SUST majors Ron Taylor, Angi Cornelius, and Ken Schmidt at the 2013 Congress
Last year, I co-presented a workshop session on Water and Sustainability with then-SUST major (and now alum) Amanda Zeigler (BPS ’12); you can view a pdf of our slideshow from that 2012 workshop. This successful experience led me to recruit three students from my Fall 2012 Water class at Roosevelt to be fellow participants in this year’s Congress. The fact that my Fall and Spring Water classes this academic year are partnering with Friends of the Chicago River on a “Blueways to Green” environmental education grant made that prospect irresistible.
Former canoeing partners and classmates, Ron Taylor and Ken Schmidt — whose collective nickname “Ebony and Ivory” demonstrates the awesome power of the river to bring together people of all races, creeds, and colors — agreed to co-present a workshop with me entitled “Sustainability and the Chicago River: from Urbanization to Pollution to Restoration,” which we did twice during the course of the Congress (here’s the pdf of our slideshow (8MB file). Ron and Ken skillfully shifted back and forth in their presentation, and were able to elicit lots of dialogue from their audience member, mainly students from CPS high schools who have done environmental conservation and/or science projects on the river.
Meanwhile, roaming the halls of the Congress was fellow SUST major Angi Cornelius, another student from my Fall 2012 Water class, who indulged her theatrical side by dressing up as one of six “Super Villians” who represented ecological/social threats to the biodiversity and water quality of urban rivers. Angi’s character was “Z. Mussel” (the zebra mussel, naturally), an invasive bivalve species that she refashioned into the persona of a Russian femme fatale. Along with her fellow Villians, Angi worked the crowd throughout the morning by engaging students in small group conversations about the impact of invasive species on rivers, streams, and the Great Lakes ecosystem.
Students from my current section of SUST 220 Water met at the Congress for our 4th week of class and our 2nd field session of the semester. The Congress is a unique learning opportunity, as it features a wide variety of speakers and workshops — some by high school teachers and students; some by college profs and students; and a few by conservationists, environmental professionals, etc. — that provide attendees with science-based knowledge about the river’s history, ecology, present status, and future prospects.
Hiking the trail at Portage Woods; Joliet and Marquette were here about 340 years ago
Following the Congress and a quick sack lunch at the high school, during which we bade farewell to Ron, Ken, and Angi, my 220 scholars and I carpooled to a nearby Cook County Forest Preserve location that has profound historical and geographic significance to the city of Chicago, the Chicago and Des Plaines Rivers, and two of the great North American watersheds (those of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River). This is the Chicago Portage National Historic Site at 4800 S. Harlem Ave. in Lyons, one of only two National Historic Sites in the entire State of Illinois.
If the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District’s Stickney wastewater treatment plant just to the east is a supreme example of how we use technology and the built environment to control water as a resource (and deal with the problem of wastewater), the Chicago Portage is polar opposite kind of experience. Here we see the landscape much as it appeared to the 17th century explorers Louis Joliet and Pierre Marquette, when they crossed Mud Lake (now occupied by the Stickney WTP) between the Des Plaines and Chicago Rivers, thus staking out a trade route between the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico.
Picking up trash from the shoreline of the Chicago River’s South Turning Basin, at the mouth of Bubbly Creek
Our last stop of the day was further east on Interstate 55, where we exited north on Ashland Avenue and stopped at Canal Origins Park. This riverside parkland (and fishing spot) provides impressive views of the present-day juncture of the Chicago River’s South Branch and Bubbly Creek, and commemorates the origin of the historic I&M Canal, which was constructed from 1836 to 1848 and fulfilled Joliet’s dream of connecting the Great Lakes with the Mississippi River system. Here, then, is a superb spot to talk about the history, ecology, and geography of the creeks and rivers which run through the city, as well as the industrial and wastewater treatment processes that have polluted these waters over the years.
At Canal Origins, we engaged in some good old-fashioned service learning, Roosevelt-style, by donning work gloves and picking up any litter/recyclables we came across. A recent blanket of snow concealed most of the litter in the upper part of the park, along the busy street. But down at the river line at the South Turning basin, where Bubbly Creek enters into the South Branch, lots of garbage and urban detritus presented itself for our labors.
Conor and Chris drag a heavy tire up the steep slope from the river’s shoreline
My students hurled themselves into this effort with purpose and enthusiasm, not the least impressive for coming at the end of a rather long day to that point. All manner of intriguing (and sometime revolting) artifacts were retrieved, from beer cans to paper cups to plastic bags to old clothes and towels to large pieces of ships’ rope to automobile tires to tampons to (most bizarre) fur-covered rat traps with wheels.
After heroically hauling a heavy, ice-filled tire out of the river and up a steep slope, using one of the old ships’ ropes as a winch line, Conor and Chris suggested that the SUST program at RU should adopt the Canal Origins Shoreline as a parkland, and clean up litter there on a regular basis.
Doesn’t sound like a bad idea to me.
The day’s most bizarre find: a furry rat trap, on wheels? We’re not sure.
Today I head west to the city of Rock Island, which hugs the Mississippi River in northwestern Illinois (right across the water from Davenport, Iowa). I’ve been invited to give a talk on urban sustainability issues in Chicago at Augustana College’s annual Winter Symposium, which this year is focused on sustainability and environmental issues. Since I can never resist a chance to talk about urban waterways, my talk is entitled “Paddling the Chicago River: A Good Way to Think about Science, Art, Ethics, and the Sustainability of Cities.”
Heading downstream on the Upper North Branch, about a half-mile north of Linné Woods forest preserve in Morton Grove, IL, north of Chicago, Oct. 2012 (M. Bryson)
Last Friday marked the graduation of several Sustainability Studies majors at Roosevelt: Alexandra Bishay, Jessie Crow Mermel, Kenton Franklin, Keith Nawls, Jeff Wasil, and Joe Zambuto. These former undergraduates walked across the famed Auditorium Theater stage in downtown Chicago to join the growing list of alumni from Roosevelt’s SUST program, which was founded in 2010 and offers classes in downtown Chicago, suburban Schaumburg, and online.
Jessie Crow Mermel and Jeff Wasil at RU’s graduation ceremony, 15 Dec 2012 (photo: M. Bryson)
Kenton Franklin worked as an environmental sustainability work-study student, then intern, at RU’s Schaumburg Campus, and has been an instrumental contributor to the sustainable campus redevelopment efforts focused on making the Schaumburg facility more sustainable in its landscaping, energy use, and recycling. He plans to study environmental economics in graduate school.
Jeff Wasil was already working in the environmental field when we transferred to Roosevelt in 2009, and then soon thereafter declared himself as one of the very first SUST majors at RU in the Fall of 2010. That semester he took SUST 220 Water, and managed to find time to fly to Lake Constance in Switzerland to give a talk at one of the most prestigious water conferences in Europe. Jeff later won acceptance to the University of IL at Chicago’s summer Sustainability Institute in 2011, where he worked on Chicago water conservation issues and planning with fellow undergraduate and graduate students from throughout the region. Jeff is employed as an Engineering Technical Expert in the Evinrude Corporation’s emissions testing, certification, and regulatory program, trying to lower the carbon emissions of boat engines as much as is technically feasible.
Congratulations to all our SUST grads this December, and best of luck to our continuing majors as they enjoy a well-earned rest and gear up for the Spring 2013 semester!
Here is an image posted by one of my students to the last discussion forum of this semester in my Sustainability Studies 220 Water course, along with her comment about it.
It can sometimes be challenging to wrap our minds around water scarcity on Earth when we so often picture it as a blue planet with immensely deep seas. Graphs certainly help to put the idea of water scarcity in perspective, but nothing has driven home this idea as much for me as this image from the USGS. The large blue bubble represents the volume of all the water (salt and fresh) on Earth (its diameter being 860 miles) in comparison to the volume of Earth. The small bubble represents the freshwater on Earth (including the water that is within trees, plants, you and I). And the teeny tiny blue dot by Georgia (look closely) represents all the freshwater that is accessible for our use. It looks smaller than the Great Lakes, but you must imagine it in three dimensions.
We live in a very visual culture. What water-related environmental images have you come across that have had a strong impact on you? What campaigns can you think of that have been successful in using images to impact change? How do you see art, photography, film, etc, having a role in expanding awareness on these critical issues we face? ~Jessie
One of the great things about the USGS page this comes from is that this arresting visual representation of the volume of Earth’s water (and fresh water, and available fresh water) compared to the total volume of Earth as a whole is then accompanied by statistical data and explanations that help us understand the physical story being told in that image. This in turn highlights, and then complicates, the often-evoked dichotomy of image (emotion) and text (reason) — the assumption in popular culture that pictures speak to our hearts and guts, while words appeal to our minds.
Of course, we know that dichotomy to be simplistic, if not simply false. Images such as this do more than pull at our heartstrings — consider the lonely and threatened polar bear here, or seals with fur matted with oil; they get us to think; they cause us to ask questions — in this case, about scale, about the relationship of water to the rest of the Earth’s mass, about the thinness and fragility of the biosphere (which is defined by water, without which there would be no “bio”).
Conversely, textual discourse — whether a poem or a scientific technical report — can stoke our emotions and even spur us to action, especially if we’re open to receiving its message and understand its internal logic. The impacts and effects of both text and image are wonderfully complex, and in the best cases work together more powerfully than they can separately. This example of Earth’s water is a fine case of that, writ large.
The work of science is phenomenally important to the advancement of sustainability in human communities — both in terms of economics and social equity — as well as to the conservation of natural ecosystems, basic resources (air, water, soil), and species. But science alone cannot change the policy that governs our human actions and regulates our excessive tendencies to waste, to think only of the short term, to ignore the unintended consequences of our technologies.
For those huge and ever-present challenges, we also need ideas — and those are debated and created in the creative fires of the arts and humanities in ways that cannot be replicated in scientific and political discourse. For sustainability to be a guiding force of human culture as well as a central feature of our governments (regardless of political persuasion), it needs art, music, literature, and other creative endeavors that define us as a species. And it needs people to connect such expressions to the worlds of science and policy as much as possible, as a means of building bridges and reshaping our views of the world — and our role in it.
This past Saturday, students in my SUST 220 Water and PLS 391 Natural Science seminars at Roosevelt University joined me for an urban ecology adventure on the Upper North Branch of the Chicago River. We convened mid-morning at Linné Woods, a woodland site locatedin the Cook County Forest Preserve system in Morton Grove, IL, where we met up again with Mark Hauser and Claire Snyder, naturalists from Friends of the Chicago River, for a water quality sampling session of the river where it flows past the lovely picnic grounds in Linné Woods.
Claire Snyder and Mark Hauser, naturalists from Friends of the Chicago River (M. Bryson)
While this was the second go-round for my 220 Water students on field sampling (our first session was further downstream on the North Branch, at West River Park in Chicago), the students from my natural science seminar were new to this exercise; however, after three weeks of being introduced to issues and concepts in urban ecology (from biodiversity to climate change), they were ready to get out in the field and get their hands dirty.
Breaking up into different teams, we measured key chemical indicators such as temperature, turbidity, pH, dissolved oxygen, nitrate, phosphate, and total dissolved solids; and wading into the river with D-nets to scrape up mud in search of macro-invertebrates (worms, leeches, crawfish, snails, damselfly nymphs, etc.), we also garnered a biological snapshot of the river’s relative quality.
Down from the meadow and near the riverbank, Claire discusses the various chemical and physical tests we’ll perform to assess the water’s overall quality: pH, nitrate, phosphate, dissolved oxygen, temperature, total dissolved solids, and turbidity. Half our group work on gathering these measurements, while the other half work on the biological survey with Mark. (M. Bryson)
Taken together, these two approaches give us an in-the-moment (chemical) and over-the-longer-term (biological) assessment of the ecological health of the North Branch. This is because while the chemical profile of a river can change day to day — even hour by hour — depending upon the weather and various inputs into the watercourse, the biological community in the river’s benthos is stationary; and some of organisms that live there have been there awhile.
Our quality results were decidedly mixed.The chemical profile we established had some indicators looking rather good, such as a low nitrate reading of 1.3ppm and a fairly neutral pH of 6.5; turbidity levels were also reasonable. The low nitrate reading makes sense, given that in this area of the northern suburbs north of Dempster Ave. (Glenview, Golf, Morton Grove), communities use a separate sewer system, so wastewater treatment plants are not burdened by high inputs of stormwater run-off, and the waterways do not received Combined Sewage Overflows as they do in older suburbs and the city. Moreover, there is not much, if any, agricultural land in this part of the river’s watershed, meaning that fertilizer run-off from farm fields is not an issue.
Hunting for macro-invertebrates in the river’s water and sediments, under rocks, and along the shoreline (M. Bryson)
On the other hand, phosphate levels were rather high at 0.7ppm and the all-important indicator of dissolved oxygen was fairly low (at 7ppm and 60% saturation), posing challenges for many types of organisms to thrive in the river’s watercolumn and benthos. All in all, we calculated a “Quality Index” grade of 68% on our collective chemical analyses, or if you’re using a letter-grade system, D-plus. Nothing to write home about, despite the lovely, even bucolic, scenery in this part of the Chicago River which follows its natural watercourse and winds through forest preserve land. This assessment was echoed rather closely by our macro-invertebrate survey, which identified 8 different taxa of organisms, ranging from several that are “modertely intolerant to pollution” to four that are “fairly” to “very tolerant” of impaired water quality. Our Water Quality index of 2.6 was on the low end of “fair” in terms of biological diversity (call it a C-minus).
Measuring stream flow (M. Bryson)
Finally, our group waded into the stream and use measuring tape, rules, a stopwatch, and a collection of sticks to calculate the stream flow rate. The trick here is to stake out a place where the width and depth of the river is known, and then release the sticks in the current. Students time how long it takes each stick to travel a given distance (here, 40 feet) and then calculate the stream flow (cubic feet/second) accordingly. Our result: a stream flow rate of 98 cubic feet per second.
Curious readers can review our original field data sheets and calculations here; and for photos of our water sampling activities, see this online slideshow.
Here on the upper North Branch, the river follows its natural course and thus has lots of twists and turns. It took us about two hours to paddle five miles. Lots of overhanging branches required careful maneuvering. (M. Bryson)
After a picnic lunch, we used several of our vehicles to shuttle our group up to our canoe launching spot five river miles north, at Blue Star Memorial Woods in Glenview. Here we met up with Dave Rigg and his fellow volunteer canoe guides from Friends of the Chicago River, who would lead us on an intimate exploration of the water, woodlands, and wetlands of the West Fork of the Upper North Branch of the Chicago River — one of the most scenic and naturalistic stretches of the entire Chicago River system. Dave and Co. gave the many inexperienced but enthusiastic paddlers in our group a paddling lesson, and once outfitted with our safety gear, paddles, and a canoe partner, we hit the water for what would be a two-hour downriver journey in utterly perfect October weather.
Ron and Ken getting ready for our first portage (M. Bryson)
The majority of this trip runs through forest preserve property, with the notable exception of the Chick Evans Golf Course that straddles the river where the North Branch splits into its Middle and West Forks. The result is that we traveled along the natural course of the stream, mostly unchanged from before the time of European settlement, with all its twists and turns and with a wide buffer zone of floodplain forest. The heavily vegetated riverbanks proved to be a stunning contrast to the reinforced concrete and rusty steel that encases much of the Chicago River further south in the watershed.
Besides navigating all the twists and turns of a sometimes narrow and always lovely river channel, as well as ducking under overhanging branches, we had to negotiate two portages — the first for a couple of large downed trees, the second for a dam that is slated by the Cook County Forest Preserve for future removal, since it no longer serves a practical purpose and has deleterious impacts upon the river’s flow, water quality, and recreational value.
Portaging around some downed trees (M. Bryson)
These proved to be an interesting and fun challenge, though — especially given our previous contemplation of the long portages done by explorers and Native Americans between the West Fork of the South Branch, through the wetlands of Mud Lake, to the Des Plaines River (a place now commemorated by the Chicago Portage Historic Site).
More photos of our canoe trip can be seen in this online slideshow. In the near future, I’ll post some additional comments about the state of the river and its surrounding landscape that we observed on this trip.
This dam is a significant obstacle for canoeing humans and swimming fish; Friends of the Chicago River advocates its removal, the sooner the better. (M. Bryson)Heading downstream on the Upper North Branch, about a half-mile from our destination in the Linné Woods forest preserve in Morton Grove, IL (M. Bryson)
To view this job posting and apply, please visit www.nature.org/careers. You can search by using the job ID #41231. All applicants must apply online; Midewin does not accept emailed resumes. Submit your resume and cover letter as one document. All applications must be submitted in the system prior to 11:59 pm Eastern Time on July 16, 2013.
