Visiting Charlotte

This is Charlotte at 12 days old. Isn't she adorable? Grandpa and I visited baby Charlotte and her parents earlier this week.

We've visited son Thomas in Chicago in the past. He's lived there for 4 or 5 years now while working on his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. On this visit we stayed close to home, visiting in their Hyde Park apartment and taking turns holding our little one. On Wednesday, we took two outings to the city.

Unfortunately, I have to admit that I do not care for Chicago. I've never been easy-going about the hustle-bustle of city life, but it's more than that. The natural landscape of the area bothers me. It's flat. The downtown cityscape is pretty, but I prefer green to glass and steel. Lake Michigan doesn't smell like the brackish Chesapeake Bay. Between downtown and Hyde Park: urban blight. There are a lot of empty lots, decrepit buildings and unkempt weediness. All over the city the confusion of imported plant material from far east and west, sitting side by side, gives me a sense of disease that has to do with the lack of an appropriate, life-sustaining ecosystem and habitat continuity. I can't breathe.

What birds and butterflies can call the created natural infrastructure of Chicago home? The Monk Parakeets have famously done so. This August the tropical birds found an abundance of red berries in the trees near Washington Park and along the streets of Hyde Park. They squawked and carried on in flocks that I imagine Charlotte will be able to admire from her third floor nursery window soon.

But on this visit to Chicago, I'm happy to report that I saw something that made me feel a little better about Chicago. I saw that an attempt was being made to bring native prairie grass and pollinators like Black-eyed Susans and Cone Flower back into park spaces and median plantings. I was glad to see that. We stopped at the Nature Museum, where Thomas goes to dump off his recyclables, and I briefly read about the restoration of wild areas along the Lake in Northeast Illinois between Wisconsin and Indiana.

An alliance of groups began preserving wild lands there in 1996. They have managed to gather up 7% of the area land in a reserve called Chicago Wilderness. They assessed threats and made recommendations in a report card on the health of the area's wild lands. Their four initiatives include developing nature to lessen the impact of climate change, encouraging green infrastructure, helping children connect with nature, and improving the health of ecosystems.

I was glad that the many areas of wildflowers and grass that were blooming during our early August stay piqued my interest and helped me appreciate the ecosystem restoration work. On Wednesday evening at Millennium Park, I was excited to see a created "wilderness" park surrounding and softening all of that machine-like glass and steel in downtown Chicago.

Once an area where prairie met and interacted with woodlands, humans have drastically altered the Chicago landscape. Charlotte's generation will be challenged to bring the life-giving and sustaining quality of nature back into places like Chicago as they take charge.

Before I go to Chicago again I will read Miracle Under the Oaks: The Revival of Nature in America, to learn about the revival of the ecosystem around the crazy backwards-flowing Chicago River. I want to take the river cruise that Thomas suggested (A View from the River: The Chicago Architecture Foundation River Cruise). I'll read Carl Smith's book about Daniel Burnham’s 1909 Plan of Chicago to better understand how the Chicago Wilderness organization is "building on that legacy to bring nature to people and make this region an even more exceptional place to live and work."

When Charlotte is a little older we'll visit Chicago again, perhaps. I hope she will want us to take her inside the Nature Museum when we drop off the recyclables. By then I will take with me a new understanding and curiosity for the place. I hope that I will be able to share an enthusiasm for natural systems with Charlotte in Chicago, a place where "nature is accessible to all residents, and the built environment reflects  [the Chicago Wilderness organization's] commitment."