Kankakee River Nature Preserve

I’m trying hard not to feel guilty. I should be at the Women’s March downtown with Susan and fellow Pullmanites Amy and Laura and Lorraine and jb, and tens of thousands of others. To stand in solidarity for the values I hold dear: equity, inclusion, fairness, kindness, love, the arts, the environment.

I am so proud of and heartened by those who showed up all over the country to have their voices heard en masse. But, as I awoke before the day’s first light this morning, I could not shake Wendell Berry’s “The Peace of Wild Things” out of my head:

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

And so here I am at Kankakee River State Park, in search of Kankakee River Nature Preserve, on a beautiful, unseasonably warm Saturday morning. At first, it’s odd. There is no still water here. We haven’t had much rain, but perhaps the thaw that comes with 59 degree weather–in January!–has released a deluge into the Kankakee River, which has spilled over its banks, running incredibly fast and filled with dead trees carried along like toothpicks.

Equally weird is the silence. Early morning is typically the best birding time, when the avian world wakes up to actively flit and feed. But this morning, I see not a single bird. I hear nothing save for the burbling of water channeling its way through various spillways to the river. Have even the birds headed downtown to add their voice to the protest?

I have visited the state park several times, without ever realizing that two portions of it were dedicated as an Illinois Nature Preserve. I head out in search of one of the tracts, known as either Langham or Altorf Island, one of several islands dotting the Kankakee River. And as I walk along the river, the new moon overhead and refusing to hide its face in the light of the new day, I consider that there are different ways of protesting. In his own way, George Fell protested against the wanton destruction of the remaining natural lands of Illinois and the nation. His was a life-long protest, the determined, hard slog of transforming the Ecologists’ Union into The Nature Conservancy, now the largest conservation organization in the world. The even harder effort to envision and see through to passage the Illinois Natural Preservation Act, which inspired many other states to follow suit in protecting their remnant and critically important natural lands.

At first, Langham Island appears not so different from its sister islands, save the for tiny sign that reminds everyone that it is a dedicated nature preserve, and that everything on it is protected by law. What’s to protect, you might think, peering at the leafless trees and the dense understory of invasive honeysuckle. But a closer look reveals that a goodly portion of the island has been cleared of its invasives. A couple years ago, Habitat2030 and Friends of Langham Island teamed up to cut brush and conduct controlled burns to restore the native habitat; in particular to rescue from extinction a flowering plant that occurs only on this 20-acre island and nowhere else in the world.

Standing here, riverside, staring across at the island treasure in our midst, another quote–this one by Margaret Mead–pops into my head: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

It is then that I spy on the water not a single wood drake, but more than a hundred goldeneyes and countless Canada Geese. And hear the downy woodpeckers, and white-breasted nuthatches and brown creepers busy at their feeding.

I do in fact grieve this day in fear of what the next four years may hold. At the same time I am comforted by those who show up–alone, with others, when needed and every day–in defense of the wild and wonderful things of this earth.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.