“While we are able to do so, let us note the distinction. A park is a managerial unit definable in quantitative and pragmatic terms. Wilderness is unquantifiable. Its boundaries are vague or nonexistent, its contents unknown, its inhabitants elusive. The purpose of parks is use; the earmark of wilderness is mystery. Because they serve technology, parks tend toward the predictable and static, but wilderness is infinitely burgeoning and changing because it is the matrix of life itself. When we create parks we bow to increased bureaucracy and surveillance, but when we speak for wilderness we recognize our right to fewer strictures and greater freedom. Regulated and crowded, parks will eventually fragment us, as they fragment the wilderness which makes us whole.”
– Wayland Drew

The word “wilderness” is likely to evoke about a million different thoughts and images. Everyone’s got a slightly different version, either experienced first-hand, or dreamed up in some corner of their imagination. I don’t know if I’ve ever experienced true wilderness, the kind of wild space that makes you forget there’s an alternative. At this point it feels almost impossible, a living environment that’s unknowable and borderless, one that edges on dangerous, or that we haven’t even touched or taken it upon ourselves to maintain.

Wilderness has become a popular word lately. It features in many trending hashtags and hangs on the pages of blog posts and well designed quarterly magazines. It pops up in print and digital advertisements and beckons from within high budget SUV and credit card commercials. It’s a bit of everywhere, but it’s still something very few of us experience. The mystery and inaccessibility may hold our imagination, and we may be inspired to hike out in search of our own brush with wilderness, but where are we actually going when we head into the wild?

In the United States, 80% of us live in urban environments. That’s a huge number of people who likely have more experiences with the outdoors via Google Image Search than they do in real life. We’re deeply separated from nature, both physically and psychologically. The distance grows greater every day as cities expand up and out. Everyday, concrete and steel facades reach higher heights and spread farther into formerly natural areas. We’re constantly encroaching on and compromising spaces that are necessary for plant and animal populations, and are therefore systematically reducing the portion of Earth that is truly “wild.” To bridge the gap, technology has advanced to allow us to take virtual tours of national parks and nature preserves. The distance between us and a backcountry hike is equal to the amount of time it takes us to search a tag on Instagram.

But we all know the digital experience isn’t enough. Looking at a photograph of a mountainside at dusk — no matter how beautiful or perfectly composed — doesn’t even come close to standing there in real time, inhaling the scent of junegrass and listening to the buzz and chatter of the creatures around you. So we seek out the wilderness. We seek to immerse ourselves in it. Millions of us, and more every year, drive, fly, hike, ski, and climb to the places we picture when we close our eyes and imagine “quiet.”

Maybe true wilderness doesn’t exist anymore; the kind that’s dark and deep and lonely and frightening because you don’t know if you’ll make it back and even more so because you don’t know who you’ll be once you get there. Or maybe wilderness is whatever place that brings us closest to that type of experience. Maybe it’s the place where we have enough space and time to ourselves that we can look both outward and inward with equal amounts of terror and courage.

It seems that wilderness isn’t a specific number of feet away from the trail, or a quota on the number of other people who have accessed a protected area. Wilderness is what you make it. It’s somewhere distant and remote, and it can also be the local park down the street. It’s somewhere that expands your understanding of nature and your place in it. It’s somewhere that makes you question yourself. It’s somewhere that makes you whole.

Another sunny and surprisingly pleasant fall day meant more ambling through Lincoln Park. The last time I was in the area, I had come specifically to do some serious leaf-peeping. This time, the Conservatory beckoned.

Lincoln Park Conservatory is the little brother of the much larger Garfield Park Conservatory, just a few miles west. Usually a cold weather refuge, wandering around this plant-filled sauna is a therapeutic experience. The Conservatory’s footprint is compact; it’s a squat little jewel that glitters from across the lawns and empty fall flowerbeds of the Park. From the outside, the milky glass and heavy steel skeleton obscure any view of its dense collection. On the inside, the glass walls disappear and you’re suddenly somewhere else.

In the Palm House, you’ll think you’re in a place that’s wild and vast. Mature palms and tropical greenery fill the space, cutting through air that’s thick with humidity. The stone pathways wind through and around an archetypal jungle. It’s easy to lose yourself in the infinite leaf shapes, the crowning fronds and reaching branches, the vines, crooked and curving. Sound lands heavily in the moist mud, and sunlight expands and focuses through the settling dew.

The Fern Room evokes prehistory, when we were still fish and scaled giants claimed the earth as their own. Ancient cycads rise from heaps of Polystichum. Clubmoss and giant Staghorns hover overhead. Furry rhizomes creep outward and over mossy rock, silently drinking up the steamy air.

Something about this place is familiar, accessible. Save for the loose crowd of strangers and staff, it’s a little too easy to imagine myself living here. I romanticize constantly being surrounded by all this green, waking up to the sound of water trickling over broad leaves, the smell of damp earth in every room. Isn’t this everyone’s idea of the perfect apartment?

I listen as nearby tourists point out the familiar — the same peace lilies and Sansevieria from their indoor gardens — as well as the rare and strange. This place reminds us of somewhere we already know, and of somewhere new, somewhere we hope to see. And among the footsteps, hushed conversation, peals of laughter, and silence, the plants just keep growing.

Lincoln Park Conservatory is located at 2391 N Stockton Drive in Lincoln Park, just south of Fullerton Ave. It is open daily from 9am to 5pm and is free to the public.

About halfway between Chicago and the Iowa state line, the reliably flat topography of Illinois makes a dramatic shift. Here you’ll find the dells. These great canyons formed when glacial pressure overpowered the surrounding limestone and sandstone, piercing through the earth to make way for flora, fauna, and eventually watersport enthusiasts. Nestled beneath the broad, blue Illinois River, the geology of Matthiessen State Park rolls and juts and spikes and pools before arching clear overhead, its basic elements proudly on display. Wood, water, earth. Calcium, iron, carbon.

The hike into the park offers your typical Illinois vegetation: hackberry and pin oak trees, clumps of goldenrod and ironweed. When the winding path stops short, you’ll see the gap. From the canyon rim, your eyes will trick you. You’ll think the floor below is close, a reasonable, respectful, Midwestern distance. You’ll think the felled trees are thin, new growth and the scattered rocks, stepping stones.

But then you’ll see people down below, humans made minuscule by distance and perspective. Bodies dwarfed by the rock walls, their voices carrying through the cavern, amplified by bowed basalt. In the valley, the stone changes color from gorge to gorge, sandy beige and deep umber at Cedar Point give way to silver and scarlet in the Devil’s Paint Box. Liverworts, mosses, and bracken ferns cling to the shady side of the canyon while the crisp fall sun pushes slender tree trunk shadows against the rough ridge.

Just across Route 71 is the more popular Starved Rock State Park. Familiar and foreign in the lay of its land, wooded forests line steep yellow cliffs while shallow creeks wind through stark gray gulches. At the top of a long bluff stands Council Overhang, a geological outcropping that looks to have more in common with the moon than with the nearby prairie. Its great mouth yawns and hovers wide around us, the sandstone threatening to chomp closed in a few thousand years.

Curve around the bend and forge a few more stream crossings until you hear rushing water. At Ottawa Falls, the last of spring’s runoff cascades into a deep pool, mushrooms cling to dormant tree trunks, and names of wayward hikers are etched deep into sandy crag. The late afternoon light glows yellow in these hidden corridors, catching in thin-veined leaves, and reflecting off the grooved walls above.

These parks are magical in their incongruity, in their perfect strangeness within the greater context of the local landscape. This is an otherworldly place where farmland brushes right up against rocky ledge and canyon. An area that forces you to imagine its tense and fitful creation when ravines were violently carved from glacial rock and cliffs were blasted free from bluff.

After dinner at the lodge paired with pints of Starved Rock Signature Ale, our group began the two hour journey back to Chicago. We watched the hot, orange sun dip and then drop below the treeline, taking our day at the dells with it. The van pushed forward, back to flat land, back to the city.

Matthiessen State Park and Starved Rock State Park are located a few minutes from each other in North Central Illinois. Instead of renting a car for the journey, I traveled to and through the parks with the REI Outdoor School. They provided transportation, food, and trail guidance for the full day. This post was not sponsored, I just loved the trip and would gladly recommend it to others.

A new park recently opened on the far north side of Chicago. Park #568 lies in a previously unused corner of Rosehill Cemetery. They claim no bodies have ever been buried here, though from certain corners of the site, you can see straight through the chain link fence toward the westernmost headstones. There’s a strange feeling in the air. Felled trees criss-cross throughout the park, some half buried in the central fishing pond, strangled limbs reaching upward from a watery grave.

A few boardwalks snake through newly planted prairie grasses. The native woodland trees stand tall and thin, shooting fifty, sixty feet into the air before multiplying and dividing into thousands of tiny twigs. Most woody plantings have already lost their leaves — the forest floor, a multicolored carpet of maroons and purples, decomposing crab apples, and cleverly disguised wildlife. We spot a Giant Walkingstick, thin and brown, legs tipped in lime green. Body bouncing as he takes uncertain steps, slowly approaching the asphalt path.

There are dozens of signs scattered throughout the park asking visitors to stay on the trails, but many don’t. Or can’t. The adults are generally respectful. Though I imagine asking rambunctious kids to walk quietly along the walkway, observing nature from a safe distance, is a crazy request. Deep woods are where secrets are shared, and inside jokes are born, and the best swords are fashioned out of dead branches. Even for me, the pull to abandon the path is strong. There’s a certain quality of light and shadow you can only experience when you’re surrounded by trees. You can’t hear that familiar cottony squish of leaves and mud when there’s only paved clearing underfoot.

But we stick to the trail. And listen to mothers share news of their most successful nieces. Wander alongside families eating identical PB&Js and miniature explorers hunting wild mushrooms. Watch through the fencing as 49B buses and pickup trucks hurtle down busy Western Avenue, windshields glittering as brightly as ripples on the pond.

Park #568 is located near the intersection of Western and Ardmore, one block south of Peterson Ave. The park is free to the public and open from dawn till dusk.

My eyes are constantly scanning the streets, staring deeply at every tree. Trying to memorize them exactly as they are during this time of year. Fall is fleeting in Chicago. I imagine many people feel this way in climate zones similar to mine. Every day looks different.

We don’t get the thick, rich patchwork of New England color. Or Colorado’s yellow Aspen explosion. But fall still comes here. Trees that stood proud and green for months — bold and persistent in their aliveness — suddenly burst into plum, gold, rust. And the next day, the leaves are gone, the trees’ newly bared limbs reaching, silhouetted against a sharp sky. The city is bare again. You can see the siding and the concrete and the power lines and all the crumbling infrastructure that’s been camouflaged since May. As spring is a season of awakening, fall is the season of retreat. Both periods of transition, but in fall, the movement is toward silence, sparseness, rest. Some like to say it’s the time for turning inward. For plant lovers, it’s a bit of a sad goodbye.

But of course, fall is unmistakably beautiful. Trees turn, in as many different ways as there are trees. Some glow from the crown downward, seemingly warmed by months of strong summer sun. Others begin to yellow from underneath, glittering only for those who remember to look up. A few trees become color; their neon leaves forming a giant mass of a single hue. Throughout Chicago, the colors are a random confetti. Leaf edges burn, the color bleeding inward until the entire thing flashes red. And then falls. The young oak outside of my living room window crisped up around August and went straight from green to ashy brown. The color drained long ago, but even now the leaves are holding on. Shivering in the wind. Just like me.

This is the time of year when the trees outsmart us. These beautiful giants, usually so slow to change, can’t keep still. Leaves fly and fall and crunch. Shadows stretch. The sun sets. It all feels so quick, and one day you look up and it’s suddenly winter.

But not yet. For now, at least for a little while, we still have color.