Letters

MOURNING CELEBRATION

Dear Editor,

I subscribe to Chicago WILDERNESS Magazine, and live in Riverside, part of the Chicago Wilderness. I’m fortunate to live very close to a small portion of a Cook County Forest Preserve within the village limits. On Thursday, January 12, I decided to take a walk through the back of the woods. I knew I was going to find something special, seeing as how the weather was so nice. I thought it was possible that a turtle might be sitting on a log in the Des Plaines River, taking in the sun. That was not to be.

However, on my return trip back towards Miller Road, I spotted a butterfly. Since I always walk with a camera (one never knows what one will find), I took a couple of photographs. After the butterfly had disappeared from view, I raced home to see what I had found.

The Audubon guide I used identified this as a Mourning Cloak. Later that night, I “Googled” to see what I could find, and it brought me to the Chicago Wilderness Web site and a very informative article about this beautiful creature.

I’ve lived in Riverside for 35 years and have never, in winter, seen a sight like this. What a treat!

Juanita Ray
Riverside, Illinois

Editor’s Note: The mourning cloak is one of the few butterflies that overwinter around here as an adult — most butterflies overwinter as eggs or chrysalises. The monarch and some others overwinter in the south. But from time to time, we see adult mourning cloaks up and restless for a little excitement on a winter’s day.

BOOKS TO GROW ON

Dear Editor,
On my shelf, right next to Joel Greenberg’s A Natural History of the Chicago Region, is a much older book entitled, A Naturalist in the Great Lakes Region, by Elliot Rowland Downing, University of Chicago Press, 1922.

You will enjoy this delightful little gem if you can find it. Particularly interesting to me are the chapters on glacial Lake Chicago and its old beach lines, on the dunes and its wildlife, the beech-maple and oak-hickory forests, the prairie, and the river valley. The text is abundantly illustrated by line drawings and charming old photographs. As Downing has said: “Chicago is the center of a region of quiet but varied beauty to him who wanders along the North Shore, explores the Dunes, or rambles over the wooded hills of the nearby moraine country there are presented bits of landscape that charm even the casual observer with their wealth of form and color.”

Arn Slettebak
Seattle, WA