Editor’s Essay

One Wild Decade

Welcome to this special 10th Anniversary Issue of Chicago WILDERNESS Magazine. It’s hard to believe we’ve been covering the biodiversity of the Chicago region for a full decade. We’ve traveled to the far ends of the region and discovered miracles in large preserves and small backyards; we’ve followed guides, scientists, canoeists, seed collectors, and buckthorn-cutters in all kinds of weather.

In surveying all we’ve written about, it’s tempting to look for signs of change, and especially of progress. There are, of course, many different ways to evaluate progress. One is by the numbers: How many rare birds are breeding each year? How many acres were acquired for protection? Compare those figures against a baseline, make a chart. If we pick the right numbers and they’re going up, we’re doing well.

But the goal of Chicago Wilderness—to identify, protect, restore, and appreciate the precious, rare biodiversity across this region—is a monumental and complex undertaking. Even after ten years, we are only beginning to be able to say: “This is where we are.” Despite preventing some backsliding in key preserves and reviving others, the overall state of the ecosystem continues to worsen. The 2006 State of the Region Report Card reflects this, as does our Trends section in this issue. But we have made many steps forward. We’re gradually getting better numbers, and are in a progressively stronger position to address questions such as how to best harness and prioritize collective resources.

Measurable results are, without a doubt, crucial. But one of the greatest successes of Chicago Wilderness is more simple, elemental, and personal: That people—no matter how many—have experienced profound awakenings, and then found the resources to continue learning and becoming actively engaged, often in life-altering ways.

Chicago Wilderness—the 213 member organizations as well as the broader community—has helped people more deeply penetrate the underlying fullness of this place in which we live. It has lifted a veil.The raccoons, rabbits, squirrels, and sparrows that most people notice everyday are just the tip of the iceberg. Where someone may have noticed only a gray squirrel yesterday, today she recognizes that in a preserve just a few blocks away there may also be a fox squirrel, a Franklin’s ground squirrel, or a flying squirrel, not to mention least and long-tailed weasels, river otters, woodchucks, and minks—each with its own set of mysteries.

That’s a big part of what Chicago WILDERNESS has been reporting on for the last ten years—people who learn to see differently, and what they do when a new world has been opened to them. Jerry Sullivan once wrote, “For me, becoming a birder was like being cured of color blindness. Imagine seeing red and green after a lifetime of viewing the world in shades of gray.” We’re not just writing about this species or that ecosystem. We’re writing about revolutions in consciousness.

So much has happened over the last ten years, yet much goes on as before. Nature, for one, beats its familiar themes, its patterns of blooming and burning and seeding, of mating and hunting. Unexpectedly, these ancient cycles continue most strongly not in the preserves where humans have kept out, but in places where we have become involved, where we have been unafraid to accept that we, too, are part of nature. In this most joyful relationship of learning and humility, we enter those cycles, and they enter us.

In our first issue, we asked the community to become a part of this magazine. Our appeal now is to grow that family. Please consider giving gift subscriptions of Chicago WILDERNESS to ten of your best friends. (Or give just one!) We’re confident it will pay you back richly.

Visit chicagowildernessmag.org or call (708) 485-8622. And thanks for being such a great readership. It’s a joy to make this magazine for you.