 In the last years of her life, my mother, Carol Dornfeld
Stevenson, rescued a wetland on the outskirts of St. Charles, Illinois,
and had it named after her. I'm so proud I could bust. Here's a URL where
you can learn more about it:
http://chicagowildernessmag.org/issues/winter2001/IWcamptonhills.html
Mom's parents, A.A. Dornfeld and Edna Hansen Dornfeld, were early
activists with the Sierra Club, supporting such local projects as the
Prarie Path (once the right-of-way for a railroad line) and the Save
the Dunes movement.
I
spent a large chunk of my childhood leisure running around forest preserves
and parks within a sixty-mile radius of St. Charles. Grandma would
come by with the station wagon and we would load up kids, dogs, and
lots of food for a daylong trip into the woods. I saw my first owl
on an outing with my grandparents. I learned what poison ivy looks
like. Here's an example. Notice how shiny the leaves are!
I also learned how to find edible fruit and nuts in the
forest preserves. In early June there were wild strawberries. By Fourth
of July we could pick black raspberries. The midsummer chokecherries
were not for the faint of heart--so sour they bite back. Chinese lantern
berries (hidden inside shells like paper lanterns) were available in
October, if a bit odd-tasting.
Wild grapes were ripe by early autumn, and could be made
into a wonderful grape jelly. I've never tasted anything like Mom's
somewhat sandy-textured wild grape jelly.
One year we also found the remains of an orchard in a
forest preserve: just a few trees in a double row, overgrown, unpruned,
bowed almost to the ground with crab apples. It was a good fall for
walnuts, too, so we made apple-grape-walnut conserve. That was wonderful!
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