Saturday, my husband and I went to Island Rendezvous at Isle a La Cache, an 87-acre preserve on an island in the DesPlaines River.
Re-enactors tell and show the history of the 18th-century fur trade in a fun weekend for families and adults.
At one point, having never been to the preserve, we wandered down one of the trails ... and wandered right back. That chunk of woods was almost exclusively buckthorn, our evil, invasive foe. Some of the buckthorn trees had massive trunks. It was choking out just about everything except the poison ivy.
We hightailed it to the forest preserve's table and asked if they were trying to attack the buckthorn. Their eyes gleamed because they could tell we shared their mission.
We were quickly passed to a forest preserve volunteer intent on selling us on Prairie People. These volunteers work in local preserves to improve them and make everything better for the whole county.
We balked. See, we have our own buckthorn problem to take care of. On weekends, our yard sounds like there are lumberjacks at work: saw, saw, saw; crack of trunk; thump of buckthorn tree hitting the lawn.
But the Prairie People have suspended their volunteer days until September, when everyone is free again and the weather is cool enough to justify tromping through invasive-species-choked forests. The volunteer days usually run September through June. ("We do a lot of them," said Renee, who coordinates the efforts for the district.)
But, on the other hand, "There's nothing quite as satisfying at cutting down buckthorn," we told the volunteer.
He grinned. "If you think cutting it down is fun, wait till you burn it down."
We all grinned and took a moment to enjoy the curative powers of fire. (Fire kills off invasive species and allows native species to grow back in the newly open space.)
This man was persuasive, and he should be. I later learned he is Bill Willis, the group's volunteer of the year. He probably ought to be marketing volunteer of the year, too. He's that good.
We think we're going to do it. Interested?
Workdays are from 8 a.m. (ouch!) till noon Saturdays. Volunteers should be dressed to tromp around the woods. You'll need to register so there will be tools and water for all. Call Renee at (815) 722-7364 to tell her you'll help.
The next date is a big specialty day, the perfect day to get started with Prairie People. Mark your calendars:
On Sept. 27, the volunteers will converge upon Isle a La Cache to do their thing for National Public Lands Day. What is their thing? On that Saturday, volunteers of all ages will collect seeds and remove nonnative species. (It's not all chainsaws and loppers, so this is appropriate for families, too.) Last year, the district welcomed about 100 volunteers for the special day. Their ages: 2 to 92.
What makes this day the perfect day to start? For National Public Lands Day, the forest preserve district adds education to the mix. Participants work from 9 to noon (a shortened work day), eat a sack lunch they've brought and then take a hike through the woods to explore the plants and animals the forest preserve helps protect.
You learn, your kids learn, you spend a day outside and you help every person who ever comes into contact with our parks and preserves.
Don't forget: Call Renee at (815) 722-7364 to get in on this great opportunity.
Julie Todd is the night editor at The Herald News in Joliet. She and her
husband are looking to cut the chemicals and get back to basics -- minus the
granola and hemp clothing. They live in a home they bought last year in
Plainfield, where they're making changes to create their own little patch of
utopia.
The public workdays doing buckthorn eradication ends in the summer, but a small core group of volunteers continue the work in the summer when the temperature is under 85 degrees foliar treating smaller buckthorn plants (less than 3 feet high). Nothing like a stand of dead buckthorn with native flowers and grass growing under it.