Summer of 1993 - The Playing Field

 I was at the Wetlands Research, Inc. (WRI) site in Wadsworth, Illinois, as a graduate research assistant for the summer of 1993. But before I get into what I was doing, I want to tell you more about the area, and what the organization was trying to accomplish.

This land is directly adjacent to the Des Plaines River, and there is a very good reason for that.

Another non-profit organization had as their goal to restore oak savannah lands along the river banks. These are native eco-systems that are almost park-like. They are characterized by mature oaks with low understory and grasses. They are transition zones between prairie and eastern woodland, and often need fire to preserve the open spaces. The mature trees are tolerant of the low ground fires.

Through "our" property, and continuing for 56 miles, the Des Plaines River Trail follows the river. Portions of the trail have existed since the 1920s. Where I was, it was a crushed limestone surface, multi-use, but non-motorized. Every day at 6 pm, the gates to the WRI property were locked. Everyone else who worked there went home. Chips and I were locked inside because we lived on site. Are you beginning to get the sense of how I managed to go to heaven without dying?

What WRI had to do with this whole thing is that it was a series of constructed wetlands designed to help clean the water from the Des Plaines River. This is an aerial photo (yes, I got an airplane ride before the summer was over). The road across the lower part of the picture ends in that little turnaround where the pumping station was located.

You can see the river curving around the left side of the picture. We pulled water from the river and fed it first into those wavy channels. It was beginning to be understood at that time that wetlands were very good at filtering and cleaning water. The channels are beds designed to help that filtering process by keeping the water moving very slowly and allowing natural bioremediation processes to take place.

From there, the water went to six "treatment" ponds. Here is a view of a couple of them. I may have a better picture. I discovered another whole box of slides from that summer, just when I thought I was almost done scanning, and I think it has some of the better ones. I hope to do those tomorrow. Anyway, you get the idea.

Some of the ponds looked very appealing and recreational.

Some of them were perhaps less aesthetically appealing to those who like nature to look clean, but they were very good at doing their jobs.

After the water went through these ponds it was released back to the river. I'll just say that my duties had to do with monitoring how well the cleaning process was being accomplished. I'll tell you more about what I actually did in the coming days.

In other news: I edited, I wrote, I walked to the library, and I made yogurt.

Total miles hiked in 2024: 167.3 of which 52.8 is North Country Trail

See Summer of 1993 Intro