Homecoming

I’ve always described myself as an amateur naturalist. I am an educator by profession but have been a student of the natural world longer than I have been a teacher. Growing up in rural south Texas, forests were few and far between. Whenever possible, and as soon as I was able to provide my own transportation, be it bicycle, car, or on foot, I’d venture off to my local park, nature preserve, or the dusty brushland that fills the empty spaces between residential subdivisions, main street businesses, and farmland. In my mind, I was an explorer braving the wilds in search of previously undiscovered lands; secret, hidden places that would be known only to me and a select group of friends. It was on these journeys that I discovered my love of science, the natural environment, and the thrill of being lost without a map and only my feet to guide me.

Some twenty years later, I packed up my life into a few storage bins and left south Texas for the Midwest, settling along the southwest edge of Chicago. By chance, my new address placed me right smack in the middle of where a person of my naturalistic inclinations needed to be. I was within a short commute of both the city’s downtown center and the suburb’s woodland perimeter. Coming from the rural countryside, the bustling city could be overwhelming at times, suffocating almost, leaving as my only recourse to head further south, away from Chicago, to the wooded haven of the forest preserve district dividing the urban sprawl of the city from the more familiar feel of the small suburban towns along Southwest Highway.

It was here that I discovered what my childhood heart had long yearned for. Here, nestled along the homey villages of such quintessential names as Palos Park, Hickory Hills, and Willow Springs, I discovered my inner naturalist’s home in the forest preserve of Cook County, Illinois. Little Red School House and Maple Lake in Pulaski Woods, Swallows Cliff, Pioneer Woods, and Lake Katherine became pilgrimage sites I’d journey to every chance I got. Not only did these natural sanctuaries remind me of home, with their serene stillness and relative silence, but they also shaped my character. Layer by hardened layer, the tough exoskeleton that had formed around me as a survival mechanism to acclimate to the harsh realities of urban life was carved off, revealing the naturalist in all its wonderous curiosity. I was finally home.

After nearly a decade of living in Chicago, I finally stopped referring to my mother’s home in Texas and the sleepy town I’d grown up in as “back home”, but home was not now Chicago, either. No, home was a quiet, lonely dirt trail beneath a canopy of proud and stately oak, hickory, maple, elm, and basswood trees. Home was the gentle lull of a zephyr flowing swiftly between softly rattling tree branches and rustling leaves. Home was among the company of hidden woodland creatures going about their day to the playlist of wild birds’ songs. Home was a place my wife, a Chicago native, had first introduced me to as we retraced her childhood adventures. It is a place we both look forward to soon sharing with our children…a place I hope they, too, will learn to associate with home.

Which brings me to this blog and to this first of what I hope will be many posts about the hidden treasures of the forests of Cook County, Illinois and the greater Midwest region. My name is Osiris Alday, and I am a woodland native. My true home, the home life, work, and the daily rat race keeps me from, is the forest. It is there that I find peace and repose from the hustle and bustle of urban life, and there that I will go on weekend adventures to capture, document, and share the beauty of nature through writing, in photographs, and on film. I hope to use this blog to build a community of amateur naturalists who share in their discoveries and guide their fellow naturalists to the hidden gems of this region’s wooded areas. Welcome to the Forest & Trail community!