Illinois is one of those places for which people - if they are not from here - often seem to have one or two particular perceptions about. The first is that Illinois is synonymous with Chicago. While that’s not remotely true, you can understand why people would make that association. Chicago is the third largest city in the country, and the city proper accounts for over 20% of the state’s population. Include the entire Chicago Metro area, and you’ve accounted for 75% of the population for the entire state. Odds are that, if you’ve met someone from Illinois, they were from the greater Chicago area.
This first point is so pervasive that, on occasion, people from other parts of the state itself will assume that you are from Chicago. When I was in college I had a fellow student ask me where I was from, and when I told him the name of the town and where it was at, he said "so: basically Chicago".
No. But again, you can understand it.
For the rest of the state the picture I think people most commonly have, when they have one at all, is of a flat terrain desolate but for cornfields. There is some truth to that perception - most of Illinois hosts intensive agriculture, and corn is a primary crop. The little town I’m from, in fact, hosts The Sweet Corn Festival every August, so it’s hard to argue that’s not an accurate picture. It’s not the only picture, of course - there are multiple other crops sown here, including soybeans, peas, hay, and so on. But there is a lot of corn.
Despite all of that when I write about my part of rural Illinois - particularly when referring to cycling through it - I often refer to it as "the prairie". Folks looking at satellite shots of the area, or who are traveling over it by plane or even by interstate, might understandably tend towards saying "well, maybe former prairie, but now...?"
Still, prairie is how I think of it. And much of that is due to the roadside.
When I was kid in the 1970’s and 80’s I would routinely see signs in the ditches proclaiming a given area part of the Roadsides for Wildlife program. I was a kid, so I didn’t entirely understand it - in some ways it seemed like it might be an excuse to not mow the ditch. But it turns out it was an active program designed to encourage prairieland wildlife because of the increasing movement towards monoculture (corn) in the state. The Illinois DNR maintains a copy of a brochure for it here on their website. And, while I’m not sure that program is still active (the DNR was actively planting grasses for the purpose), they do still recommend holding off on mowing.
The program was active when I was a kid, and it has a distinctive effect on the landscape that remains for much of the region still. While there are certainly people who fastidiously mow their ditches, many are left to grow. For the cyclist riding in rural Illinois it means that you aren’t just seeing cornfield after cornfield. Rather, there’s prairie right along the roadside:
Depending upon the part of the season you are in, you’ll see not just grass, but also a variety of flowers and flowering plans - clover, as above, but also raspberries and sunflowers and black eyed Susan’s; bee balm and phlox and - of course - the ubiquitous presence of the trusty dandelion, often in great profusion early in the spring before the grasses grow up.
But wait, you say, the program was roadsides for wild life, not wildflowers, right?
Yes:
If you choose the road less traveled - and the ones where mowing is not routinely conducted - you will find those ditches contain a wide variety of critters. The original program was originally focused on prairie birds, and particularly on pheasants, and you will see those here, along with killdeer, red-winged blackbirds, and many others. In addition to the fox, above, who was one of a pair of juveniles curiously playing alongside the road (see here) for more pictures of them) in the past two months I’ve seen countless versions of the aforementioned killdeer (they are prominent because they actively try to lead you away from their nest) and other prairie birds, but also pheasants, hawks, and even a young deer or two out in the fields, one of which stayed still long enough for me to get a pic:
Here’s a bit of a closer look:
"Ok", you say, "so there’s more to see than corn. But it’s still flat."
First, the countryside rolls more than can easily be conveyed in a photograph. But second: Yes - and we’re talking cycling here. Flat is hardly a major downside.
I don’t expect to see legions of cyclists showing up suddenly across the northern Illinois region. But story after story tells us that the bike shops have been cleaned out by people looking for things to do in the era of social distancing. If you are one of those folks yourself, and you live within a reasonable distance of Northern Illinois, you may want to come out our way.
I’ll be the one on the orange trike - and I’ll wave if I see you.