Dam Forest Preserve

Just got back from a walk with my wife through the local forest preserve.  A couple posts ago, I commented on how cool it was to see a beaver so up-close and personal.  My wife and I rounded the bend to the lake...and heard the sound of rushing water.  The Park District had destroyed the beaver's dam between the two lakes.  The water level was noticeably lower.  This made me think a couple of things - are we really conserving nature if we wreck something one of nature's creatures has constructed to survive... and I really hope the beavers are still here.

Frogs, Frogs, Everywhere...

I do not know if it is the rain, or just the time of year, but I have been seeing a lot of frogs lately.  Last night, I went on a walk with my dogs.  A couple of minutes in, I saw something hopping across the sidewalk - a little toad.  About half-way through the walk, the dogs all of the sudden stopped and looked to the side.  I followed their gaze and saw the biggest frog I have seen in a long time.  It had to be at least 5 - 6 inches long.  I am guessing it was a bullfrog.  Near the end, we saw a medium-sized toad.  So I saw the small, medium, and large of the frog and toad family on that walk.

Today, my wife and I took the dogs on a longer walk around the lake.  It was in full sunlight, and I still saw three small toads along the way hopping along the path.  These were a reddish brown in color though.

I also saw another interesting thing on the walk today.  Earlier in the year, we had seen mother turtles laying eggs along the path we walk around the lake.  I though all of them had been eaten or hatched by now.  However, today we saw a hole that was newly dug out of and had the remains of hatched eggs.  It looked like all the baby turtles had made it into the reeds. :)

1,500?

As a hopeful novelist, I have a Writer's Group that I go to. There are three of us, and we simply read each others' pieces of work and help to edit, give ideas, and the like. I look forward to doing this every week, and am able to do it a vast majority of the time. I think it is an invaluable tool because it gives me some people I can bounce ideas off of...and gives me an incentive to make sure I am working on my stories. I hate it when I go there with nothing.

I explain all of this because we have decided - as a group - to enter a short story contest. I would call it a short short story contest or a flash fiction contest...because the word limit - including the title - is 1,500 words. I at first thought this would be a pretty easy undertaking. I mean, really, cranking out 1,500 words is pretty easy for me. I used to do it in a couple hours every Thursday evening for my History essays.

Wrong.

Happily, I am finding this to be a challenge. How do you add depth and suspense to something that is only 1,500 words long? How can you develop a plot in such a short time? You need to have some sort of theme...but not let the whole thing come across as unfinished.

The strange thing with the story I am writing is that I know where I want to end up. I have the setting, the theme, the ending, and I know conversation is going to be a large part of the piece. But how do I start? How do I get to the ending? Ah...there's the rub. I think I am liking this challenge because it is like a Haiku...conveying meaning in a very minimum amount of words.

It is nice to explore this kind of intellectual challenge every once and a while. We'll see where this goes.

Off the Beaten Path...Kind of

If you are ever traveling along 173 between Antioch and Rockford, Illinois, take time to stop off at the Tuttle Clarkson Nature Area. I have driven past it many times as my wife and I have traveled to visit her parents in Rockford. This time we were actually able to stop and explore it.

The Nature Area is actually not that big. It has two paths. One is a paved path that goes through a prairie area. That path is pretty uneventful and is extremely short. The best path is a grass path that takes you through the different habitats of the area. It is only about a half of a mile loop, but you go through at least three different areas. There is an upland woodland area, a sedge meadow area, an oak forest area, and - my favorite - the fen.

A fen is actually something I had never heard of before. It is a lot like a bog. The big difference is that whereas a bog has source of ground water that is not moving...the fen has a subterranean source of water that is moving beneath it. Peat is still formed and there are a lot of the same types of vegetation. Tuttle Clarkson takes you through the fen by means of a boardwalk and bridge system. It was a very cool experience...especially since a fen is a rare thing to see in northern Illinois.

It's great to see what happens when you take the time to explore somewhere new.

When to Remember a Camera

It is amazing the things that can happen when you decide to go a different way in life.

Mind you, it was not anything really major today. When I got home, my wife and I decided to take a large loop around the lake for our daily walk. The forest preserve near our house is really great. We usually get to see deer, rabbits, swans, and other birds almost every walk we take. Today, we were able to see a small brown snake (maybe someone will know what kind it might have been), but, even more impressively, we were able to see a beaver. I literally came with in two feet of it as it hid in the long grass surrounding the lake it lives in. I stood there looking at it, and it looking at me. I then slowly made its way down through the grass and reeds to the lake and slowly swam away. We have seen them swimming in the lake this year (which I have never seen in the seven years we have been here), but I have never come this close to one before.

Wish I had had a camera with me. :)