Alex Palmer's Natural History Notes and Thoughts

This blog post consists of my notes from the Chicago Wilderness Congress gathering at the University of Illinois Chicago Forum, held on November 2, 2016 in Chicago, Illinois.   Lecture 1: Restoring the Wetlands of Calumet Nat Miller, Chip O'Leary, and Gary Sullivan. The former area of glacial "Lake Chicago" are now lowlands that make up the Calumet Region .  This flat and sandy area of land is dotted with various lakes and marshes and has numerous creeks and rivers passing through it.  In some areas, dune and swale topography is present.  Historically, the Calumet Region was very open with scatterings of oak trees along with scattered pockets of marsh.  There were 16 species of reptiles and amphibians, and large marshes provided habitat for marsh birds and wetland passerines. The Calumet Region has undergone many changes within the last 200 years.  There is been a lot of habitat fragmentation, although most of the original plant communities are "hanging in t

It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.                             -Eugene Lonesco As a professional naturalist I am filled with heartwarming stories I can tell of seeing a child's eyes light up when he learns something new, or the amazement of a young girl's eyes when she find a butterfly, or the comical screams of startled visitors when they pop the spring-loaded seeds of jewelweed ( Impatiens capensis ).  Our role as an interpreters is not just to recite the names of different plant or animal species, but to connect those "resources" to the people and places who are impact by those resources.  Our hope is that people will not only learn about nature, but will reap the personal and emotional benefits of the "awe"someness that Paula Spencer Scott elaborated on in her recent Parade Magazine article (2016), which highlighted some of the key positive psychological effects findings of people being in "awe" of things such as scenic