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PLANO, ILLINOIS Rob Roy Creek
Earlier this year I picked up a job right near this little stream. I didn't even know its name was Rob Roy Creek until I read it on the bronze plaque mounted on the Shaefer Road bridge abutment. I am a horticulturist, and I had been hired by a local builder to help them oversee their landscape projects. I drive a lot when I work, and over the years I have developed a sense that often lets me spot nice native plants at highway speeds. In April I saw a work crew burning off last year's growth from the low marsh grasses. That tipped me off that there might be something worth seeing here, but I never had the chance to stop until one Saturday morning in early May. I parked my truck right by the bridge over the creek, just 100 yards west of Eldamain Road. That morning was pleasantly warm and damp, and the sky was plain grey. Powerful spring storms had been ripping across the entire Midwest, and I was lucky to get a break in the weather so I could explore this little watershed. All of three yards wide, the waters of Rob Roy Creek were high, and they ran fast and muddy through the bright green grasses emerging on the fire-blackened banks. Even though this parcel had been burned over a month ago the smell of the old fire still lingered in the moist air like an extinguished campfire. It seemed like every songbird in the county was singing. Two swallows stopped their swooping and rested on the telephone wires overhead. Blackbirds pestered me as I clambered down the road bank to explore the meanders ahead. I followed deer tracks deeply sunk into the muddy trail, serenaded by blue jays and catbirds. Further ahead I saw my first kingfisher of the season and also a red cardinal. I was able to lose my thoughts in the music around me until the sound of a passing jet brought me back to reality. I walked about as far as I could until the path was too wet to go any farther without waterproof boots. So for now, only my imagination would take me southward to the creek's confluence with the larger Fox River, less than a mile away. I found a narrow bend and hopped over the creek and turned towards the oak and hickory trees on drier ground. Growing amongst clumps of dogwood and willow, Eurasian honeysuckles - probably escaped from a garden - were blooming pink next to white flowering viburnums. Wild purple violets grew underneath, and I heard a few peepers trilling from the marsh beyond. Buckthorn grew on the edge of the dark woods, and as I pushed my way through I nearly missed seeing a lapis-hued male indigo bunting dart past through the underbrush. The last time I'd seen one was a few years ago in a prairie at Churchill Woods, one of the very few remnants of its kind in DuPage County. I passed a few scattered red trilliums, and a lone chipmunk escaped my sight. This little grove was unusually dark, and the source of the gloom was the clouds gathering ahead of an incoming storm. High above, tall oaks and hickories had only just started to push out bright new leaves. The forest floor was lightened by the green umbrellas of mayapple, hiding their blooms of white under the wide foliage. On the surface of the black earth were the old bones of some hapless animal, perhaps a raccoon, scattered among dozens of old bottles and cans.
Not even a mile north of Rob Roy Creek is one of the fastest developing areas in Chicagoland. Enormous sections of land await transformation along Route 34, as former farm acreage is being subdivided at a rapid pace. The tattered remnants of this tiny watershed are bound to be transformed as well. Increased siltation and pollution are almost guaranteed to follow any large-scale construction project, and across Illinois the effects of agriculture and industry have completely overwhelmed the natural world. It is hard to imagine that this land was once home to several species of native orchids that are now virtually extinct. Close to where I live in west Cook County I see Addison and Silver creeks as grim harbingers of what this creek could become in a few decades - a degraded eyesore. Small tributaries, like any other habitat, often suffer in the wake of urbanization. In many cases they are overgrown with invasive scrub such as boxelder and burdock, weedy plants that thrive in such chaos. Sometimes the actual streambanks are reshaped to conform with human whims of property and drainage. Enough of this sort of abuse and a dark, dank, lifeless rivulet is all that remains. I hope that Rob Roy will have a better fate - at least the local forest preserve is looking after a small corner of it. I was told that nearby Eldamain Road is slated to be expanded as a major north-south route, and is apparently destined to be carried over the Fox River one day on a brand new bridge. So even knowing what was to come I was stunned when I drove by the creek a month later to see a nearby field being transformed before my eyes. Two giant earth graders were parked side by side as a bulldozer busily gouged out a new detention basin - an artificial lowland built to slow the runoff from the new roads and roofs to follow. Enormous polygons of staked orange construction fence played out to the north, demarcating heaven knows what. A pile of tree trunks, remnants of a demolished hedgerow, was stacked neatly near the edge of the road. The naive part of my soul had thought this scene was still many years off. I revisited Rob Roy Creek recently while driving on my rounds. Rushed, I had but only a few minutes to linger. Just above the water surface floated half a dozen metallic green damselflies. I can't guess the species, but they lazily circled one another in irregular loops, occasionally lighting on rocks and branches clustered in the creek. What amazes me still is that what I noted on that May morning could have easily fit into a small, fifty-yard wide circle, with the bridge nearly at its center. And I hadn't even scratched the surface. Did I mention the pale yellow tassels of sedge flowers? Or the great blue heron wheeling to the north after I startled it? Did I note a single insect? No. In my brief visit I focused only on the obvious. What I saw in a few mere minutes was exhilarating. My gosh, what if I stayed an hour? I would ask you to count how many places (locally) where you have seen that much natural life flourishing. I have not seen nearly enough of them. Every so often I must remember that I hadn't seen a true prairie until I was in my mid-twenties, and twenty years later, I am still hooked. Never before had I seen the riot and beauty of tall grass and flowers. It was a joy like meeting a lost and unheard of sibling, but I felt a bit angry that I lived in the "Prairie State" that had saved very, very little prairie. These places are now rarer than any diamond, as only one-hundreth of one percent of the original prairie ecosystems remain. Our constant expansion, our constant need for the new, our relentless transformation of open lands puts many of us into a world where there is no viable context of what our natural world once was. How will I know what I'm missing, if I won't ever see it in the first place? We may never even get to see the tiny fragments, these living jewels of indigo, green, cardinal, and blue. Unless we stop at a bridge. 
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