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| A white-tail deer pauses beneath a willow tree that stands in a pasture area that once was home to a large pond in Burnidge Forest Preserve, west of Elgin, Illinois, on Thursday, July 3, 2014. | Credit: Ted Schnell |
Childhood friends reunite after nearly four decades
The 1989 film Field of
Dreams starred Kevin Costner as an Iowa farmer who follows the mantra, “If
you build it, he will come,” building a baseball field amid his crop of corn, ultimately
to recapture a piece of his childhood with his father.
Twenty-five years after that film’s release, three friends
returned to their fields of dreams — the former pastures and farmland now known
as Burnidge Forest Preserve, west of Elgin, Illinois. We had no need to build
anything, for the fields in which we played and formulated our dreams for the
future are still there.
Granted, things have changed. Thick brush and small woods of
30- to 40-year-old oaks, shagbark hickory and myriad other trees now cover the slopes
of gentle hillsides once covered with waist-high grass that rolled like waves
on a breezy day.
- Related photos, Site to Sight: Roots of My Childhood
That same growth now obscures the once-open vistas that
allowed us, as children, to step out onto the deck of my parents’ former home on
Brindlewood Lane in Wildwood Valley, from which on a clear day we could see the
John Hancock Building, some 35 miles away. In fact, twice a year — once in the
spring and again in late summer or early fall — the rays of the setting sun
would reflect off that Chicago skyscraper and stand on the horizon like a
distant torch. Our first glimpse of that phenomenon had us believing there was
a big fire in Elgin.
Despite the changes, much of the area remains recognizable
to us, even if the remnants of old forts, a ball field and sledding hills no
longer are clearly visible. Long gone is an abandoned hay wagon, where we sometimes
ate lunch during our hikes, for example. But, the trail that passes by the spot —
in fact, the main north-south trail along the western edge of the preserve —
still follows nearly the same path originally created by the black Angus cattle
that once grazed those fields.
Along one trail, near an old spring once used to water those
cattle, is a pair of trees enveloped in deep brush. One of the trees bears a
large scar in its bark, where we, as children, once carved the first initial of
each of our names — K, E and T, although not necessarily in that order. Our
handiwork no longer is visible, long ago covered over as the tree’s bark grew
back over the bare patch. Also gone is the lean-to, of sorts, we had built
there as a primitive shelter. The fallen branches and logs rotted away long
ago, although a trench we had tried to dig — a rock under the ground there that
probably was bigger than we were, thwarted us — remains, although time and
erosion have filled it nearly completely.
Each step we took jarred loose a memory, which we discussed,
sometimes in detail, as we revisited past jaunts, old adventures. We talked
about times that, through the eyes of middle-aged men who perhaps have grown a little jaded
by the sorrows and burdens we’ve accumulated over the years, somehow seemed better, purer, cleaner.
We recognize that nostalgia looks back at the past through
rose-colored glasses, often choosing to overlook the tragedies even the young
experience. Even so, some things were better — things that are hard to ignore
in a world that seems to grow increasing uncaring and too often violent.
We did not worry about things like rapists and pedophiles,
street gangs, shootouts. Bullying occurred too often, yet far less frequently,
I think, than today.
Then, we would leave our homes early in the morning and
seldom returned until dinnertime, whether we were simply playing within the
subdivision borders or were making our frequent hikes, crossing field after
field or following the railroad track en route to Tyler Creek, just a little
south of Camp Big Timber, at Big Timber and Tyrrell roads.
They were genuinely good times. We ran wild through the
hills and valleys, never worrying for a minute about what we might encounter,
although today, as we look back, we’re fairly certain our parents would have
been mortified at some of the risks we took. But we were “indestructible”
children for whom these simply were grand adventures.
The landscape indeed has changed over the years. Just as there
is more brush and trees cover the landscape, we too have changed. Crow’s feet accent
our still bright eyes, and the worries and cares of more than five decades line
our faces. Gray has begun to take over as the dominant color of what hair we
have left.
But while we walk together in these fields of our dreams, we
can almost be boys again, perhaps in part as we relive those precious years,
but also as we renew old friendships that had been sundered by circumstance for
far too long.
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