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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.
