MORRIS, Ill. — You need glasses to walk a prairie in winter. Anything — safety glasses, sunglasses, eyeglasses — will do. They’re not to protect your eyes from the unending drabness of prairies in winter but to keep dried stems of bluestem and Indian grass from poking your eyes. It’s preferable to get whacked on the cheek by a dried rattlesnake master ball than to be poked in the eye by a stem.
You really have to wade into a prairie to understand the magnitude of it fully. You feel like an insignificant dot on the landscape, a character roaming in a Laura Ingalls Wilder novel.
That’s even more true in winter, with the browns, tans and dirty shades of white. The most color on Goose Lake Prairie came from the fluorescent-orange flags deer hunters are required to wear.
I drew a deer-hunting permit for the antlerless-only CWD hunt at Goose Lake Prairie/Heidecke Lake. The first part was Thursday through Sunday; the second part is Jan. 17-19.
On Saturday, when I was able to go, another hunter and I shared one field. He planned to hunt north, so I went south.
With open water on Heidecke, Canada geese, white-fronted geese, snow geese, mallards and many ducks I couldn’t identify flew heavily for the first three hours after what passed for dawn on a gray day. The only notable wildlife I encountered was a marsh hawk (northern harrier).
While walking a couple of miles to familiarize myself with a section I had not hunted, I only saw one pile of deer scat and a few tracks.
Considering only two of us were in this vastness, I figured it still was best to hunt the prairie, hoping to jump a deer.
About 100 yards in, the unending prairie overwhelmed me.
I never could just sit outdoors and soak it up. I needed to do something — hunting, hiking, birding, foraging — but I had a breakthrough Saturday. As an old English major, I call it an epiphany; psychologists might call it a breakthrough.
Deep in the prairie by a dry pothole, I sat in my camouflage chair and was swallowed up. For the first time, I appreciated just sitting there and soaking up the stillness and vastness.
Maybe I finally have gotten old enough to achieve oneness with the wild world. For me, it was time.
First-day hikes
You don’t have to do anything organized to do a first-day hike. Some ideas on the New Year’s Day tradition are in a blog from ilstateparks.org, including organized events at William Powers State Recreation Area and Illinois Beach State Park.
Wild things
John Heneghan reported 18 dead geese below the Yorkville Dam on the Fox River and a dozen dead around Aurora to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. If you find dead birds in this avian flu outbreak, check details at dnr.illinois.gov/press-release.30768.html about what to do. . . . Andy Hansen messaged about multiple sightings of an eagle at Humboldt Park.
Stray cast
Having Greg Olsen in the booth for the Cowboys-Eagles game Sunday felt as comfortable and competent as tying on a Ned rig for smallmouth bass.