After earning an economics degree but before landing his first job out of college, John Shiel traveled throughout the southwest United States.
Amid the splendor of mountains, canyons and deserts, Shiel decided that the idea of spending the rest of his life immersed in Keynesian theories and econometric models could be downright dismal.
“I started thinking about the places I had seen and about how nice it would be to spend time in a beautiful place,” Shiel recalled. “I knew that some people actually got paid to walk around in the woods, and I decided to see how I could do that.”
While it was the rugged beauty of the American southwest that shifted Shiel’s interest from economics to ecology, it was the softer hills, fields and woodlots of McHenry County that actually captured his heart.
“The first time I saw the county, I thought it had been stolen from Wisconsin,” Shiel said. “It was as though some geographer’s mistake had put the county in Illinois. And what a delightful mistake.”
So not only did Shiel manage to land a job at which he gets paid to walk around in the woods, but he also chose woods located in the midst of that “delightful mistake.”
Shiel, 44, is education director of the McHenry County Conservation District, a job he has held since his arrival there in 1979. In the last five years, the hundreds of educational programs the district offers each year have attracted more than 100,000 people, sharing in Shiel’s enthusiasm.
Shiel, who lives in Wonder Lake with his wife of 10 years, Caryn, and their three sons-Sean 7; Kyle 5, and Bryan, 3-returned to college and earned a degree in forestry before heading to the McHenry County Conservation District. In all of Illinois, Shiel said, he may not have found a better place to work in the conservation field.
“I’m not entirely sure why, but there are many people in McHenry County who seem to know that they have something special here-natural history and cultural history-and they want to protect it and learn about it,” Shiel said. “The district has lots of programs that respond to that interest.”
Indeed. Shiel estimates the district sponsors about 450 activities a year, ranging from bluebird workshops, owl hoots and marsh walks, on through stargazing, maple-syrup making and archeology. They are all programs that demonstrate conservation district officials’ idea that conservation includes much more than plants and animals.
Shiel and his five-person staff, with the help of some 200 volunteers, teach visitors not just about local flora and fauna, but about the heavens above and long-gone peoples whose remains lie in the ground below.
Local archeologists, astronomers, skiers, bird-watchers, hunters, fishermen, horticulturists and others with an interest in the land and those who have peopled it lend a hand with the effort. And it’s that kind of support that makes Shiel decline to take credit for the growth of the district’s education programs. He may be education manager, he said, but the county’s residents make the job easy.
“There is a core of people here who have pursued preserving the heritage of this county for decades, in a way that has drawn other people to their point of view,” he said. “The district’s programs have grown much more than the county’s population, and I think that’s largely because of their patient influence. They’ve helped generate interest in the work we do.”
One of those people is Bill Howenstine of McHenry, a professor of geography and environmental studies at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago and a member of the conservation district’s site development committee. Howenstine said that many other Illinois educators in the environmental field recognize the district for its broad range of activities.
“When I tell them that I have a connection with the district, they often say, `Oh, I hear they’re progressive out there. I hear McHenry County has lots of good things going on,’ ” he said.
Carol Thomas of Schaumburg would agree. Thomas works at the Spring Valley Nature Center in Schaumburg and has attended several nature functions in McHenry County. “I love to come out for the nature walks and bird-watching,” she said. “I’m a real bird person. Every time I come out I learn something new. There’s a lot of variety of plant and animal life and they do a good job of explaining what is here.”
“One reason the conservation district is able to do so much is that it realized early on that it could get a lot done with volunteers,” Howenstine said. “Some other open space agencies have been loath to use volunteers, probably out of liability concerns. But the district gives them good training, and in return the district gets people with lots of enthusiasm and, often, a high level of technical skills.”
That legion of volunteers is one of the best signs of the success of the education effort Shiel and the district have made, said Terry Clarke of Crystal Lake, a former member of the conservation district’s board of trustees.
“I think a good judgment of the quality of leadership in an organization is how leaders use the resources that are available to them. John has made great use of resources by opening the district to numerous volunteer opportunities,” Clarke said. “The most important element of the conservation district is education. John and his staff forge a link between the protection and preservation of the open space mission of the district and teaching people about those spaces.”
Last October, the conservation district turned its 2,900-acre Glacial Park, between McHenry and Richmond, into one huge outdoor classroom as about 12,000 people showed up for the fifth annual Trail of History program. The two-day event may be the largest of its kind in the Midwest.
The Trail of History re-creates life in McHenry County from about 1670, when the French began settling the Great Lakes areas, to 1850, shortly before the railroads opened up the frontier. About 150 volunteers dress like French fur traders, Native Americans or early American farmers and set up camp in wigwams, tents and bark huts. Volunteers and district staff members also station themselves along the two-mile trail that leads to the camp site to lecture about the land and aspects of life during the 180 years the event covers.
The trail was the idea of Ed Collins, one of the conservation district’s education department staff members, a fact Shiel is quick to point out as he spreads credit for the district’s success with the trail and other programs to the staff, trustees and volunteers.
“Every department is heavily involved in the planning, arranging and conducting of the Trail of History,” Shiel said. “It’s truly a district-wide event. One of our purposes is to get people to discover a particular conservation district site and learn about what we’re doing with the lands we are buying with public tax dollars. We draw people out with entertainment and then try to educate them a bit about the mission we are carrying out in their name.”
As Steve Weller, McHenry County Conservation District executive director, points out: “Education, recreation and preservation are the district’s stated goals. Education is listed first. It’s something that everyone who works for the district subscribes to.”
That emphasis on education reflects the aims of the district’s founders, whose desire for an organization to protect open space and educate the public about land management issues was realized in 1971, when county residents voted for the district’s creation. Two previous referenda to establish a county forest preserve district had been trounced.
County residents objected to a forest preserve district because forest preserves have more taxing power than conservation districts. Politics also can play a larger role in forest preserve districts, since forest preserve trustees are allowed to hold other political offices. Witness Cook County, where County Board President Richard Phelan and other county board members also run the Cook County Forest Preserve District. Conservation district trustees, who are appointed by the county board, are barred from holding any other political office.
The reduced taxing authority and lessened chance for political chicanery appealed to McHenry County residents, who handily passed the conservation district proposal.
One of those who helped with the successful referendum campaign is longtime district volunteer Bill Wingate of Woodstock, a 77-year-old naturalist and former conservation district board member whose “Wanders with Wingate” programs are one of the district’s more popular educational events. The wanders take people over conservation district property, where Wingate teaches them about the plants they see and about how American Indians and early settlers used them.
“The district is doing a great job of putting education into everything it does, including the recreation and preservation work,” Wingate said. He cited as an example the district’s volunteer cross-country ski patrol, whose members often disseminate information about prairie restoration projects and other district activities to skiers who use the trails.
Of course, to educate people the district needs to reach them. It does so mainly through a bimonthly newsletter that Shiel writes. With 7,500 people on the mailing list, the newsletter is one of the more widely circulated publications in McHenry County-and beyond.
“One-third of the people who go on my walks are from Chicago and the close suburbs,” Wingate said. “That’s got to be because of the newsletter.”
Shiel takes pride in the newsletter, since the good response it receives is in part a response to him.
“I have the freedom to use an informal style, not regimented and official-sounding, which gives it a lot of personality,” he said. “People have remarked on that over the years. If, say, we’ve got a hike to look at animal tracks in the snow, I can tell a little story about how that could be illuminating. It gives a vicarious experience and a little lesson to everyone who reads the article, 99 point 99 percent of whom probably won’t take part in that particular event.”
The newsletter also promotes events not directly tied to the conservation district, such as bird-watching expeditions by the local Audubon Society, horticulture classes at McHenry County College, or nature walks at Volo Bog State Natural Area in Lake County.
Shiel’s background as an interpretive naturalist surely helps in his writing of the articles. After deciding that economics wasn’t for him, he landed a job leading nature walks at a campground and a state park in Pennsylvania. A native of Decatur, Shiel soon decided to move back to Illinois and enroll in the forestry program at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.
To enhance his forestry background, he took jobs at nearby state parks and worked in the summer Youth Conservation Corps. He finished his master’s degree thesis while working as a naturalist at the Shawnee National Forest in southern Illinois.
After earning the degree, he moved from the southern tip of Illinois to the northeast corner of the state, where he had landed a summer job at Chain O’ Lakes State Park, near Fox Lake. The McHenry County Conservation District was then looking for a naturalist, and Shiel was offered the job, which he gladly took.
It wasn’t long before people who worked with the district knew they had someone who was well-suited to the job.
“I remember once, not too long after John started working for the district, I watched him do one of the nicest jobs of interpretation that I’ve seen,” Howenstine said.
As Howenstine tells it, a local astronomer was supposed to set up a telescope for viewing and give a talk about the stars. But the night was cloudy, and the speaker assumed no one would show up. He was wrong.
About two dozen people ended up standing in a clearing in the dark, waiting for a lecturer who never arrived. Shiel rescued the event. “He just winged it, talking about stars and light and night. It was a beautiful example of natural interpreting. He had everybody engrossed.”
The district hopes to engross youngsters throughout the county in learning about conservation. That’s why one of its major efforts includes teaching local educators how to teach conservation. On Feb. 8, for instance, about 20 junior high and high school teachers from 14 area school districts attended a workshop where they were taught lessons based on essays by Aldo Leopold, author of the 1949 book “Sand County Almanac.” Shiel said Leopold is regarded by many people as the founder of the ecology movement.
“The general purpose of the workshop is to instill a sense of personal and shared responsibility for preserving and understanding the health of the land community,” Shiel said. “It’s to develop a land ethic. Someone might ask, `What is that?’ It’s an understanding of how the land community works, what the health of that land community would be and how to maintain it.”
Each of the teachers who attended the workshop was given 25 paperback copies of “Sand County Almanac” to hand out to students. “The idea is to get students in junior high and high school to read the book,” Shiel said. “I can’t think of anyone better to learn about the land from than Aldo Leopold.”
Another popular program for teachers and students is the Living Land program, where about 75 school groups a year spend a day at the Farm at Bree, which abuts the Hickory Grove Conservation Area near Cary. Students learn about the farm’s goats, chickens and other small farm animals and about farm life as it was lived in the county before mechanization took hold.
The conservation district’s Wildlife Rehabilitation and Education program, which cares for injured wild animals, also has a heavy education component. Sally Joosten of Woodstock, who runs the program, visits dozens of schools each year, usually with a few animals in tow. In school assemblies, she teaches hundreds of students at a time about the area’s animals and the importance of habitat preservation to their survival.
Shiel said the district’s educational offerings “have evolved by recognizing opportunities and resources and finding ways to deliver and package them. It’s a matter of looking at what’s going on, who’s doing it, what’s involved, how it fits in with the district’s aims and the interests of the county’s residents.”
The Farm at Bree and the wildlife rehabilitation program are examples of that evolution. Both programs were begun by individuals independently of the district. Over time the programs grew and were absorbed by the district. The originators of the Farm at Bree have moved to Iowa, but Joosten, who started the wildlife rehabilitation program behind her Woodstock home more than 20 years ago, is now a district employee.
“We take in about 2,300 animals and answer 10,000 telephone inquiries a year,” Joosten said. “That’s a lot of contact with the public. Someone may find an injured animal and bring it to us. That shows they have a lot of concern for that individual animal. The education part of what we do is to take that concern for a specific animal and expand it to an interest in the animal population.”
Shiel said that being able to reach people in that way is the favorite part of the education staff’s job.
“I enjoy sharing some things that I feel enthusiastic about and then seeing that enthusiasm sparked in others who maybe didn’t have so much enthusiasm before,” he said. “And it’s so good to see people develop from their participation in our programs.
“I have one person in mind, someone very quiet, who began showing up at every trail program we had. After a while this person opened up and became involved as a volunteer and has become a stalwart support person for the district. He’s still quiet, but this is a case where actions speak so much louder than words. When you see someone enjoying a program and developing like that, that’s so rewarding.”
