Maybe they should call it something other than a “workday.”
Playday?
Funday?
Hang-out-in-the-woods-with-friendly-people-restoring-nature-day?
Picture it: The sun shone gauzily into the woods of Deer Grove Forest Preserve in Palatine. The white oaks were gleaming in the soft light. The temperatures were in the fabulous 40s.
And the friendly and knowledgeable Deer Grove Natural Areas Volunteers had gathered for a workday, the happy task of burning several large piles of brush.
The camaraderie was swift; the talk was easy; the morning was fun, even though the guy who usually brings a Dutch oven to cook stew in the fire didn’t make it.
“It’s almost like, `You mean we can do this and not have to pay?'” said Pete Jackson, co-steward of this site and a biologist with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “It’s just a very pleasurable thing for a lot of people.”
If volunteers get a lot out of the workdays, so do the nature sites. Workdays are sessions, usually lasting three hours, in which volunteers hack out invasive plants, gather wildflower seeds and burn brush to help return a natural site to its settlement-era glory.
Workdays are the backbone of the restoration work going on at forest preserves and nature sites throughout the Chicago area. Volunteers have restored prairies, coaxed back wildflowers and turned dark and deadened woods into sun-dappled magnets for insects and birds.
On any given weekend, volunteers are meeting in a forest preserve near you.
Even in winter?
Especially in winter.
“This is the best time of year to work,” said Chris Linnell, volunteer coordinator for the Forest Preserve District of Du Page County, which will hold an open house for potential volunteers on Saturday at its headquarters at Danada Forest Preserve in Wheaton.
With plants dormant, there is no danger of damaging fragile ones by stepping on them, she said. And while outdoor labor can be uncomfortable in July, in January it’s a happy occasion for stripping off a jacket.
And what better time of year for making a big, roaring fire?
The delights of winter workdays were on full view on a recent gathering of the Deer Grove volunteers, who tend this 1,800-acre woods.
The first parcel acquired (in 1916) by the Cook County Forest Preserve, it is an entrancing site, cross-hatched with ravines and running streams. Mountain bikers love it, but those who have detoured into the woods have destroyed plants and speeded up erosion, leading the forest preserve to protect fragile areas with fences.
A half-dozen volunteers met in the parking lot and began pulling loppers and work gloves out of their cars. Jackson, 53, and his fellow co-steward, Ron Vargason, 66, a retired product manager for Motorola, were joined by a core of regulars, although Colin Tysoe, 42, a software engineer from Palatine, confessed that he was returning after “an adulterous affair with another group.”
No expertise is required to join a group like the Deer Grove volunteers, though Jackson has a considerable amount and the others have acquired plenty.
“These guys have taught me so much,” said Mark Eichaker, 48, of Palatine, a truck driver who joined the group to nurture the woods where he spends hours riding his horse. “They’re walking around the woods talking in Latin and pointing out plants. . . . I’m like, `Ease up on the Latin, guys.'”
We walked along a trail from the parking lot until we reached the area where the volunteers have been removing buckthorn, the scourge of area forest preserves.
Now the remains of the invaders were lying in large piles on the forest floor, awaiting their fiery demise.
Vargason, the group’s semi-official fire tender, headed toward one of the piles, lighter in hand. His jacket and wool hat were pocked with holes from airborne burning embers.
“If you guys are ready,” he said mildly.
He reached into the brush pile and flicked the lighter. The crackling and smoking began.
But even with a little help from a roll of toilet paper soaked in lighter fluid, getting beyond crackling and smoking proved challenging. The brush was damp, and there was almost no wind. The fire blazed up under the occasional breeze, only to die back down.
“We’ve got a reporter and photographer here, and we can’t even start a fire,” said Tom Burke, 45, of Fox River Grove, who works in sales for Hewlett Packard when he is not restoring the forest.
They don’t call it a workday for nothing. Eichaker took off his jacket and flapped it at the fire while the others threw brush and logs onto it.
And slowly the fire grew, roaring and flaming and becoming so hot that it made a wall of heat too hot to get near.
There is something wonderful about being too hot outdoors in January.
We stood around our fire and talked about fires and forests and our kids. The pile of buckthorn shrank to glowing embers. The workday ended, though that didn’t mean you couldn’t hike along the ravine just in case you hadn’t had enough fun.
Newcomers are eagerly welcomed at workdays. No ecological knowledge is required, though you will undoubtedly leave with some.
“The more you come here, the more you learn about the landscape,” said Vargason, who has been volunteering at Deer Grove since 1995. “That’s why some of us have been here so long; you fall in love with the site.”
And love doesn’t end in winter. Though rain can halt a workday, snow and cold don’t, unless the temperatures are extremely bitter. “In winter, we’re always saying, `Oh, I hope it’s a nice day,'” said Jackson. “And you know what? It almost always is.”
The next Deer Grove workday will be Feb. 4; volunteers will meet at 9 a.m. in the Grove 5 parking lot. For more information and directions, go to bakhome.northstarnet.org/deergrove.
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Get your hands dirty
If you go to a workday, dress in layers and bring work gloves. And although you can just show up, contacting organizers first allows them to bring enough tools to go around. Workdays this weekend:
COOK COUNTY
Friends of the Forest Preserves provides workday schedules at www.fotfp.org.
North Park Village Nature Center, 5801 N. Pulaski Rd., 9 a.m.-noon Sunday. 312-744-5472.
Hidden Pond, Palos Preserves, 9 a.m.-noon Saturday; 708-598-2234.
Theodore Stone Preserve, Hodgkins, 9 a.m.-noon Saturday; www.restoringnature.org.
Sundown Meadow, Hodgkins, 1-4 p.m. Sunday; www.restoringnature.org.
Poplar Creek Forest Preserve, Hoffman Estates, 9 a.m.-noon Sunday; 847-885-4630.
The North Branch Restoration Project holds workdays at several locations. For complete schedule and where to meet volunteers, go to www.northbranchrestoration.org. Weekend workdays include Somme Woods, Northbrook, and Watersmeet Prairie Grove, Northfield, 9 a.m.-noon Saturday; Wayside Woods Prairie, Morton Grove, 9 a.m.-noon Sunday.
DU PAGE COUNTY
West Chicago Prairie, 9 a.m.-noon Saturday; www.wcpsg.org.
LAKE COUNTY
Lake County Forest Preserve District holds regular workdays. For complete schedule and where to meet volunteers, go to www.lcfpd.com or call Tom Smith, volunteer stewardship coordinator, at 847-968-3329 or email tasmith@co.lake.il.us. 9 a.m. Saturday workdays include Grant Woods Forest Preserve, Lake Villa; Lake Bluff Forest Preserve, Lake Bluff; Old School Forest Preserve, Libertyville. 2 p.m. Saturday at Gander Mountain Forest Preserve, Fox Lake.
Barrington Bog, a site owned by Citizens for Conservation, 9-11 a.m. Saturday; 847-382-7283.
— B.B.
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bbrotman@tribune.com
