New Roots

By M.G. Bertulfo

From the Golden State to the Prairie State

When I moved to Oak Park from the San Francisco Bay area nine years ago, I was horribly homesick for California. I missed the rolling hills, the cinnamon smell of dry grass in the summer time, the orange poppies nodding their faces in the sun, and the green Monterey pine needles shaking in the wind. I was an avid hiker and missed the dramatic sunsets over the bay and mountains; it was a deep ache in my soul.

What was this place I’d moved to, the Midwest? I wondered my first summer here. So flat. No hills whatsoever, let alone mountains. The terrain was foreign, a land of suburban tidiness, of square lawns and boxy juniper bushes. Honestly, I couldn’t find indigenous nature in Chicago to save my life. I’d moved to a neighborhood of hostas and hostas and, well, hostas ringed around homogeneous rows of oak and maple trees.

As a girl growing up in the neon-glow of Hollywood, the only image I had of the prairie was Michael Landon’s ’70s show, Little House on the Prairie. Filipino girls like me wanted to live out on the land and walk those grassy hills like Laura Ingalls Wilder. But where, I wondered, was the prairie?

I chanced upon Chicago WILDERNESS Magazine in the checkout aisle of my local organic grocer. That’s when I became intrigued. The Midwestern tallgrass prairie, as true Chicagoans know, typically does not look like the back lot of Universal Studios—dry grasses and golden hills. CW photos showed me a wild riot of color splashing across the prairies: vivid pinks of phlox, purple blazing stars, sunny coneflowers, pokey rattlesnake masters, and hairy prairie smoke plants that look like crazy Dr. Seuss characters. All these gorgeous shapes and colors called me out to Wolf Road Prairie in Westchester, Illinois, to experience it for myself, the real deal.

The summertime prairie was an overwhelming experience for a Midwest newbie like me. Not even the photos had prepared me for the tossed salad of plant life. Common milkweed tumbled into bright coneflowers tumbled into brown-eyed Susans and hundreds of plants and grasses whose names I didn’t know. I was stumped. Where did one species end and the next begin? As much as I mocked the neat rows of suburban hostas, I had been trained to experience nature in much the same way—life should be boxed, neatly arranged, and polite.

At Wolf Road Prairie, wildlife disappeared into the tumult, which added an unpredictable sense of movement. Cricket songs hung in the air around me. Birds played hide-and-seek among the thick forest of stems. A microcosm of tiger beetles, red spider mites, grasshoppers, and fritillary butterflies marched, scurried, jumped, and fluttered at my feet. My perspective was brought down, from the sweeping mountains of northern California to the prairie’s world of rich earth and leaf tangle. I had never known so much diversity—so much natural messiness—in one place.

True, I mourned my loss of California’s mountains. But was there something I was missing while I kept my eyes focused upwards? The more I read about the prairie, the more intriguing Illinois became. Roots that grow twelve feet down into the ground? Plants that live “in community”? Lightning bolts that start fires and replenish the prairie soil? What other mysteries did my new home hold?

Over the next few years, I explored the Midwest with my family and new friends. I was thrilled to discover that just as Chicago is a city of neighborhoods, the Midwest is a land of distinct wilderness communities. Along the shoreline of Lake Michigan, Warren Dunes are continually sculpted by the wind. Bulbous cloudscapes float like white mountains across the unbroken line of the lake’s horizon. Sailing with my husband, Alan, I felt a part of the waves. I got to experience the lake’s shifting azure, mint, and gray moods up close.

With our friends Cheri and William, my son and I hiked through Teason’s Woods near Palos Hills. The boys would whoop and race each other to the top of snow-dusted hills. For miles, we could see nothing but the woodlands—you wouldn’t even know the Chicago skyline was nearby.

Experiences of Midwest nature slowly seeped into my bloodstream. Beaver dams at dusk. Frogs hiding in rivers. A family of raccoons trotting up a log hollow. Summer rains pelting the smooth, brown Des Plaines River. A great blue heron gliding across a pond, wingtips fanning the water. The jumbled, brow-beaten look of the woods surviving another winter. The first wildflowers of spring pushing up through the snow.

Still closer to home, I stumbled upon Thatcher Woods, in River Forest. It was like entering a cathedral of living stained-glass. Branches, like leaded lines, etched the organic shapes of tree canopies against the flat, white sky. The afternoon light filtered through the autumn golds and yellows of sugar maple, slippery elm, and basswood leaves. There’s a hush in Thatcher Woods, the kind of quiet that is pregnant with possibility. Here, I can think. Here, I can breathe. I become absorbed in the vibrant yellows and golds. Real nature, I’ve noticed, is impossible to label. Colors in the woods blend into each other, disobeying the strict divisions in a box of crayons. A fall oak leaf is a miracle of mottled brown on red, burnished to gold and chewed through by wind and bugs and time.

There are longings I carry with me wherever I go. I need places where I can connect to the wilderness. The closer they are to where I live, the better I seem to feel. In these places, I get absorbed in something larger than myself. Something infinitely wilder. And I get to be reminded: I’m part of this living, breathing universe, too.

So, three years ago, I brought Chicago Wilderness home. Can you guess what I replaced my small boxy lawn, juniper bushes, and hostas with? Bergamot. Rattlesnake master. Butterfly milkweed. Sky-blue asters. Foxglove beardtongues. Little bluestem grass. With the help of prairie advocate Art Gara, my family replaced our own yard with native plant communities.

Looking back, I see a lot of subtle changes helped convert me from a die-hard California vista seeker into a woman who re-prairies her yard. I had to learn to seek beyond the hostas and plastic tulips in my neighborhood. I had to get over expecting beauty to manifest only as mountains and ocean. I had to love the Midwest on its own terms. The unfettered prairie, expressive lake, and autumn woods have nourished my own internal wilderness and transformed me. Now, finally, I feel connected to Midwestern land.

M.G. Bertulfo is a writer in Oak Park, Illinois. She is currently working on two books about the 16th-century Philippines and Filipina Americans. She submitted her essay in response to our call for writing on the topic “What does ‘Chicago Wilderness’ mean to me?” It’s the first of many we hope to publish. Readers with their own perspective on the question can click here to find details for submitting essays.