SILVER LAKE: ILLINOIS NATURE

A lake is a landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature. Henry David Thoreau, Walden.

What’s the story here, boys?   Alan, Jim, and I looked up in surprise.  Three large men were standing above us.  We were unloading our small boat, a string of carp visible on the bottom. I felt as if I had been punched in the gut.   Wha.. what do you mean? We stammered?  We are from out of town, the men said.  We haven’t been here before.  Do you need a city license to use this lake?  We looked at each other in relief as we explained the local regulations to the men.

This was 1966, the summer before my senior year of high school.  My friends were a year older.  The three of us frequently hunted and fished together, usually with limited success and sometimes trouble.  

The previous winter, we had gone rabbit hunting on a property owned by a friend of Alan’s family.  She was just leaving, going into town for the afternoon, she said.   Sure, you can go hunting but don’t go on the neighbor’s property.  He is not friendly. 

It was a rare day off school in the middle of winter; I do not recall the occasion.  Alan claimed to know something about this neighbor.   He works in town.  He won’t be home today.  The rabbit habitat was vastly better on the neighbor’s property, so it did not take us long to cross the fence. We had success.  Soon we had two or three rabbits each.  Unfortunately, the owner was home.   He was aroused by our shotgun blasts.  We heard, then saw, an old truck barreling up the field road.  A man was screaming at us out of the open window.  He had a pistol and fired off a couple of rounds.  

Beat ass!  Yelled Alan, and we did.   We ran for our vehicle on the other side of the fence. Jim and I were not tall, but we were able to hop easily enough over the barbed wire—not Alan, who was short and stocky.   I can still see him approaching the fence, shotgun in one hand, a freshly killed rabbit in the other.   He sized it up as he briefly ran alongside and then he leaped prone and rolled over it, landing on his side, rabbit guts and shotgun shells flying.  We helped him up and ran to the car.  We threw in the guns and our hunting vests, spilling blood and rabbit parts everywhere, but the man had driven around and blocked our road with his truck.  He leaped out, swearing at us.  He flaunted the pistol as he screamed at us for trespassing.  Jim, in a very meek voice said, uh, do you want these rabbits? That sent the man into another tirade.   Finally, he ran out of air and told us to leave saying he would shoot us if he ever saw us again.  

That incident had come quickly to my mind when the men at the lake asked, what’s the story here boys? You see, the fish in the bottom of our boat were stolen.   We had put baited lines around the lake to catch carp.  Ours were empty, but as we checked them, we found other lines, put out after ours, were full of fish.   Somehow, collectively, we decided the individuals who had put out lines after us must have stolen our fish, so we took theirs.   We should not have taken those fish. We really did not want the carp anyway, but at least we avoided trouble over it.

This happened at my hometown’s reservoir, Silver Lake.  The name belies the muddy creek for which it was named.  The water in the lake is never clear.  Still, in an area mostly covered by corn and soybeans, if not subdivisions, Silver Lake with its shoreline is THE natural area in my hometown.

The lack of natural areas is demonstrated by my memory of pleading with my parents, please, can we go to Grackle City?  Often, they assented. It would be a Sunday morning after church when we frequently went for a ride in the country.  This meant piling into our old Plymouth Cranbrook to drive the farm roads around my hometown of HIghland, Illinois.  On one of those rides, we had come across what I called Grackle City.

A large colony of Common Grackles nested in a line of small trees.  Grackles, then as now, were considered “trash” birds.  Although I liked seeing the crowd of birds and listening to the dissonance of sound, what thrilled me most was that we had to drive a mile or two on an unpaved road.  I was about ten years old and had never been anywhere except the thirty miles to St Louis.   An unpaved road was wild and exotic.  

Often those rides in the country occurred on summer evenings, and we would sometimes walk by our town’s old reservoir, known as the “City Lake.” Interestingly, this still-existing original reservoir was built by a local brewery and a condensed milk company because local voters rejected taxation to pay for it.

This “old” city lake was adequate until there was a great drought in 1954.  The small lake nearly dried up, resulting in the plan to build a much larger reservoir.  I wonder if the project could be built today.  It flooded nearly six hundred acres of virgin hardwood forest.  There are no large areas of such forest remaining in that part of Illinois.  It would be an amazing resource.

When we walked at the old lake on summer evenings, there was a harmonious serenade of what seemed like dozens of whip-poor-wills—now very much (70-90%) declining—a population loss no doubt hastened by projects such as Silver Lake.  An unforgettable moment was when I saw what appeared to be a length of brown hose sticking out of some reeds. I reached down and hoisted a muskrat—a shock to both species as I shrieked, and it scooted away.

After Silver Lake filled in 1961, my parents bought a small boat. It had an unusual, air-cooled engine, like a lawn mower.  Although unreliable and barely faster than paddling, I loved taking it out.   Once I saw a flash of bright red in the top of a shoreline tree—my first Scarlet Tanager.  And it was evening on this lake where I first heard the loud, rhythmic bleating whoops, coos, and gulping kuk-kuk-kuk notes of Pied-billed Grebes.  Sometimes I would chase them.  They would dive and I would have to guess where they would resurface.

Once, I took the boat several miles to the village of Grantfork. This upper end of the lake was difficult to navigate because it was necessary to find the old creek channel.  I slowly bumped along, sometimes killing the motor to row.  Finally, I passed under a highway bridge and entered the dark, shadowy creek.  An enormous turtle had its head above the water and slowly submerged. It was so large.  It was an Alligator Snapping Turtle, the largest freshwater species in North America.  I had never heard of one in our tame part of Illinois.  

The lake also provided hunting access.  I would bring my rifle in the boat and stop along the shoreline to hunt squirrels, but I was hunting a remnant.   That old bottomland had been prime hunting territory.  A sad story of my hometown was of a young father who had been shot by another hunter before the dam was built.  The shooter panicked. The wounded man, found hours later, was blinded by the incident.   I recall him walking the sidewalks of Highland, tapping a cane in front. 

I gave no thought in those days to how much nature was lost as farm after farm was either consolidated, subdivided, or submerged.  For example, my dad and I went hunting for Ring-necked Pheasants at a nearby conservation reserve.  That area is now under Carlyle reservoir.  

But while I enjoyed the experience of hunting, I did not really enjoy the aftermath. Cleaning the game was messy and smelly.  My mom was a willing cook, but most times we would bite into a piece of shot—no thought in those days about the toxicity of lead; it probably being a good thing most of our hunts were futile.   

One successful hunt followed a day when I worked on a farm and noted a spare clump of trees in the middle of a field.   I had seen a squirrel from the hay wagon. Thinking correctly that no one ever hunted such a small patch, I secured permission, went out in the evening, and bagged that squirrel.   It was an old buck, hard to clean, and harder to eat.  Mom tried frying it, but it was too tough. Then she took those leftovers and cooked them in a stew, thinking longer cooking would soften the meat. It did not work. Chewing it was like grinding on rubber.  I felt bad for killing that old squirrel who had found a safe patch of woods and had lived long and peacefully until I noticed him.  I remember my sister, three or four years old at the time, running out one morning after I had been hunting and calling Did you catch any? I felt like a murderer.  I only hunted a few more times thereafter.

Instead of hunting, I always wished someone could have mentored me with birds.  I would wistfully read of free bird walks in St Louis’s Forest Park, but they were always early Sunday morning, unavailable to me because of weekly mass.  Once, mom heard of a local woman who fed birds and had books about them.  Mom called her and borrowed some books.  When I returned the books, I was unable to talk to the lady. The couple were elderly.  The woman’s husband, seeing a teenager on the porch, was gruff What is it you want? I meekly handed him the books never meeting his wife.

Maybe she would have taken me birding at Silver Lake—something I always do when I return for a visit.  I always anticipate reuniting with two beautiful Illinois birds: Red headed woodpeckers and Eastern Bluebirds.  Here is where I saw and heard my first Eastern Warbling Vireo.  Another day I saw a Great Crested Flycatcher.  Fall migration can be especially good. I have identified many migrant warblers and vireos.  Lately, kayaking on the lake has become popular and I have enjoyed going with my brother.   

Hence, the lake and I have a lot of history.  An interesting bit begins with my mom’s penchant for shopping at The Salvage Store.  Again, I am one of the few old enough to remember it.  This store purchased items salvaged from train and truck wrecks or from warehouses damaged by weather or fire. Items would be laid on tables for shoppers to pick through.  I do not recall mom buying much, but it was important to her to ensure after each week’s delivery that she did not miss an amazing bargain.   

When I was a late pre-teen, I became interested in music.  This was just before everyone had a transistor radio.  I asked about buying records.  Too expensive, mom said, but then she came home with a succession of albums from The Salvage Store.  She could buy these for ten or twenty-five cents.  I was supposed to be happy because I now had music.  When I complained about it, she was unsympathetic.  But these records being all that I had, I listened to them anyway.  That is how I came to know songs that had been popular in the previous twenty to thirty years such as Jumping Jive, Buttons and Bows, and The Song from Moulin Rouge.  I especially liked the melody of the latter and used to whistle it to a girlfriend when we walked at the lake. I never thought about the melancholy words: whenever we kiss, I worry and wonder. I also realize now that my whistling was off-key.   Well, girls did not have unlimited choices in that small town. 

My favorite lake memory, however, involves my sister.  I am nearly 16 years her senior.  When I was back from college, I often loaded her car seat and took her for rides and sang to her.  My favorite song to sing, perhaps for no other reason than that I knew it, was Tiny Bubbles.  Silver Lake, being the closest thing to a natural area, was always our destination. I liked pointing out all the squirrels.  My singing to Jeannie and driving around the lake paid off handsomely. Once when I returned for Christmas, I took her for a ride to the lake and then we went to our dad’s store.  My sister, being three or four, was asked by one of the clerks, who’s coming Jeannie?  Referring, of course, to Santa Claus. She got a quizzical look and said, Nobody’s coming, Nic’s already here.