Fiacré's spade: The oaks of McHenry County

On Saturday, May 17, Hilda and I took an MCC trip to see the Oaks of McHenry County. Our tour guide for the day was Lisa from The Land Conservancy. It was a beautiful day to be out, sunny and cool. We went to three sites, all of which were not far from where we live. We would have done well to meet the tour at the first stop rather than drive all the way to the college to meet the bus there.

The first site had some oaks that were an estimated 400 years old. They would have been sizable trees when Europeans first came to the county. Native Americans would have known the trees as landmarks. We stood in the morning sunlight imagining a hunting party drinking from the stream nearby and resting in the shade beneath the tree.

The second stop was a property I drive by nearly every day. The house had been for sale a long time. I learned that the Land Conservancy and the McHenry County Conservation District had worked together to get a grant to buy the land, which included not only the house but also a pole barn and a long stretch of pristine oak forest that was not visible from the road. The roof of the pole barn had collapsed. The house would eventually be torn down.

We walked past the pole barn along a trail next to a pond. The previous owners had taken a couch and a sleeper sofa back to a clearing next to the water. I always have to wonder what people are thinking when they put indoor furniture outside. Lisa told us that one of the people who came out to assess the property had lifted the couch and found mouse trails everywhere. What a surprise.

Behind the pond and rotting couches, however, was a tract of oak forest that had never, ever been cleared for farmed. How can you tell? The presence of erratic boulders. Once Lisa pointed them out, I could see them everywhere. After the glacier retreated, it left behind stones of all sizes. Whenever land was broken for the plow, the stones got pulled out and piled at the edges of the field. If the stones remain, the land is virgin.

The forest floor was covered with spring ephemeral flowers. They get their name because they sprout, flower, and set seed during the narrow window of time between the ground thawing and the trees leafing out. This is the only time there is direct sunlight on the forest floor, and the only time the spring ephemerals can get enough energy to complete their life cycle.

Mayapples

Red trillium

Jack-in-the-pulpit

A face in an old oak

We had lunch next to the collapsed pole barn. Someone hauled in folding chairs and box lunches. I love boxed lunches. You get a sandwich, a bag of something full of salty, greasy deliciousness, a cup of salad, a cookie, and a piece of candy. My box had a ham sandwich on a croissant, nacho cheese Sun Chips, fruit salad, and a peanut butter cookie. The candy was the only disappointment. A wee bit of chocolate is the best, of course. This time, it was a mint. Not a good mint, but the dried toothpaste kind of mint. Since the sandwich was twice as large as a normal sandwich and had enough meat for three sandwiches, I ate too much.

On the way to the next stop, we passed an alpaca farm. One guy in the back asked, “Are those llamas or emus?”

A woman replied, “I think they’re alpaca.”

“Oh yeah,” the guy said. It was not clear to me that he really understood the difference between two legs and four. Starts with a vowel…

Our last stop was a short hike to a stand of swamp white oak. These trees were the first of their species discovered in the county. We walked across the road to private land that had a conservation easement in perpetuity. We met the owner of the land. Hilda recognized her and said, “I’ve taken a class with her.” She looked familiar to me too. When we talked to her later, we figured out that we had all been in one of the Saturday classes at the Conservation District last year. She took us on a short hike through her woods and showed us a rare sedge, indicating how it could be distinguished from other sedges. I have trouble with any grass-like organism and am sorry to say that that information has now, a little over a week later, been lost to the ages (that is, my age).

A retired biology instructor from another area community college had set up a table of pond samples that he had collected from the water at the base of the glacial moraine on which the forest grew. I saw something I had never seen before—the larva of a tiger salamander. He also had examples of a few kinds of snails, a water tiger (larva of a predaceous diving beetle), fingernail clams, and several caddisfly larva. One man on the trip thought that the caddisfly larva crawled into pre-existing sticks. After several tries, I think I got him to understand that the larva built the homes for themselves.