By Michael McColly

For me, summer in Chicago has become the season to hike. I don’t mean a stroll through Grant Park or a long walk home from the bar after a breakup. I mean a purposeful pilgrimage across the city. I’m talking about urban hiking. For years, as a hiker and fitness freak, I packed my gear and headed west or east to the mountains of Appalachia to get my nature fix and break free from the city. But after a walking tour of the UK, where people walk everywhere and trails link city to country to coast, I came home and looked out at this vast metropolis and asked myself: why can’t I hike here? A few weeks later, I walked to the Indiana Dunes from Rogers Park, and I’m discovering you can walk anywhere with a good pair of shoes, an adventuresome spirit and the willingness to break old ways of seeing urban landscapes.

The key to urban walking is distance. A three- or five-mile walk won’t do. You have to push beyond your idea of how far is far. You have to treat the hike as if it were a new place, a wilderness of another sort. I have a few rules: no car, no cell phones, no soundtrack to distract you, but, sure, bring a small camera or notebook. This is all about exploring how perception changes when you slow down and look at the landscape at the pace generated by nothing more than your own muscles and will.

Here are a few of my favorite hikes. Living in Rogers Park I’ve explored all three directions, south, north and west. But the joy of this form of recreation is to make your own pilgrimages. Read the rest of this entry »

By John Greenfield

If you’re a car-free Chicagoan, you don’t have to hit up Hertz to take a kick-ass road trip this summer. Here in the nation’s railroad hub, bicycle plus train is a powerful combo, not just for getting around the metro area but the entire Midwest.

Case in point is the beer-soaked bike camping trip my buddies and I took earlier this month along the Mississippi River, across Wisconsin and back using Amtrak and Metra. It was our annual Men’s Trip, a chance for the married guys to take a break from family obligations, and since most of the guys are serious beer snobs we planned our itinerary around brewpub visits. Late spring wind and rain made this tour a bit of a death march for us, but if you’d like to try the route (tinyurl.com/brewpubride) it’d be a blast to ride in July sunshine.

On a Wednesday evening we loaded our touring bikes with tents and sleeping bags and hauled them aboard Amtrak’s Carl Sandburg line to Kewanee, Illinois, near the shoulder of the state. Soon we’re flying west across the prairie past dozens of white modern windmills tinted pink by the setting sun.

When we pull into Kewanee, a sign says we’re in the “Hog Capital of the World,” so down the street at the Pioneer Club I tackle a breaded pork tenderloin horseshoe sandwich. The horseshoe is a downstate Illinois specialty often called “a heart attack on a plate”—white bread, fries and a protein, drowned in cheese sauce.

We camp up the road at a park donated to the city by Fred Francis, an oddball inventor, artist, poet and nudist. In the morning I tour Woodland Palace, the futuristic dream home Francis built on the site in 1890, featuring wind-powered heating and cooling systems, automatic doors and many other clever gadgets. I’m most excited to see his bicycle, with a seat installed over the front wheel so he could carry his wife Jeanne to church. Read the rest of this entry »

The city grind makes it hard at times to get back to nature. Pack a picnic or lace up your boots, there’s something out there for everyone.

For an educational trip outdoors, head out to the Little Red Schoolhouse Nature Center in Willow Springs (9800 Willow Springs Road). Find out about the area’s rich historic past ranging from glacial formations to Indian trails. The Schoolhouse itself is a great location for children to learn while enjoying some fresh air.

In the same vein, visit Graue Mill in Oak Brook (3800 York Road) and see the only working waterwheel gristmill in northern Illinois. The attached museum showcases the inner workings of the mill itself. It is also one of the remaining stations of the Underground Railroad, with a full exhibit with photos and interactive displays.

If plants are more your thing, visit the Garfield Park Conservatory (300 North Central Park) located on Chicago’s West Side. Take the Green Line, getting off at the Central Park Drive station. View prehistoric ferns and lush foliage in any of their multiple greenhouses. Check in with the park for scheduled events or workshops. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Elias Cepeda

Summertime brings people out to their lawns everywhere. Good neighbors may have good fences in the backyard, but front yards welcome exhibitionists, chatty neighbors and strangers who stop by lemonade stands, especially on sunny days. In suburbia, homes are ripe with lawn during the summer, inviting kids in bathing suits and on bikes. Grown-ups hold barbecues and everyone plays ball. In the city, the boundaries dissolve even further. Deprived of personal front yards, we share. We play in the sun together. Like any neighbors trying to share space, we fight sometimes, too. Rather than argue about who gets the tricycle next, our neighbor’s browning grass, or how much the lemonade should go for, we wish Taste of Chicago never got Grant Park, we ask why the pavement’s crumbling and we grumble about the money being spent—or not—on improving our front yard.

It’s a complicated shuffle, especially when Dad isn’t Chief Executive of the Front Lawn. There’s the Park District, of course. They take care of the lawns, but not the ones in Millennium Park. Those are under the Department of Cultural Affairs. And they contract operations out to MB Real Estate, which deals with the day-to-day challenges of a much-loved park. They too contract out some of the work—they hire a cleaning staff to do things like pick up trash, wipe benches and the Bean, and clean bathrooms. “The largest problem about keeping Millennium Park looking good is, as its popularity increases, so does of course the traffic flow,” says Neal Speers, director of operations for the park. “Grass isn’t designed to have 100,000 people walk over it every day,” says Speers, who has to “find the balance of protecting the landscape but still letting people use it.” Read the rest of this entry »

By Ilana Kowarski

Hidden near the parking lot of the Museum of Science and Industry, people meet in a green near a little brick building. Seen from afar, their rituals seem somewhat strange. They dress in all white, use odd hand gestures, and throw balls on their lawn. I have decided to meet these people. A Scotsman dressed in white shakes my hand, and smiles, “I’ve got something for you.” He introduces himself as John Clark, reaches into his bag and takes out a tiny ball, which he twirls between his fingers. Clark grins and exclaims in brogue, “These are the best bowling balls out there. There’s no excuse for not playing well when you have these.” I nod. I take the ball and throw it across the grass. The ball bounces and goes only a few feet. “Try again,” he tells me. I throw the ball harder, and it goes further, but in the wrong direction. “It’s not an easy game,” Clark shrugs.

Like many Scots, Clark loves land bowling, and considers the sport to be an important part of his heritage. Clark has been playing the game for years, both in Scotland and here in Chicago, at the Lakeside Lawn Bowling Club. Read the rest of this entry »

By David Witter

Nelson Algren bought his beach cottage in Miller, Indiana in 1950, partially from the proceeds from the film rights to “The Man with a Golden Arm.” I was born on Juniper Street, across the Calumet Lagoon from his cottage a few years after Algren had left. However, tales of the man whom many consider to be Chicago’s greatest writer have echoed through my family gatherings ever since.

In a way, a lot has changed in Miller since Algren and Simone de Beauvoir drank, swam, hiked, made love, wrote and enjoyed the dunes area just east of Gary only forty-five minutes from downtown Chicago. Yet a lot has stayed the same, and it is not hard for Chicagoans to spend a summer afternoon retracing the steps of Algren in Miller. Read the rest of this entry »

Urbanrules/Creative Commons

By Patrick Roberts

It is 7:40am on a Saturday, and I am smoking a cigarette on Darrow Bridge, waiting for birders to appear. A friend waits with me, and a debate between us is why we are here. Inexplicably, she believes fish to be more interesting than birds. I disagree. In flight and song, birds capture the imagination and lift the spirit. Think “Ode to a Nightingale.” Fish, by contrast, lack all personality. I don’t know of any odes to a fish. Nonetheless, my friend is unconvinced, and so we have come to Wooded Island in the heart of Jackson Park to gain perspective.

During the summer, Wooded Island draws birders and fishers alike. The birders stroll the trails, eyes upon the trees; the fishers troll the lagoons, eyes upon the water. This morning, we hope to join one of the semi-organized bird walks that have been a fixture on Wooded Island for years. Every Wednesday and Saturday morning throughout the year, birders gather on Darrow Bridge and set off together in ornithological fellowship. Read the rest of this entry »

By John Greenfield

On a hot August morning, I load my bicycle with camping gear and catch Metra up to Kenosha, Wisconsin. As usual I’ve stayed up late packing and haven’t slept much, so I snooze during most of the hour-and-a-half train ride.

Taking a combo of Route 32 and bike paths I ride thirty-five miles to a dock on the south side of Milwaukee for the high-speed ferry to Muskegon, Michigan. The main function of the ferry is a shortcut for drivers who want to avoid Chicago congestion, and the lower deck of the boat is packed with cars, RVs and motorcycles—mine’s the only pedal bike. Read the rest of this entry »

I have always felt that the best parks in Chicago can only be reached by bus and don’t have neighborhoods named after them. Indian Boundary Park, located at 2500 West Lunt, is no exception. I have a special connection to the park. Sometime in the late 1980s, I remember watching my parents and neighbors build the maze of wooden castles, bridges, spires and tunnels that comprise its playground, and when my pet rabbit started chewing the wires behind my dad’s stereo, it got a new home in the park’s petting zoo. They nixed the petting zoo a couple years back, but the park still has the only outdoor zoo you’re likely to find on the Far North Side, containing deer, sheep and some very mangy alpaca. On the weekend you can take yoga classes and see no-frills local theater in the old fieldhouse. After hours, the playground is a haven for dog walkers, Latin Kings and high-school kids with no place else to go hang out.

There’s not much else to say about Indian Boundary. It was named after the West Ridge borders established for Potawatomi villages in the early 1800s that were breached just before the turn of the century. It has tennis courts, a lagoon, a geyser-style fountain to play in, and copious elote and paleta vendors. I’ve fallen in love there at three different points in my life.

There are about a hundred days of summer between the solstice and the equinox. Add another thirty for the rise in global temperatures, then subtract twenty for Chicago weather weirdness. That leaves a lot of time to take the Western Avenue bus north for a visit, and if you don’t, it’s practically criminal. (Eric Strom)

A few years back, I tried flying a dual-line stunt kite at the Eiffel Tower. It was a violently hot day and the only wind was an occasional dry wheeze. The standard launch technique of backing the kite off the ground by yanking the grips doesn’t work in such conditions. At best, it stays aloft a few seconds before crashing to earth. There’s simply not enough wind.

While the Eiffel Tower may have been just for the birds, summer in the Windy City attracts kite fliers from all over the country. Chicago’s a natural for the pastime. But there are some unique challenges to kiting in the city: power lines are everywhere, all the parks are lined with trees, there are very few wide open spaces. FAA rules don’t permit flying above 400 feet and it’s rainy enough to deter fliers who know that: even though they’re flying with a cloth line, it’s still capable of conducting electricity when damp. Nonetheless, throughout mid-summer, the sky above the city’s lakeshore gets dotted with everything from traditional diamond kites, four-line “quad” sport kites, parafoils and seven-foot Japanese Rokkakus, or “roks,” octagonal kites with richly illustrated sailcloth front panels. Occasionally an inflatable lizard or an octopus kite shows up floating across the ether in Astrobright orange, as if it just crawled up out of Lake Michigan and took to the skies, trailing tentacles of wind-whipped Mylar. Read the rest of this entry »