A walk on my day off

Whalon Marsh (I think this is its name) is right across the Des Plaines River from my apartment. But it takes about ten minutes to drive there, because there is no bridge across for a few miles in either direction. There's my apartment complex, right there -- I can even pick out my bedroom window. I started walking, in gorgeous sunshine...

WHAT?!?
Whatever. Not to be deterred, after walking for only about 8 minutes, I decided to bushwhack a little -- someone else had the same idea, because there was a board set across the trickle of a creek just past the end of the asphault. I found a few footpaths through the thicket in the background, there. I picked one...

And found myself in another open area, totally deserted, and huge... spread out under the powerlines. (Power lines are a theme in my life in Bolingbrook, I tell you! See here.) I love wide-open spaces -- for some reason, my mild agoraphobia does not play out here -- and being alone in a lot of quiet openness is just what I've been needing lately, after all that travel, conferences, and making wedding invitations for eight hours (more on this to come).

Green leaves! A sight for sore eyes, let me tell you.
How come bramble bushes turn green first?

More green. Leaves, curled up like tiny fists! In wet ground...

Whalon Marsh is part of the floodplain of the Des Plaines River.
The water hasn't entirely dried up since our last flooding, last week -- so there's both brown, dry grass and wet, muddy green patches. But it's wet deep down, even under the dry grass.

I got my feet wet, more than once.

Here's the Des Plaines, a low, brown, muddy, Midwestern river. Classic Midwest spring ugly, too. But it smells like dirt and life. It's swollen with rainwater, and it's good to walk along...

especially all by yourself.