On Friday, I went for a walk in a place I don’t usually visit in the winter, because I happened to be driving by: Spring Valley Nature Sanctuary, though sometimes I go as northern Illinois is emerging from winter.

The recent snows have been modest, but enough to cover the trails and the ground.

In about four months, this same view of thick bushes along the trail will be a mass of green as dense as any in more torrid zones.
It was also time to document Doc Baker’s stone, also along the trail, put there in 2002. One of his life’s achievements was the founding of the Rotary Club of Schaumburg and Hoffman Estates. I have nothing bad to say about the Rotarians. The fellow who hired me for my first job in Chicago in ’87 was a Rotarian, and occasionally we had lunch at Rotary Club 1, which was on Michigan Ave. at the time.
Doc Baker seems to have been well liked. Good for him.