Woods, Water & Michigan, Part 1

The pull of childhood impressions must be very strong within me, because, even today, woods and water mark the epitome of serenity and romance. Perhaps that’s why Simons Woods and Lake Munson were two of Bryony’s earliest settings.

I grew up in Joliet in a brand-new subdivision that was still underdeveloped enough to contain fields of prairie grasses and tiny, raspberry-sized wild strawberries that my sister and I picked on June mornings until they disappeared with the July heat. We could spend an entire morning crawling on the ground, the weeds scratching our bare legs, moving aside green thatches to find the reddest berries. When our plastic, old butter tub containers were full, we ran home to remove the green tops and toss them into a colander to rinse them clean. They topped our Cheerios the next morning, just like a cereal’s box’s cover photo.

Our three-bedroom ranch house backed up into Highland Park, so before my father installed a six-foot, wooden, privacy fence, you could see the within walking-distance athletic club pavilion. However, the strawberries grew less abundantly there than behind my friend’s house across the street.

Beyond Highland Park was Pilcher Park, with its winding roads, famous flowing well, nature museum and walking trails, and a creek that featured paddle boats in summer and ice skating in winter. I remember being pulled away from an afternoon showing of “Munster Go Home,” on the little rabbit-eared, black and white television in the basement to instead go ice skating. I had outgrown my ice skates and wobbled on a pair, two sizes too large, that had once belonged to my mother. I detested ice skating from that day forward.

We moved to New Lenox in 1974, again to a wooded area near a much smaller creek. That body of water was the perfect spot to watch dragonflies and entertain random musings. I took woods for granted, until I had children of my own and lived in an area that had none.