Tales from the Garden

A small creek in the midwest When I was 7 years old, my family moved from a brick bungalow on the south side of Chicago to a ranch-style house in a suburban cul de sac in Ft. Wayne, Indiana.  Everything about our new neighborhood was very different than our old one (which I missed so much), except for one very special thing: our small Chicago house on a small urban lot was across the street from a giant easement of open meadow, wetland, and trees, with freight rail tracks running down the middle of it. All us kids called it "the prairie", and it was filled with the magical sights and sounds of dragonflies, songbirds, lightning bugs, and frogs.  How I longed to venture out there, but because it was also a place where teens and young adults met to hang out, build fires, and fight, it was off limits to me (but not to my big brothers).  However, the backyard of our new house had a "prairie" right behind it too, with hundreds of acres of farm fields and a tree-li...