By Linda Sullivan
The forest floor was a carpet of spring wildflowers. Snakes on Snake Road swam to the edge of ponds to stare at hikers who stared back in delight. The cypress swamps of the Cache River Basin were loud with the drone of insects and unfamiliar birds singing their ancient songs. Hikers who pulled out phones to use the latest app to identify them seemed out of place in an area where dinosaurs seemed just around the corner. The contrasting sunny hills and canyons were no less wild. At night, those who ventured out were serenaded by frogs long extirpated from urban areas.
Fifteen participants on Ed Max and Paul Saindon’s four-day trip to the Shawnee National Forest in April stayed at Touch of Nature Lodge run by Southern Illinois University. Stepping outside the comfortable lodge on Grassy Lake was a world apart from where participants lived. For many, coming mostly from Chicago and surrounding suburbs, but also from as far away as the Dallas area of Texas, the razor-back ridges, lush canyons of the Shawnee, and mystic cypress swamps of the Cache River wetlands were a first-time revelation. Others had been to the area many times. But in three days of easy hikes, everyone said they visited parts of the Shawnee where they had not been before. All benefited from the deep knowledge and enthusiastic interpretation of plants and ecosystems by Ed Max and of geology by participant Mike Davis.
It was tough to go home, and many begged the leaders to do the trip again next year with one more day.
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