Feeling Like a Kid Again
Ben made his way down the street to the path that ran next to the train tracks and headed east. He thought how Amy would call it the “Prairie Path Superhighway,” because usually it was filled with joggers and bikers, but Ben enjoyed the path. He found it a seclusion of nature as it was bounded by trees on both sides creating a canopy of green in the summer for much of a walk.
A spring in his step, Ben started down the path as the occasional person on a bike would shout, “On your left.” He would sporadically see groups of runners who Ben thought must be training for a marathon, because, in his mind, “Who would be out here just running in a group for no reason?”
The path started with a stretch of trees, but then cut through their small downtown, crossing Main Street. To his left, Ben could see the commuter train station. He thought of the few times he would take the train into the city for work meetings, and how he actually liked the “being on the train” aspect of the trip to the city.
Eventually the path turned back into a “nature seclusion” section, and Ben found himself humming a bit as the spring in his step propelled him forward. He pondered just how far it would be along the trail until there was the split to the ridge and the entrance to the other path.
In his head, Ben pictured himself on a monumental adventure, a trip that, as he would explain it to people, would be a hike through the mountains that would take days, but it was really just about a mile and a half to where the trail would split to the ridge that ran parallel to the railroad tracks.
Ben could see the sign up ahead, and in his memory he started picturing the satellite image he found earlier, as well as the map that he viewed on the forest preserve website. He made his way to the left side of the trail to get out of the way of any runners and bikers, and veered off to Ridge Trail.
As he entered Ridge Trail, he saw where that trail split. The previous time he was here, he walked to the right where the trail was a little more developed, as opposed to the left which revealed a thinner path with more brush. While the trail to the right wasn’t similar to the crushed limestone or asphalt sections of the Prairie Path, it was a dirt trail that was just wide enough for two people to walk along.
Remembering his satellite images, and knowing the trail went in a loop that would eventually end up where he was standing, he looked to the left. It was the same as he had remembered it, a much less beaten path, tighter, with only room for single file walking. There was much more pronounced ground cover and tall grasses, with prairie flowers almost covering the trail.
Ben wanted to go around the entire loop, hoping there would be a good spot on the trail closer to the train, but unsure as he had never taken that path. As he began his trek through the brush, he noticed that this part of the trail didn’t rise up to a ridge. Instead it stayed low to the level of the tracks. As he made his way closer to the tracks, the trail became more and more overgrown, and one could tell that people rarely came this way as the plants weren’t beaten down to reveal the path.
In Ben’s mind, he pictured himself cutting through the Amazon Rainforest, on a quest to find a lost treasure, when in reality it was just walking through prairie plants while paying attention to the path.
As he pushed the plants of burdock and various grasses out of his way, Ben was transported back to being around ten years old and hanging with his friend, Billy. He thought back to the area next to the high school that was filled with weeds and cattails. He remembered how he and Billy would yank the cattails from the ground and try to light them, hoping to create torches similar to what they would see in movies.
Ben recalled how they would use any lighter they could find, even sneaking to get Ben’s dad’s favorite lighter, but no matter how they tried, the cattails would just smolder because neither Ben nor Billy realized they needed to be dried out and soaked in kerosene.
A smile came to Ben’s face as he saw some cattails up ahead and thought, “I should grab a few, take them home, and light them up.” Then he remembered he didn’t have kerosene in the house, but instantly envisioned the can of kerosene in his old, family garage, along the wall, next to his dad’s wooden toolbox.
As Ben continued, the spirit of hiking through the woods with his “cattail torches” quickly went away.
The trail began to open up a bit as he was walking near the tracks, and Ben started paying more attention to a possible photo shoot location. As he looked around the various weeds, grasses, small trees, and cattails always seemed to get in the way of the shot he envisioned in his head. He continued down the trail, noticing that he was coming to the bend that would lead to the right and up to the ridge portion. He realized that getting a picture from the low portion of the trail wouldn’t work.
“I really hope there is an open area up there with a clear shot of the tracks,” Ben said to himself.
As he began to climb to the top of the ridge, the dirt path widened, and Ben noticed that his pants were covered in seeds from some of the plants.
“Oh, crap, I don’t think I’ve been covered in this many seeds since I was ten years old. What were these again, Desmodumdum or something like that? Oh yeah, mom used to call it ‘tick trefoil.’ I guess I’ll wait until I get home to try and knock them off. Man, Amy is going to be like, ‘Are you sure those aren’t real ticks?’”
Even with his pants covered in seeds, Ben was filled with joy thinking back to traipsing through the woods and fields with Billy.
Another childhood memory came back to Ben…
“Mom, I’m going with Billy. We’re going to just ride around the block and maybe to the park!”
“Okay, Ben, just be careful. I don’t want you going into the woods or the fields and coming back dirty.”
“Okay, mom,” Ben would shout back.
He and Billy would then proceed to ride directly to the fields or to the woods, with the woods being Ben’s favorite as there was always the adventure of traipsing through the trees but never finding the other edge of the woods.
As the skip in Ben’s step mirrored his joy and excitement, Ben continued on the trail as it was winding back towards the starting point. Up ahead and to the right, he could see an opening where the trees had fallen down. He got closer, and then he saw it, a possible, perfect opening if he put his tripod as close as he could to one of the trees.
Still covered in tick-trefoil, Ben changed his mind and decided that the first order of business was to get the seed pods off of his clothes. He had an old rag in his camera bag that he pulled out, “Well, this will end up in the garbage can. At least I won’t be dragging them in the house.”
As he started to use the rag to get the tick-trefoil off his clothes, in his head he heard his mom yelling at him, “You went to the woods, didn’t you?”
He smiled at the thought, and how one time his mom threw his pants in the garbage because they were covered in prickly, seed pods, and he had torn them sliding down a muddy hill.
With the seeds off his clothes, Ben set up his tripod and camera. Pulling out his phone he checked the commuter train schedule to see if there might be a train coming through so he could get some live test shots rather than just pictures of the tracks.
“Look at that, there will be a train in five minutes. Wow, how did I plan that so well?”
Ben kept an eye on his watch as he knew the train should be reasonably on time. As he noticed four minutes had passed, he finalized his test shot settings. Fifty seconds later he heard the train just about to get to the clearing.
He pressed the remote shutter button setting off a flurry of clicks on his camera just as the train emerged at the clearing. As quickly as the train had arrived, it was gone, and Ben started looking at the images on the camera preview screen.
A smile came to his face as one image was just about perfect. He noted all of the camera settings from the F-Stop and shutter speed, to the focus distance and the zoom length, all the while smiling.
“That went great! Oh, I can’t wait until the real train!”
As he packed up his camera gear, he said to himself, “Wow, that’s going to be a quick photo shoot. So glad I came out, I just hope the weather will be great!”
Ben texted Amy, “All done. Photo shoot went great! I should be home in about half an hour unless I find some flowers and birds to take pictures of. I think I got all of the ticks off of me.”
As he pressed “Send,” he chuckled to himself, imagining Amy’s reaction to his text, knowing he failed to call it “tick-trefoil seeds” and just left it at “ticks.”
Ben’s phone buzzed, and he looked at it.
“WHAT!!!!!!!” Was the reply from Amy.
Ben chuckled, then thought, “I hope there will be some birds or flowers. Oh yeah, it will be better if I change the shutter to single picture instead of high-speed.”
He adjusted the setting on the camera from continuous to single shutter, put the backpack onto his shoulders, and slung the camera over his right shoulder. As he made his way back home from his recon mission, Ben bounded down the path with a spring in his step, still feeling like he was ten years old exploring the woods and fields with Billy.