Postcard from Ragdale #3: Little Writer on the Prairie

The rain has stopped and the weather has cooled and I think it's officially coming up on fall (in this part of the country, anyway.) The Canada Geese have been flying overhead en masse, the crabapples are ripe on the trees--to the great delight of the chipmunks that live on the grounds, all of whom are stuffing their cheeks full of them--and every morning, when I look out my window, a few more leaves on the trees have started to turn. It's still very early in the season, of course, but I'm glad I was here for a little piece of it.

Yesterday I took my first long walk on the prairie, starting out at the north end of the Ragdale house, where I took these pictures of the Ragale angel. There's a small blue angel at the top of the official Ragdale letterhead--everything around the Ragdale house, not just my room, is a very specific shade of Ragdale blue--and there's a carved wooden angel's wing on the wall of the Barnhouse living room. I'm assuming this is the woman who inspired it all. And that seems fitting, given that there is definitely a sense that someone's watching over you here. Not in a creepy way, but in a grandmotherly kind of way. At dinner a couple of nights ago, one of the other residents said "There's something about this place that just puts out of a vibe of 'Come on now, no procrastinating, get to work'--but in the nicest possible way." I think I'd have to agree.

From there I ventured out beyond the split rail fence. The Shaw Prairie, right behind the Ragdale house, is one small part of the Skokie River Nature Preserve. What I like best about the prairie is that trails are mown into it, so that when you're walking you're surrounded by the tall grasses and flowers, some of them ten or twelve feet tall. There are moments when it's a little claustrophobic, when I hear a noise in the grass and start having a Children of the Corn flashback--but then I remind myself that this is the real world intruding unnecessarily, because there's not a thing to harm anyone at Ragdale, as those casual raccoons demonstrated earlier. (In fact, the day I arrived, the driver who brought me up from the airport said "There's no crime in Lake Forest. The police here really have nothing to do. So be sure you come to a complete stop whenever you're at a stop sign.")

I took the center trail out into the middle of the prairie, then cut off to the north and found an area with trees and a bench dedicated to several members of the Ragdale family. That's where I called my husband and tried to describe what I was seeing, though I'm the first to admit that words are no match for the prairie and we didn't talk long. I wandered back to the center trail, then toward the Skokie River. I think this suspension bridge might be a new addition since my last trip to Ragdale--it looks new, anyway. I didn't brave the swaying bridge this time, though. Instead, I kept meandering north along the riverbank, through the Shaw Woods, and eventually found myself in Bennett Meadow. In spite of the fact that I feel like I'm out in the middle of nowhere when I'm on the prairie, I think it would be pretty hard to get lost. All the trails loop back on themselves, kind of like the circular path of the labyrinth mown into the grass in the back yard of the Ragdale house. (And, after all, it's still in the middle of Lake Forest--how lost can you get in a town full of houses the size of Costco?)

I don't know if you can see the bee at the center of this photo on the right, but he was one of many I saw while I was walking. At dinner, a visual artist commented to me that he'd been for a walk as well, but hadn't seen any bees. "That's because they were all following me around," I said.

After an hour or so of walking, I ended up back at the Ragdale house, on the south porch. These cat sculptures were soaking up the sun in a bright corner, exactly where a pair of cats should be. And they didn't seem the least bit interested in bothering this little bird I found perched on top of a (blue) post at the edge of a nearby flowerbed. I sat on the porch for awhile, soaking up some sun myself--it isn't cold for the people who live here, but it's cold for me. Let everybody else wear shorts, though. I'm putting on a sweater and enjoying a little taste of cool weather while I can.