BY ANDREW MORKES, FOUNDER & AUTHOR OF THE “NATURE IN CHICAGOLAND” BLOG
I’m taking a little break from writing about nature in Chicagoland for a little nostalgia.
It was an amazing tree house. A wood castle built in the oak tree tops by my dad for his adventure-seeking sons. It had a pulley system that we used to carry things up into the tree house and a cool trap door that we could slam shut to keep out the pirates, monsters, or other bad guys who populated our games. Once built, it became the neighborhood hangout. We played “fort,” “castle,” and countless other games. Once, jealous kids threw rocks at us from the Metra train yard below, but that was my only bad memory of our tree house.
My dad built us a wonderland in our big leafy Beverly backyard (on the far South Side of Chicago). There was a wood clubhouse and a rough baseball diamond, as well as a huge red swing set that somehow prompted a chin-up contest one summer day between my dad, uncle, and grandfather. In the winter, we flooded our backyard and my mom taught my brother and I how to skate. I loved whizzing around the yard. My dad was not a skater, and my mom (who loved ice hockey and skating when she was a girl) still laughs at the memory of him holding tightly to the swing set like a man clutching the edge of a cliff so he wouldn’t fall on the ice. One year, a bird must have dipped her legs in the still unfrozen ice rink, then froze to the top of our fence. We gently chipped her ice-bound feet from the fence, brought her inside, thawed out her feet, and encouraged her to go back outside. In the spring, heavy rains would flood our backyard, a block from the Blue Island Ridge (which was formed by piles of rocks and sand pushed along by a glacier 13,000 years ago). As kids, we’d float around the backyard in big buckets and whatever else we could find, pretending that we were pirates or explorers. But playing in the tree house was our favorite backyard activity.
From the tree house, we used to shoot our BB guns at pop cans and other targets in our yard to the west. Once, a commuter from the train (to the east) saw us shooting at stuff in the yard and claimed we were shooting at the train. We knew this because two Chicago police officers walked down our path a few minutes after the train left to ask if we had been taking train potshots. “No!,” we said. We were simply told to stop shooting at the train if we had been. No harm, no foul. Today, we might have been arrested.
Time passes.
I can’t remember when and how our tree house was dismantled. But it’s gone. The massive oak tree that held up part of the tree house is mostly mulch, and the spot where we played (near Canna Lilies and Love-Lies-Bleeding) is overgrown with weeds. The club house, baseball diamond, and swing set are just memories. Today, my dad is long gone, his tools largely sit untouched in the garage he built and in the workroom that was like a den to him. My mom still lives in the home she moved into in 1966 with most of her life just a dream ahead of her. She does not move like she did when she used to chase us all over the house, bake cookies, paint window frames, mop floors, and chop wood—all in a day’s work. But she’s still here, and I am grateful for that.
Time passes.
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Did you have a fantastic backyard tree house like I did? If so, please tell me about it in the comments section.
Copyright (text/photos): Andrew Morkes
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Looking for some great nature destinations in Chicagoland? If so, check out my book, Nature in Chicagoland: More Than 120 Fantastic Nature Destinations That You Must Visit. It features amazing destinations in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Click on the title to learn more. The book has 306 pages and 210+ photos and is only $19.99. Nature in Chicagoland received great reviews in the Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune, Daily Southtown, This Week in Birding blog, and Beverly Review.
ABOUT ANDREW MORKES
I have been a writer and editor for more than 30 years. I’m the founder of College & Career Press (2002); the author and publisher of “The Morkes Report: College and Career Planning Trends” blog; and the author and publisher of Hot Health Care Careers: 30 Occupations With Fast Growth and Many New Job Openings; Nontraditional Careers for Women and Men: More Than 30 Great Jobs for Women and Men With Apprenticeships Through PhDs; They Teach That in College!?: A Resource Guide to More Than 100 Interesting College Majors, which was selected as one of the best books of the year by the library journal Voice of Youth Advocates; and other titles. They Teach That in College!? provides more information on environmental- and sustainability-related majors such as Ecotourism, Range Management, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Built Environment, Sustainability Studies, and Sustainable Agriculture/Organic Farming. I served as a member of the parent advisory board at my son’s school for five years.
In addition to these publications, I’ve written more than 70 books about careers for other publishing and media companies including Infobase (such as the venerable Encyclopedia of Careers & Vocational Guidance, the Vault Career Guide to Accounting, and many volumes in the Careers in Focus, Discovering Careers, What Can I Do Now?!, and Career Skills Library series) and Mason Crest (including those in the Careers in the Building Trades and Cool Careers in Science series).
Here’s a list of the environmental-focused titles that I’ve written:
- Nature in Chicagoland: More Than 120 Fantastic Nature Destinations That You Must Visit
- Wind Turbine Technicians (Great Careers Without a Bachelor’s Degree series)
- Environmental Scientists (Cool Careers in Science series)
- Renewable Energy Careers (Cool Careers in Science series)
- Environment (Getting Started series)
- Solar Power Technicians (Careers in Infrastructure series)