Though the winter oak savanna of Fullersburg Woods is a busy mess of trees, grass, and snow, the horizontal Rayleigh-scattering-blue shadows of the riverbanks add large-scale structure to the landscape.
Category: Illinois
Canada Geese from Above
Canada geese clustered around the newly restructured Salt Creek through Fullersburg Woods form an array of little dots and dot-pairs: sitting geese form single blobs, while standing geese make for a dot-pair from a goose and their shadow. It occurs to me that I might analyze the distribution between the two to understand flock dynamics if I weren’t the particular kind of scientist I am.
Oak Savanna in the Shadow of Towers
I’ve long been drawn to images where I could capture nature and dense urban settings in close proximity. Perhaps it’s the utopian feel of those images—if a lot of people want to live in harmony with nature, we need to pack ourselves into dense structures to do so. Does that make this just a little solarpunk?
Dead Tree in New Prairie in Winter
Fullersburg Woods was the location where I captured some of my earliest Decaseconds posts (all the way back to December 27, 2011!); it was a delight to revisit the location after the nature preserve has been completely restored to the oak savanna ecosystem it originally exhibited.
Enter the Grid
The expansive grid of warehouses and industrial facilities in what was once Chicago’s meatpacking district have an eerie, cyberpunky regularity. An aggressive teal/magenta color grading maxes out the Matrix/Tron vibes.
Northside Beaches
The steady, even grid of Chicago and its suburbs terminates into chaotic reality when it hits the shore of Lake Michigan, but hey—at least there’s a beach.
Leaving O’Hare
Runways on runways on runways, with the Rayleigh-scattering-induced silhouette of the Chicago skyline in the distance, on this summer morning over O’Hare International Airport.
Morning Light on the Grid
Sections of Chicago’s hinterlands that were once stockyards and meatpacking facilities have long since been converted to serve as industrial parks, but the sense of an endless grid remains.
New Train Station in Clarendon Hills
A visit to my home town of Clarendon Hills brought a surprise: the unremarkable train station from the mid-twentieth century has been replaced by a modern station and platform with a lot more greenery and some really interesting materials.
The station itself uses both lacquered rails (on the left) and wooden slats at odd intervals (Fibonacci-esque, but I didn’t measure to be sure.)
Neighborhood Baseball
This week’s theme on Decaseconds is apparently athletic fields. In the suburban Chicago grid, little park oases like these are a delightful break from the monotony.
Canal Through Suburbs
Chicagoland’s nearly 2D topography and nineteenth-century population boom conspired to make for a remarkably uniform grid of structures and roads. Even the water that might “go rogue” in another setting is often confined to the grid.
Lake Michigan Coast
Where Illinois meets Lake Michigan, a sunny winter afternoon makes a natural instance of the “classic” orange and teal look.
Chicago Silhuoette
An early-evening flight into Chicago puts the setting sun behind the skyline along Lake Michigan, reflecting silhouettes from the placid surface.
Chicago Interstate
The grayness of Chicago-area sprawl takes on a golden hue at sunset.
Nightflight
At the dawn of aviation, flight was magical. Then, it became routine. Now, after months in lockdown, a view above the clouds once again feels pretty special.
Decaseconds 