Chicago River

In the comments on this post I mentioned Chicago.
I knew one day I would have a use for this picture:



Union Station is out of the picture to the left - it's the main train terminal where you come into the city. I'm not sure which street this is, but it's one of the bridges that cross the Chicago River and into the main part of downtown (to the right in the picture) - walking toward Lake Michigan.

Writing that -'the main part of downtown'- almost makes me laugh now, but it didn't back when I actually went downtown. The parts of town -the blocks and various neighborhoods- are like a West Virginian's knowledge of the names of the ridges and back roads. The same, but very, very different.

And, too, I have to point out the significance of 'I'm not sure which street this is.' I don't know because they all look the same to me. I know how cliche that sounds and I'm sure if someone from Chicago read this it would make them as mad as someone saying that all our hills look the same, but, for me, it's true. I found my way around by keeping Lake Michigan to the East in my brain and figuring out which east/west street I had to be on in order to make it back to Union Station (yes, they have names, but I can't remember them right now). Even when driving, if I kept Lake Michigan in my brain, I could find my way around. Mostly.
The kids used to only-half-jokingly ask, "Do you know where we're going, Mom?" I'd answer with a direction: north, south, east, west and they'd groan and crack jokes about being lost and never finding our way back to the house. But, really, if I could keep the map in my head, I was usually fine. I eventually got to know the main north-south and east-west roads and I was fine. Or as fine as I ever got in Chicago.
What I missed were the hills. Here, nestled in the hills, the directions are still there, but more important as directionals are the ridge lines and contours of the land. I never got used to the flat, square grid layout of Chicago.
[PC took this picture sometime in the past year when he was in Chicago on business (I haven't been there since we moved back here).]

I took a land management class while we lived there and one of the things that we studied was the history of the Chicago River. That's what this post was originally supposed to be about, but I kind of wandered off course, huh? Well, I'm running out of time this morning, but I'll get back to the Chicago River and my reasons for taking the class sometime soon....