Last week I got to visit a stand of oaks in Kenosha county that I have enjoyed my entire life. Thankfully they are still standing, among a small patch of land, as the interstate and sprawl is all -consuming around them.

As a child, every time we passed these trees on the highway I would look so wistfully at them, as they were obviously hundreds of years old even then. It's amazing to me to imagine the prairie and oaks that laid like a blanket over the landscape, as it is now just a small patch.

I got out of the car to walk among the grass (off the parking lot of a mega grocery store), and the crickets and birds were singing.