By Megan Donahue

Earlier this spring, I was walking through the woods. It was one of those first perfect days–warm, but not too hot, the sky a brilliant blue. As I wandered along the paths, I noted the signs of spring migratory birds calling to each other, carpets of spring ephemeral wildflowers, the leaves just starting to emerge. Every year, spring feels like a miracle to me, and this year, especially. On both the macro and micro level, it had been a long winter.

I rounded a bend and saw a fallen tree. Not unusual– the winter winds take some out every year. What struck me was all the new growth sprouting out of it. Branches with bright yellow-green leaves were beginning to unfurl. I looked closer; there was just a small section of the trunk still connected to the roots. Apparently, that was enough to keep this tree going.

The metaphor was hard to miss.

Merriam Webster defines resilience as:

1: the capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation caused especially by compressive stress

2: an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change

In tumultuous times, we know that cultivating resilience is important. When we are that strained body, we want to recover and adjust. Nature offers us many examples of resilience, from the fresh regrowth after forest fires to the dandelions that grow in the cracks in the sidewalk.

“To me, resilience means a way of grounding yourself, recovering. It’s a way of having a self-care plan. I think nature’s just wonderful because it’s so resilient. I mean, it don’t matter if it’s a storm, if it’s a flood, it’s a fire. It always finds a way to heal itself,” says Bruce Wright, founder of Nature’s Emporium in Waukegan.

Here in Lake County, there is a powerful story of resilience and recovery: The Waukegan Dunes.

Lessons from the Dunes

The natural environment along the Waukegan lakeshore is special. It includes a rare landscape of dunes, swales, bluffs, and ravines found in very few other places in the world. But the Waukegan Harbor and lakefront were long contaminated by over a century of industry. 

As Brushwood Center reported in the 2023 Health, Equity, and Nature: A Changing Climate in Lake County, Illinois (HEN report).

“Waukegan’s industrial pollution traces back to its development as a port city. In 1855, the economic future of the town seemed assured with the first train running through Waukegan connecting Chicago to Milwaukee. Waukegan Harbor was one of the busiest on the Great Lakes, and throughout the 1900s Waukegan continued to grow.

Throughout the twentieth century, the city grew as an industrial center with companies such as Abbott Laboratories, Outboard Marine Corporation, and Medline.”

The industrial activity resulted in a staggering amount of pollution, and today Waukegan is home to five Superfund sites (there are eight total in Lake County). Superfund sites are sites of environmental contamination that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) designates as significant hazards that must be cleaned up. It also requires the parties responsible for the contamination to either perform cleanups or reimburse the government for EPA-led cleanup work.

At the end of the 20th century, the Waukegan shoreline was overwhelmed with contamination. But with community action and advocacy, the Harbor and surrounding dunes were rehabilitated in an extraordinary way.

From the HEN Report:

…Fortunately, community action and advocacy has led to the continued remediation of these sites, and particularly in Waukegan Harbor. In 1990, the Waukegan Harbor Citizens Advisory Group (CAG) was formed by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) to lead the development of a remedial action plan (RAP) for the Waukegan Harbor Area of Concern.

In 2013, the final environmental dredge of Waukegan Harbor was completed. As of August 2020, the Waukegan Area of Concern (AOC) has only one Beneficial Use Impairment (BUI) remaining: Restrictions on Fish and Wildlife Consumption. The Illinois Department of Natural Resources monitors polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) levels in harbor fish.The CAG continues ‘to work with local, state and federal agencies to assure that the remaining contaminated sites located along the Waukegan lakefront are remediated and the remaining BUI is delisted and the AOC be declared an Area of Recovery.’”

“We say that humans have the least experience with how to live and thus the most to learn—we must look to our teachers among the other species for guidance. Their wisdom is apparent in the way that they live. They teach us by example. They’ve been on the earth far longer than we have been, and have had time to figure things out.”

Cultivating Resilience in Our Communities and Ourselves

“In the Western tradition there is a recognized hierarchy of beings, with, of course, the human being on top—the pinnacle of evolution, the darling of Creation—and the plants at the bottom. But in Native ways of knowing, human people are often referred to as ‘the younger brothers of Creation,’” wrote Robin Wall Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass.

At first glance, my fallen tree looks like the story of a rugged individual, eking out its existence despite all the odds. But there’s a community at work there, too. The soil and sunlight are feeding the tree. Insects help pollinate it. Birds rest in its branches. That tree is not alone, and neither are we.

This story was first published in Thrive, Brushwood’s seasonal newsletter. It originally stated that the Waukegan Dunes “re-emerged.” Thanks to our friends at the Waukegan Harbor Citizens Advisory Group for clarifying that while a natural environment has re-emerged, the current dunal system formed in the late 20th century.