Conscious Choice: A Voice in the Wilderness

September 2000

A Voice in the Wilderness

by Bob Condor

The snapshot was one of maybe sixty photos mounted on a poster board display in the back of the church at John Husar’s funeral. Every picture helped tell the story of John’s remarkably full and loving life, but this particular photo stuck out in my mind for all of the right reasons.

First, both men looked happy, clearly having fun on a weekday afternoon away from computers and paperwork and meetings. Second, the pair was riding horses to check out 1,039 acres of new state forest land in northern Illinois. Third, one face was John and the other was a guy named Jim Edgar, who happened to be governor at the time.

"Just two hours ago, I was in Chicago with Mayor Daley [and others] dedicating the new World Trade Center," Edgar revealed in John’s Sunday outdoors column in the Chicago Tribune a few days later. "I told them I really had to be somewhere at 2:00 p.m. I didn’t tell‘em I was going horseback riding."

While cantering with the Governor makes a good photo opportunity, John Husar made the most of every walk in every woods. He noticed the little things — songbirds, snake trails, deer tracks, newly scattered black walnuts still in their green husks, the orange-golds of sugar maples in October, garlic mustard greens he pulled with his wife, Louise, in the woods outside their front door in Willow Springs — but John focused on bigger issues, too.

"John never really hunted before he got the outdoors writer’s job at the Tribune," recalled Louise the other day. "And I have to admit I was bothered by the hunting part of the job at first. But John determined from the start that whenever he harvested an animal [and fish] it would be for our table or someone’s table.

"He prayed for the soul of every animal. He thanked God for the food at the table."

For vegetarians, "conscious" and "sportsman" might seem to be mutually exclusive labels. John was both and much more.

"He built bridges between people who loved the outdoors," says Jerry Adelmann, executive director of the Openlands Project, a local private, nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving wilderness and open space. "He was one of the few who encouraged collaboration between conservationists and the‘hook and bullet’ crowd."

Adelmann learned firsthand in 1980. He was fresh from a fellowship at the Smithsonian Institute and newly hired by the Openlands Project to lead the effort for establishing a new type of "linear park" that would in this case connect a downstate Illinois trail system that stopped at Joliet to a growing forest preserve green belt reaching from the Chicago Portage National Monument in Lyons up through western and northern suburbs into Lake County.

Adelmann proposed the idea himself while serving as a nonpaid consultant for historic preservation in his hometown of Lockport. He envisioned the entire lower Des Plaines River valley as a sort of "living, working mosaic" with great potential to provide countless hours of recreation and communing with nature.

Trouble was, Adelmann’s dreamscape was not all one sweeping acreage of land. It was seven acres here, twelve there, a few that way, another tract this way. All of it was interspersed amid industrial smokestacks, railroad tracks and drainage canals, plus two rivers that combined to make a major flyway for more than 200 bird species.

If this new conceptual model for a national park was to become reality, companies would have to provide access to the open lands. Politicians and other public officials would have to endorse the idea, and all of us would have to realize nature can be in our own relative backyards, even when it looks suspiciously like an industrial park.

That’s where John figured in. He had written a series for the Tribune in the late 1970s about "the vanishing landscape" complete with easy-to-understand descriptions of how we were losing valuable topsoil at alarming rates and endangering critical natural habitats through consumer and government neglect.

As it turned out, Judith Stockdale, then executive director of Openlands, was a neighbor of a top editor at the Tribune. She suggested Adelmann write a letter to this editor about the linear park idea for the lower Des Plaines River Valley and propose that Husar investigate.

A few weeks later, Adelmann got a phone call from John, who as luck had it, lived
in the very region recommended as "Chicago’s last frontier."

"I’m willing to do this," John said to Adelmann, "but only if you work with me for three months. Jerry, you have to understand the power of the Tribune to convene people. I will gather information and get influential people to meetings. You have to get the message out."

John more than lived up to his part of the agreement. He and Adelmann started by spending a couple of weeks walking the open space, paddling in canoes on the waterways and inspecting the architecture of such towns as Lockport and Lemont with buildings dated pre-Civil War. He organized informal focus groups on a near-weekly basis, inviting businessmen, public officials, activists, historians, sportsmen, and politicians to the same table.

"John didn’t just want to know about the sports and recreation in the area," said Adelmann. "He wanted to find out about the geology, the geography, the archaeology, everything."

The result was a remarkable five-day "Our Hidden Wilderness" series that was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. It was published in September 1980, a time when Illinois ranked forty-seventh in amount of public lands and was one of only five states without a national park or trail. Perhaps most amazingly, it helped readers discover that the Des Plaines River wasn’t just some polluted, wasted waterway.

VIPs were quoted liberally during the five days, though, the more important outcome was that these same influential officials were won over by the idea. For example, Governor Jim Thompson promised his commitment in the first installment and State Representative Michael McClain, chairman of the House Environmental, Energy, and Natural Resources Committee, called it "really a hell of an idea" that the legislature would "regret wasn’t their idea."

These days, that linear park is called the Illinois & Michigan Canal National Heritage Corridor. Nearly a dozen other national parks have been created around the country based on the original concept. Nature lovers of all inclinations — and diet preferences — have reaped the benefits.

"John certainly didn’t stop there," says Adelmann. "In fact, he wasn’t even the outdoors writer yet." (John was officially named to the job in 1983; he did the "Hidden Wilderness" series during the summer of 1980, before he had to return to his duties as a college football writer.)

The beat wasn’t lacking for news about open lands or environmental causes (including John’s and Louise’s own personal campaign to keep a local forest preserve clean in answer to partygoers who didn’t see fit to clean up after themselves). In seventeen years, John wrote about more than 38,000 acres added to state preserves and recreational areas, plus he helped fight for another 30,000 acres of federal holdings at the Joliet Arsenal and Savanna Army Depot to be preserved for wilderness once the land was relieved of national defense duties. One of his special interests was spinning the wheels for miles of state-funded bike trails (at least 1,300 by one count).

"As a columnist, he took every opportunity to write about conservation," said Adelmann. "He got all of us who care about open space to realize we’re all on the same side. He persuaded us it was time to stop fighting each other. His constant message was that we had shared goals and concerns."

My friend and colleague John Husar was a big man. Ducks could practically wade in his hiking boots. He played offensive line for the University of Kansas. How he put bait on a tiny hook with those huge hands, I don’t know.

But John’s size was no match for his vision. He made you aware of nature close by, whether up the street or down the map a fingertip or two. He recognized that open space can actually bring us closer together. He loved the land. He spoke for it.

He was our voice in the wilderness.

Bob Condor is the health and fitness writer at the Chicago Tribune.

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