A journey of a thousand miles begins with 20,000 steps. Doesn’t it?

Today was my first long conditioning walk: 10 miles at Waterfall Glen in southern DuPage County. It’s a circle – actually, more like a quadrilateral. Waterfall Glen features a waterfall, not a natural feature but one constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s. It is not named after that feature, however; it honors Seymour “Bud” Waterfall, an early president of the Forest Preserve District’s Board of Commissioners.

The main trail has its ups and downs, its prairies and woods and of course the main waterfall. The trees of the Bluff Savanna include white and black oaks and shagbark and bitternut hickories, some in the range of 200 years old, young when this area was first settled by white people. Kettle Woods is undergoing restoration that has removed most of the invasive understory of buckthorn and honeysuckle (grrrr…..). Now, as shrubs are just beginning to leaf out, the view through Kettle Woods is impressively clear.

Water was standing around in lots of low-lying areas after this week’s rains, making plenty of suitable spaces for spring peepers. We heard them but never saw a one; they are little ones, so that is not surprising. We also saw plenty of runners, dogs, families pushing strollers, and a few hikers wearing backpacks, as we were.

We chatted with a man who told us he was conditioning for the John Muir Trail in late summer; I guessed he was half my husband’s age. When did we get old? I asked my husband later. Yesterday, he answered. Good to know.

I got tired about five minutes before our hike ended – reasonably good timing. The temperature rose from 50 degrees F to 60 degrees in the four hours it took us. Perfect, in other words. I started to think without dread about walking in Spain, which I do not expect to look like a suburban forest preserve. We have already begun chatting in a friendly way with fellow hikers; there will be much more of that, my husband observed. And the crunch of unpaved trail underfoot. What kind of birds, I wonder?