Running Around Illinois: Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie

November 24, 2024

Wilmington Turkey Trot 5K

Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie (Will County)

Chip Time: 27:54

Illinois is a state which demands perspective. You might think of it as a flat expanse with no national parks, and this is true enough. Sometimes though there are very unexpected things hidden in the Prairie State - vestiges of times when Illinois was a very different kind of place.

Perhaps the most famous road in America is U.S. Route 66: nevermind that 66 was last a certified federal highway in 1985. The road persists in the imagination, but also of course in physical pavement, starting on Jackson Street in downtown Chicago, following Ogden Avenue out of the city, veering onto Joliet Road, and once out of Joliet proper, following what is today Illinois Route 53.

Route 66 - a road which does and does not exist - essentially connects two of the three official National Historic Sites in Illinois, the Abraham Lincoln Home in Springfield and the Chicago Portage in Lyons, in the process spanning centuries of the American experience. It was along this highway of nebulous status, several miles beyond Joliet, just past the south edge of the town of Elwood, that I found the turn into the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie: the center of what, 80 years ago, was the Joliet Army Ammunition Plant, aka the Joliet Arsenal, but today is a restored prairie inhabited by bison.

This was, easily, the strangest place I have ever run a race.

Midewin was presented on site as a Potowatomi word for “healing”. I use the word “for” as opposed to “meaning” because in looking this up, I think that it can best be understood as a set of practices of spiritual healing - the Midewinini or practitioners of Midewiwin are often referred to as “medicine men”. I dwell on the distinction some because I find it interesting in the context of the existence of this strange place.

When World War II broke out in 1939, the United States was technically neutral, but clearly on the side of Britain and France. The U.S. became the “arsenal of democracy”, supplying arms and munitions to the Allies, which required massive construction across the country. Two munitions plants were built on farmland south of Joliet - the Elwood and Kankakee plants - which together would become known as the Joliet Arsenal. The Arsenal continued to produce TNT until 1976. (Read a lot more about it here.)

When you turn off of Route 53, it’s onto a gravel road, which leads to a gravel parking lot. There were cars there when I arrived, but nothing that looked like a race. I had to walk along wooded trails for a bit to arrive at a broad mown clearing where a registration table, a couple of other tables, and a big finish line were set up.

The sponsoring organization was the Wilmington Park District, Wilmington being the next town south along Route 53 (old U.S. 66), and this was their first annual race, so it was a fairly small race. The registration table was excited to hear I was from Brookfield because that was a long way away! It’s always interesting to encounter new races, where they’re not really sure who they’re going to have show up.

It was 40 degrees at race time, a temperature where I wasn’t really sure how I wanted to be dressed. I wound up choosing to go with the short-sleeved race shirt and athletic pants, no hat or gloves. This wound up being prudent as, unexpectedly, it was sunny most of the race, and I was only cold at the very beginning.

The race began on the grass, going under an inflatable arch, and at that time I didn’t know that the dirt road was forthcoming:

As it turned out, though, the grass soon gave way to a seemingly half-abandoned, slightly overgrown dirt and gravel road, and this was how almost the entire course was.

A handful of people broke from the main pack right away, and I wound up in a clump which was probably running at a pace around 9:00-9:30 per mile. I had decided to start slowly, but found myself hemmed in going a little slower than I might have expected. I cleared that group a little before the half-mile point, and wound up… weirdly on my own.

The entire course was curveless, and there were only six turns. Most of it was along two long stretches, the first running east, then the return running west. Along the north side of the eastbound portion was about the only evidence of what this place had been: a series of ammunition bunkers.

The bunkers were recessed from the path. The path itself along that edge was lined with occasional Osage orange trees, which had dropped most of their signature weirdo fruits:

When I got to the end of the eastbound road and turned south, I… saw nobody. It persisted like this for most of the race. After a little while south, I turned west, and theoretically could have seen bison in the enclosed area off to the left, thanks to an experimental program. Alas, I saw no bison. I saw occasional mud puddles which I danced around and that was close to it. But the thing about a tallgrass prairie in late November, I suppose, is that there’s not really much to see except, you know, some tall grass.

Overall, I finished eighth in the race, over a minute and a half behind seventh and over a minute and a half ahead of ninth. This seems about right: I can’t really keep up with the very serious runners, but I tend to be ahead of the less serious runners. My time was a little high, but, the course was, for once, a little long: the app had it at 3.2 miles.

At the end of the race, I walked back along the early road to get a closer look at the bunkers and statue. Yes, statue: in memory of the people who died in massive explosions at the Arsenal.

I also found that the first bunker was actually open, with benches inside:

There was also a notebook for people to record whatever they might wish to record. Naturally, I encouraged people to find META-SPIEL so they could read all about my experience later. And I also gave people the most important advice I could:

After the race was over, I headed back home a slightly different route. I went through Elwood - a name you might not realize you’re familiar with, but you absolutely are, thanks to “Joliet” Jake and Elwood Blues. Yes, this is the town that gave Dan Aykroyd his Blues Brothers name. In Elwood I found this curious display:

That’s two things to highlight Route 66, a worker in a hard hat for some reason wearing a pumpkin necklace, and in flat profile, Rosie the Riveter. There’s an information sign located conveniently right there explaining Rosie’s presence: women worked at the Arsenal!

Continuing on past Elwood, I found myself in the middle of a massive constellation of warehouses, and the most semis I’ve ever seen (most of them parked, as it was a Sunday). South of I-80, overlapping with the former grounds of the Arsenal, the Joliet area is simply awash with distribution centers. It’s really quite stunning to see it all and realize how overwhelming transportation and logistics really are.

All of the concrete made for an interesting alternate take on the idea of Midewin. While the prairie represents one notion of healing - that of restoration, of return to a previous time - the nearby multimodal extravaganza arguably represents a more typically American approach to healing: adapt and move on. Now, far be it for me to say that we shouldn’t adapt, that we shouldn’t change and evolve and move forward. But when do we actually get to heal? Is the secret out there with the bison, beyond the ammunition bunkers?

Or does healing just demand perspective?