Stopping By: A taste of pioneer life in Forest Glen Preserve

WESTVILLE – Like a lot of children, as a girl I devoured pioneer novels.

As I grew older my taste in books changed. Still, I was entranced when I first saw the Pioneer Homestead at Forest Glen County Preserve near Westville, my hometown.

Rustic and charming, it's a reproduction of an Illinois frontier log cabin, barn, herb garden and outbuilding.

Only staff members or people like frontier re-enactors can use the homestead for public programs. But I gained permission from Ken Konsis, director of the Vermilion County Conservation District, to spend a couple of nights there as long as I write about the experience.

In this case, it turns out I followed my bliss.

My friend Corinne Suhm, who with her toy poodle, Ruby, accompanies my border collie, Scoop, and me back in time. Like me, she is captivated by the Pioneer Homestead and its surroudings.

It's spread out over a well-maintained meadow – seemingly tucked away from civilization – surrounded by trees just beginning to display the ochre-colored signs of the approach of autumn.

The roof and front porch of the cabin, larger and with more windows than most frontier cabins, are covered with cedar-shake shingles.

Inside is an impressive hearth, built of limestone from a nearby quarry. The cabin is furnished with period chairs, a four-poster bed sans mattress, and tables built by park employees.

A rough-hewn white-oak staircase leads to the loft, where a rope pulley lifts and raises a candle chandelier for easier lighting and snuffing of the flames.

The barn has a loft as well, and under the open half are antique wagons, one with its wheel spokes covered with chipped blue paint.

A weathered and whimsical picket fence surrounds the herb garden next to the cabin and barely contains some of the plants.

Although we're there on a muggy late July day, we find the cabin cool inside. Its yellow-poplar walls provide good insulation from the summer heat but not the winter cold: It would take three days of burning firewood in the hearth to warm the cabin.

The Pioneer Homestead fact sheet tells us that Forest Glen rangers and other employees built the homestead in the early 1980s to represent the frontier home of James and Anna Ogden. They settled there in 1827. Before that, of course, were Native Americans; their trails still wind through the preserve and along the Vermilion River, which runs through the area.

We put the tapers we find in a cupboard in the copper-colored sconces and in the large chandelier. Later, Corinne lights a fire in the hearth.

"OK, we have a problem," she says.

"What?"

"We have an animal in the chimney. Or it could be cicadas. It could be bats.

"We're just going to smoke them out, and they'll go away," Corinne says.

She lights the fire; the cabin quickly fills with smoke until she figures out the flue. We open all the doors and windows to air it out. It still smells of burnt firewood the rest of the weekend, as it did when we arrived.

She decides to use her camping stove, but reserves some of the sirloin steak for a beef stew to be cooked overnight over the hearth embers.

At dusk we decide to go to sleep. Corinne has claimed the four-poster bed, placing her inflatable mattress and sleeping bag over the slats on top of ropes stretched between the frames.

I choose the front porch, built of black-locust planks, hoping for Emersonian transendence. Instead, I shift constantly all night on my sleeping bag and thermal mat, trying unsuccessfully for a comfortable position.

Scoop is just as restless. In unfamiliar territory, she's on hyper-alert, pacing the porch most of the night. At one point, she growls. I sit and think I see a dark form 20 yards away. I tell Scoop to stay near. She calms down eventually.

As the night air cools, I cover myself with a sheet and later crawl into my sleeping bag. I've completely covered with mosquito netting, but mosquitoes buzz my ears only a couple of times.

I listen intently to the insect orchestra of cicadas, locusts, crickets and grasshoppers. With dawn a new ensemble of cardinals, house wrens, indigo buntings and other birds takes over.

At 7 a.m. I rise and snap photographs in a light mist. After a breakfast of eggs and canned potatoes, my mother, Eleanor, drives out with Bertie Urbas, whose family once owned the land where we're staying.

We sit on the porch and chat. Bertie talks about how interesting it is to watch park employees each spring boil down the maple syrup in two huge vats in a nearby building.

After they leave, the rest of the day passes lazily. We hike along Willow Creek; Scoop splashes through it. The clear stream runs through the wooded ravine behind the cabin.

Back on the porch, we watch wrens, Eastern phoebes and butterflies. We see a hummingbird feed on the Rose of Sharon close to the cabin.

"The life here – everyone is happy," Corinne says.

Everyone seems to include the park visitors who pass by while we're there.

One, Kim Washkowiak, tells us that she and her husband, Jason, used to sit on the front porch and dream. They now have their "own little piece of heaven" not too far from Forest Glen.

Another, Darren Moody, says, "This is just like 'Little House on the Prairie,'" as he, his wife and their teenage daughter walk through the pioneer cabin.

That night Scoop and I sleep well on the foam pad that my mother brought me, just inside the cabin and near the open door. We wake at 6 to a brief rain shower. After breakfast, I sweep the cabin floor and wash the windows.

As we reluctantly gather our things, a few more people come in. I explain why we are there.

"Did you feel like you were going back in history?" Connie Neal asks.

Yes, I say, even though I realize, somewhat sheepishly, that our brief stay was far less rugged than what the pioneers endured.

Also on this date

• Urbana school district's Splash program funding drying up
• Indiana jail term delays Danville trial for Keon Clark
• Champaign council to review city's energy consumption
• Pizza delivery man robbed, beaten in Urbana
• Police looking for two men in robbery on UI campus
• Danville wants to return sales-tax money to Steve & Barry's
• Camargo residents turning golf-cart ordinance into a lifestyle
• Obituaries

» More