The Barrington Hills Observer

Raccoons frolic at Jarvis Bird Sanctuary. (E. Jason Wambsgans / Chicago Tribune)

Say you were to visit the lakefront.

You can’t, of course; the mayor closed the Chicago lakefront on March 26 to recreation, to promote social distancing and slow the spread of coronavirus. But say you could go, right now. What would you see there? What are you missing? Well, I can tell you, and Tribune photographer Jason Wambsgans, he can show you. He got an OK from the city to shoot our beloved stretch of recently-abandoned Chicago. And here’s what’s there:

Nothing. No one.

Just animals, a lot of birds, flora in bloom. Just nature, unimpeded. A steady stillness, a compelling absence of pace. Robins are not playing cards, coyotes have not formed book clubs. Yet raccoons, some waddle up to you in the afternoon. I watched a fish leap high out of a canal, twice, as if delirious with freedom, then splash back, hard and loud.

Read reporter Christopher Borrelli’s accounts of what some of us take for granted here.