On a May morning more than 300 years ago, two unlikely explorers set out on a four-month voyage that carried them thousands of miles through the heart of wild North America.

They were Father Jacques Marquette, a studious Jesuit two weeks shy of his 36th birthday, and Louis Joliet, a 27-year-old philosophy student turned fur trader. Their journey helped to initiate the first white settlements in the vast North American interior, and one of their many stops was The Chicago Portage.

                                           Music:  The Journey

I took my spouse on a little hike

To a place, steeped in our history

I took her to The Chicago Portage

And what a marvelous place to see

It is my hometown’s ‘Plymouth Rock’

It is where Marquette and Joliet, arrived

They traveled here by canoe, back in 1673

And it has been preserved, for all of this time

As soon as we began sauntering down its wooded trail

We forgot that we were surrounded by an enormous city

We were quickly transported back, over three hundred years

And we had a marvelous feeling, of utter peace and tranquility

We were walking where these explorers had, with their native guide

We were awe-struck by massive trees, which are hundreds of years old

The forest here is still filled with the songs of wondrous birds of all kinds

Wild animals still thrived here, as they did, all those three centuries ago

We saw painted turtles, joyously sunning themselves on logs in the river

We watched a family of wood ducks, swimming along the river’s shore

We saw a beaver dam, and a magnificent white heron fishing for its lunch

For a nature lover/history buff like me, I could not have asked for more

And as I stood here, taking in all this history and natural wonder

I suddenly wished that I had been on that epic canoe ride with them

What a truly magnificent place to explore, before our destruction began

And I hope that places like this are preserved, for generations without end

I took my spouse on a little hike,

To a place, steeped in our history;

I took her to The Chicago Portage,

And what a marvelous place to be.

©September 2013, Mr. Ed