A Modest Quest

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Once I read in a local Chicago nature magazine... Chicago wilderness?  -  I learned that there were eskers in the Palos forest preserves. Eskers are ice age remnants like kettles and moraines. They were the bottom of river beds in ice age glaciers that collected debris over decades and are now raised ridges through the forest (the debris being left over). 

I remember I packed the kids and went in search of these features, going off trails and exploring through the woods.  It was an adventure that was fun and interesting.  I told the story about it dozens of times.  It revealed something pretty cool about how we live in a world that has these rich elements of and evidence of the far away past.

That’s maybe why I was so interested in Rob Walker’s recent piece of the Modest Quest- link   And in TAoN No. 61, he goes on a short quest to find a real “milestone” that he read about.    

My inspiration was this article about the history and significance of Elysian Fields, a thoroughfare here in New Orleans that runs five miles from Lake Pontchartrain to the Mississippi River, and used to link those destinations via the Pontchartrain Railroad. That train ceased operation in the 1930s, and the tracks were removed by the 1950s. But one trace remains. The article explains:

“On the neutral ground by North Roman [Street’s intersection with Elysian Fields] may be found a stone slab etched with the Roman numeral ‘I,’ meaning one mile from the river. This is the last of the five milestones along the Pontchartrain's tracks, and now stands as a sort of tombstone” for the departed rail line.

That’s right: an actual milestone.

Ever since I read this article back in 2018 I’ve wanted to go check this out. It’s about a 30-minute bike ride from where I live, and on a recent weekend I finally did it. That’s my first modest quest of 2021. 

Life is more interesting when you have a series of modest quests. When you are learning about the world in books (or TV) and then take field trips to find them. 

In a recent newsletter he also wrote about a different kind of modest quest - binge reading (all books by an author) or binge listening (the entire collection of NPR’s list of essential classical CDs).  I’m very happily in the middle of listening to Ted Giiia’s list of the the 200 best recordings of 2030. 

Of the first 20 albums on his list, I have really enjoyed 10 of them. I’m keeping a Spotify playlist of the tracks I’m really digging here.