January 11, 2006
By Chuck Ebeling

I had a rather poignant experience today when I walked the wooded lakefront acres of the Yerkes property, for the very first time.

I took advantage of the clear, dry winter day to criss-cross and explore that land, which has been so much discussed, but so little visited of late. To my surprise, the tangled woods descend steeply, in a step, back from the lake, until one looks down almost vertically into the lapping waters. It was in coming down that step from the high plateau that, right in front of a large tree, I found settled in the dirt a sharpened, hand-sized, flat and tapered rock that clearly has been a cutting or skinning tool of the style used by native Americans. A few inches away, right at the surface was a much smaller stone, sharply chiseled on three sides, which was perhaps a smaller cutting stone or arrowhead. In the quiet of that high place in the woods on a winter's day, with the lively waters of Geneva Lake below, it wasn't hard at all to imagine an earlier century, at that very spot, a native American skinning a deer he had just downed with his bow and arrow.

The University of Chicago and its Yerkes Observatory have helped preserve those ancient relics, at that spot, for the past 110 years. While the great telescope on the hill pierced the heavens, paving a way to man's future, the woods above the restive shoreline has kept its peace, and perhaps, just for the moment, still does.