Apathy Canyon Traditional Cache
adgorn: The area is in fact being renovated, which I hope will turn out to be a good thing. Thanks to all the visitors.
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There’s a gaping canyon in the oak woods on the northwest side of the Theodore Stone Forest Preserve in Hodgkins, IL. The canyon’s eroding maw — now 50 feet wide, 20 feet deep, and 1,000 feet long — is swallowing 100-year-old oak trees and channeling dirty water toward the two remnant prairies.
There’s nothing natural about the canyon. What decades ago was a slight depression has been gouged into a muddy gorge by floodwaters flowing from a 36-inch concrete drainpipe. The pipe carries stormwater from the adjacent shopping mall directly into the preserve.
The problem dates to the mid-1960s, when a trucking company received a 20-year permit from the Forest Preserve District of Cook County to lay the pipe and drain stormwater into the preserve. That permit has long since expired, and the property has changed hands. The pipe has remained, but it has lost the ability to contain the increased volume of runoff water that came with new development and spreading parking lots. Today much of the pipe is broken and can be found in huge, jagged (and, some say, terribly dangerous) chunks at the bottom of what volunteers refer to as “Apathy Canyon.”
Those 40 or so volunteers have logged thousands of hours of labor, engaged year-round in restoring the native habitat to the Forest Preserve
Good news is on the horizon. In February 2006, the Village of Hodgkins announced that it would seal off the pipe at the edge of the preserve and connect it to the main storm sewer line, which runs outside the eastern border of the preserve. The Forest Preserve District itself committed to filling and repairing Apathy Canyon to its former state — a forested bluff. So hopefully one day soon Apathy Canyon will be a memory.
If caching with little ones, would suggest you hold their hands.
Please notice when you remove the cache and replace it just as it was. Forgot to put in a pencil, so BYO.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Va n iregvpny jbbqra pbagnvare.
Treasures
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