by Margaux Sky

Created on: December 14, 2008

SUGAR RIVER

Sauganash is a quaint community in Chicago where I grew up and to cross over the Peterson Avenue Bridge, a busy main street, would take you into the little town of Edgebrook. For a long stretch along Peterson Avenue ran the Edgebrook Woods, a forest preserves filled with tall, gorgeous trees that waved in the tempestuous, unpredictable winds of Illinois. Graceful and laughing in the vivid sunlight, come night they were riveting, quiet, and haunting under the moonlight.

My parents warned I shouldn't go into the forest preserves alone, and positively never at night under any circumstances, so I obeyed.

Peering through a rain speckled car window into the wooded jungle on the way home from an evening at my aunt's home one wintry night, the wooded thickness screamed eeriness and the streetlights highlighted the intimidating spookiness, especially in that exploding thunderstorm during this particular trek home. The treetops lurched angrily, thrusting from side-to-side like a person lost in grief.

Clearly, as a six-year old child, I felt the fear that something evil could happen in the forest preserves and I should never enter, and most certainly not alone. Even during a brilliant sunny day the lengthy entrance into the preserves was frightening with a creeping, sketchy black drive that resembled the long hungry tongue of a venomous snake.

Years later, the summer I was twelve years old, a couple of my friends who lived near the edge of the forest preserves convinced me that it was a wonderful place to play, and I should shed childhood fears of evil predators awaiting my shrinking emergence into the wooded dungeon to do me harm. They warned to stay away from strangers but as long as we were in a pack, we were safe.

Craig Ryan, a secret crush, whispered to me that there was a magical river deep in the heart of the bulky woodland to which my response was a cynical laugh.

"It's true," he said eyes wide. "It's called Sugar River".

Reluctantly and trembling inwardly with fear, I opted to go into the forest with my friends. No longer a child, I felt it was a rite-of-passage and my parents would have to understand that, if they ever found out I'd entered (and they did).

As the day wore on and we played climbing in trees and running through the woods, we finally came upon the river Craig spoke of. It was no more than a brook, but at the young age I was it seemed a large and fast flowing river.

"This is the magic river," Craig said. "Sugar River."

"Why do you call

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