This column originally ran Aug. 10, 2014. We bring it back since the Kankakee has just gained federal status as a National Water Trail. Once the chatty group of paddlers had left, I crept back onto ...

In “Pioneer Hunters of the Kankakee,” J. Lorenzo Werich dedicated one chapter to “Draining of the Swamp.” To Werich, the Kankakee Marsh was a paradise that man destroyed for the sake of short-term ...

Since the mid-1800s the Kankakee River, which flows through Indiana into Illinois, has been viewed differently in each state. In Indiana its marshlands, covering eight counties eastward from Lake ...

Nature is putting on a big flower show over the next few weeks on a little corner of the Kankakee River, ripe with marshy inlets, that feels like what the Grand Kankakee Marsh must have been before it ...

A friend of mine recently asked me what the difference was in a wetland being called a marsh or a swamp. I told him it’s hard to say what makes one different from the other. Both are wet areas that ...