On a day like many others, I walked along the beach in the Rogers Park area of Chicago. I once lived in the area: with a roommate from Albania, and later, with Corey. I don't know what happened to the Albanian: I'd heard rumors and more rumors, and while in Prague, discovered that he might be back in Durres. I have no intention of going there. I wasn't thinking of Albanians on the day that this photograph was taken; I was thinking about the odd little man beside me. He was (is) one of the many volunteers tending a patch of Nature-reclaimed beachfront property. Chicago (back in its swampy days) was also something of a grassland, and though most of Lake Michigan was muddy along its shores, there were sandy bits...where interesting things grew. I received a lakefront lecture in exchange for a cigarette, and I'd learned that nearly a dozen different species of grass lived along the shores of Lake Michigan. None of those breeds were named in the rambling lecture I'd heard, and I was amused with that. In fact, none of the plants native to Lake Michigan were named. They were simply pointed out, though I was invited (countless times) to stroke one tuft of grass or another, so that I might feel its raspy bite, silky smoothness, or strange, oily...um...grassness. I snapped photographs: most of which didn't come out. And with grass scent on my fingers and cigarette toxins comfortably nestled in the appropriate brain-receptor niches, I snapped photographs of a navigational beacon, encrusted with fishermen. (The encrustation you see here is nothing in comparison to what it had been earlier in the day.) As I snapped photographs of a man-made thing, my volunteer grassland caretaker nudged my arm and asked if I wanted to see something special, to meet one of the beach's secretive, fragile, and endangered natives. I thought he was talking about some arcane species of bird...or maybe some rare breed of grass. I was surprised to learn that Illinois (and, by extension, Chicago) is home to Opuntia humifusa: The Eastern Prickly Pear. A cactus. My volunteer grassland guide called such a plant a volunteer. It grew in the grass-anchored sand completely on its own. Unlike the grasses in the area, it wasn't a transplant, or the descendent of a transplant. Like the other grasses in the one-square acre of beachfront property, it had a right to be there. Unlike the grasses, however, it's existence is something of a secret. Opunita humifusa is something prized by people who like digging Opunita humifusa up and putting it in flower-pots on their window-sills. Upon seeing a small, brave cactus, growing near a clump of grass doing its best to impersonate a bird's nest, I promised my hobbit-like guide that I'd keep his cactus secret. I'm glad to say that I've kept it, thus far, as I forgot where the cactus grows, exactly...I couldn't find it again if I had to. This is not a photograph of a cactus, as you can guess, but a wild, Illinois-native cactus is an intimate part of this shot. There are no hobbit-ish garden volunteers in this shot, either, and—to my knowldege—no smokers, either. A cactus has a lot to do with this shot, and this brooding cloud-enhanced photo is a marker of the day that I discovered the rare and wild Chicago cactus. It was in a shy and retiring mood that day, probably rather miffed at the presence of an ant-hill bare centimeters away from it. As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting, and I hope to catch up on my own viewing and commenting: especially next week, as I get my laptop back. Finally!