My name is Anne, and I’m an organizer with Save Briar East Woods in Hammond, Indiana. Two years ago, my friends attended a Hammond Common Council meeting to get involved in local issues. They sloughed through bureaucratic jargon and roll calls until public comment, when a man came up and passionately made the case to save a forest in the Hessville neighborhood from destruction.
Later that night, I met my friends and we walked to a bar on Calumet Avenue. We ran into that man there, Ken, with his fiancee, Sue. Ken told us all about the dune woodland he had fiercely defended in his speech earlier: the Briar East Woods. A 4,700-year-old, ancient shoreline of Lake Michigan; the last unprotected remnant of the High Tolleston Dunes.
He gave us homemade flyers. A couple weeks later, Ken toured us around the trails, resplendent with horsetail and other native flora, down to the lake where he played ice hockey as a kid. He reminisced on more recent trips to the woods for birdwatching and solitude. We craned our necks up toward the sky to take in those 150-year-old black oaks, monolithic and sturdy in the changing colors of autumn.
We learned how the city misled the public about the project known as Governor’s Parkway, to be built over 12 acres of the Briar East Woods.
Governor’s Parkway is a bridge ostensibly designed to get people -- in cars and emergency vehicles, but primarily children walking to school -- over a train crossing on Grand Avenue. Kids there climb over stalled trains on their walk to school. It’s a huge safety hazard that received national attention a couple years ago.
I can go on about how Governor’s Parkway is two miles away from Grand Avenue crossing, exorbitantly expensive, entirely ineffective, and a ruse to throw up a housing development over Briar East Woods, some of the last undeveloped land left in the city of Hammond (4,000-Year-Old Forest Under Threat by Hammond Mayor - JTNWI). But I have said that many times, and that is not what I’m writing about here.
What I am writing about is how I got hooked on this dune woodland. Its beauty, the much-needed intermission it provides from its industrial surroundings, the service it provides to the people of Hessville and the region at large.
I got hooked on the energy of Ken and my friends and everyone who has participated in the fight to Save Briar East Woods. On how our collective voice can challenge the powers that be, and even win. I got hooked on caring for the land, cleaning it up to make it inviting for the community.
I’m a city dweller and did not grow up with a great appreciation for nature. I know it’s hard for some to understand the value of an ancient forest when we live in a culture that is so driven by development, profit, and capital. People are often unaware of the natural environment.
The truth is that the natural world can offer you much more than the man-made chaos. We take for granted the few natural areas left in our region, and many people don’t engage with them at all. But once you destroy a 4,700-year-old ecosystem, you can’t replace it. No one can build back the historic landscape that defines our region, or acres of crucial habitat for so many types of wildlife.
I have witnessed firsthand the power of the natural world, and how it compelled thousands of people to come together to defend the Briar East Woods. If you take the time to learn about it, you might be compelled to come together with us, too.
You can visit our website at savebriareastwoods.com, and watch our documentary by Hessville resident Jana Abouhashem.
Please sign our petition and consider donating to our GoFundMe. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram to stay up-to-date on our fight, and to find out when we are holding our next clean up. Attend Hammond City Council meetings with us on the 2nd and 4th Mondays of each month. And please, take a walk through Briar East Woods.
Anne Sedlacek
Organizer with Save Briar East Woods