Letter to the editor: Trim the flora to give us back our beautiful lakefront

Improving Our Lakefront Fair warning: this will seem trivial relative to the serious challenges barraging us these days. It’s about a fairly minor complaint that might be easily remedied.

The lakefront is the pride and joy of many Evanstonians; it sets our city apart and makes it such a desirable place to be and to visit. Simply viewing the lake and that far horizon has a biological, calming effect on the brain (you can look it up!). Walking by the lake can be simply joyful. Too bad you can no longer actually see the lake for great distances along it, for example between Greenwood Street and the Arrington Lagoon.

This is where you used to be able to step up or sit on the large white boulders lining the shore, which are now fenced off for some reason. (Were there grave injuries or deaths caused by people exploring these rocks? Or were they fenced in misplaced anticipation of someone hurting themselves?)

Among the rocks now grow a bunch of flora I think of as “weed trees.” They’ve been left unchecked so that now they obstruct any view of the lake for people walking by or sitting on one of the lovely memorial benches. (Just think how those memorial-ees must feel!)

Can we cut the weeds back and stop them from growing? Can we open up the rocks again for quiet reflection? To this 30-year resident it would be a return to something beautiful.

Neal Stamell
Evanston