PEORIA MAGAZINE June 2022

She witnessed great changes in her students over that time. Generally speaking, they had become more withdrawn and less likely to engage with others, more infatuated with the screens on their phones than with the world immediately around them, and decidedly sadder. It was a far cry from her upbringing in Washington, where she had grown up in the Highview Estates subdivision, which backed up to acre upon acre of open land. It became a place of

of unscripted play and fresh air on young children. She rattles off research showing how being outside affects cognitive and neural development, which then fosters improved learning and independence. Intuitively, she already knew all that. Yet it wasn’t until 2018, while studying to become a master naturalist with the University of lllinois Extension and driving by the Peoria Park District’s Tawny Oaks-Singing Woods Nature Preserve one day, that Robinson

She is amazed at how much public recreational land exists in central Illinois. “We owe a huge debt of gratitude to all those people who came before us and said, ‘This is important, we’re going to save it, we’re going to put our money where our mouth is,’” Robinson said. She is doubly amazed by how little recognition there is of all that land’s existence. There are a lot of “silos” in central Illinois, she notes, with too little shared information.

exploration for her, “a refuge” from life’s unpleasantries. “If I was outside, I was happy.” Her antidote to what she was seeing inside her classroom, then, was to encourage her students to get some fresh air and sunshine and human interaction. She tried to start an Outdoor Recreation Club, with limited success. She offered “math money,” or extra credit, to those with photo evidence of their travels. Then COVID came, leading to more isolation and depression. What Robinson had long preached became a bigger priority than ever. “Physicians are writing ‘nature prescriptions,’” she said. “Get outside.” Her classroom background makes her especially sensitive to the impact

thought to herself, “How have I never been here before?” She went onl ine in search of some central clearinghouse of area recreational opportunities, which she sensed were all there, right under her nose. Astonished to find none, she set about putting together “a little pamphlet for my students.” Despite having zero experience with website design – all she knew was that the domain name had “to be easy to remember” and the platform “easy to navigate” or “you’re doomed” —by 2020 Robinson had given birth to localopal.org. She was retired— from the classroom, anyway – and she had more time than ever to feed her beast. Alas, “the only problem with building a website for an outside person is that it makes you stay inside.”

Yet her enthusiasm knows no bounds. For starters, Robinson firmly believes that this part of central Illinois has not come even remotely close to fulfilling its tourism potential for outdoors enthusiasts. Chicagoans have clearly discovered the Starved Rock corridor along Interstate 80, “which is beautiful but crowded.” Might they be inclined to drive another hour south if they knew what was here? What they would find is no end of hidden gems. For example, central Illinois actually brags two Ramsar sites – wetlands determined to be of international importance by UNESCO – in the Dixon Waterfowl Refuge at Hennepin and Hopper Lakes, covering 3,100 acres in Putnam County, and in the Emiquon

JUNE 2022 PEORIA MAGAZINE 43