It was a little valley in the sand dunes of Indiana, as untamed a spot as can be found in this part of the world. The flickering, crackling campfire of resinous branches lighted up the surrounding jack pines and scrub vales. Outside and above was pitch blackness, such as you only see in the wilderness. A few score men and women were gathering about the fire, waiting expectantly for something - they knew what. Presently their leader, the man whose spirit and enthusiasm had infected them all and brought them there together, rose to his feet. He was bareheaded and the fitful gusts from the gathering storm toyed with his shaggy, gray locks.

He asked that they sing "America, the Beautiful." It was like a hymn. Then he spoke. The occasion was a memorial to Enos Mills, the Colorado Naturalist, whose career had come to an end but a short time ago. The speaker was eloquent, 2but his emotion, the affection he had for the deceased interpreter of nature overcame him. He was forced to cease and he stepped back into the fringe of darkness.

This man was Jens Jensen. The others about the campfire were the members of the Friends of Our Native Landscape. No one there that night will forget the incident. It showed powerfully the genuineness and deepness of feeling that possess this simple, unspoiled Chicagoan, who was grieved by the death of his dear friend Mills and at the same time was depressed by the imminent fate that hangs over the dunes, our mountains, the only mountains that we of Chicago have. The sorrow in his voice was unmistakably real.

This Jens Jensen, this Chicago man from the sand dune country of Denmark, this simple-hearted citizen, who has taught Chicagoans to understand the beauty that lies in this flat country of ours, has several distinctions.

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In the first place, he is rightly called the man who loves the soul of the landscape. He has a sympathetic understanding of what the dune, the moraine, the flood plain, and the spreading prairie are trying to say. And as a landscape architect he has been able to disclose nature's varying motifs probably with more success than any other person. He develops the spirit of the concept that is native to the soil and the waters. This can be seen in many places in the great west parks, especially in the prairie river of Humboldt Park. It can be seen over and again in the county forest preserves. It is developed in every bit of landscape upon which Jens Jensen puts his hand and the mark of his genius. There is nothing exotic, nothing foreign, not a pagoda or a garden brought in for mere ornament, but the thing that is indigenous to the location. If there were fairies and dryads in the woods and wilderness of Illinois, they would all be calling Mr. Jensen by his first name.

His story is easily told. He was born in 1860 and studied in Denmark and 4Germany. Marrying in 1884 and coming to America in that year, he began work in the parks of Chicago as a laborer and in a short time became superintendent of the small units of the west park system. He was superintendent of Humboldt Park from 1894 to 1900; landscape architect and general superintendent of the west parks from 1906 to 1909. In all this there is nothing about the Cook County forest preserves, yet the magnificent stretches of prairie and forest owe much to Jens Jensen's labor, enthusiasm, and understanding.

Early in the 1900's the idea of the forest preserve was forming in the minds of a small group of thoughtful Chicagoans, most of whom were associated with George Hooker, George Sikes, and others in the Municipal Science Club. The idea of a forest preserve took root and grew. Its plan was municipal at first and presently it expanded into the huge thing it now is. When Dwight H. Perkins was made secretary of the forest preserve organization he became 5associated with Jensen who was invaluable for the technical side especially in the choice of sites. This was because Jens Jensen, accompanied by Mrs. Jensen, and frequently carrying the Jensen babies, had been studying the land about Chicago for many years. They roamed the country about Pullman and as the town spread into the places they loved, they went further. They traveled through the dunes and all the other outlying wild stretches about the city. Thus it happened that when it came time to make these bits of country over into playgrounds for the people, Jens Jensen was pre-eminently the man who knew the way.

It is interesting to note how Jensen has affected the minds of Chicago people. Carl Sandburg, radical and poet, says: "If I were asked to name the ten most useful men in Chicago, I would put Jensen down as one. Have you seen his work in Garfield Park? I used to pass there every day, and I loved it."

George E. Hooker, the gentlest of reformers says: "From a somewhat wide 6observation of outdoor public art in America and Europe, I should say that the work of no one in that line in our day has surpassed, if indeed it has equaled in interest, creative spirit, and orginality, that which Jens Jensen has done in Chicago and vicinity. His outdoor pictures have a uniqueness and a reference back to nature herself that show the elusive secret of his genius."

"In South Jutland there is a small peninsula where Jens Jensen's father had a farm," says J. Christian Bay of the Crerar Library," and I believe it was on that very farm that the first red monastic bricks were made. The landscape is of broad fertile fields with the sea beyond. I am quite certain that for a time he walked about in wooden shoes - a kind of closeness to the soil.

"The South Jutlanders were freeborn men, but they were forbidden to speak their native language: they were fined and imprisoned for singing their native songs.

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In this way they developed a fine sense of responsibility upon which freedom will grow like a beautiful flower. This flower grew for Jens Jensen under the sky of Chicago. In a very short time he acquired an appreciation for our natural landscape, which is that of the prairie. As a landscape gardener he refused to combine any foreign elements with this, and it is magnificent to see what this man can create out of the prairie: the naked plain with a background of white pine whose architecture is almost beyond human comprehension of beauty, and a tiny river.

"But this man's freedom extends far beyond this. The life in the open holds possibilities which you cannot even divine behind the walls of skyscrapers. Within the skyscraper idea in life, in politics, in social affairs will not prevail. He is absolutely devoid of fear, especially fear of the mighty."

Jens Jensen is now recognized as a great landscape architect. He won his first fame in the west parks, taking hold there when they were at the lowest 8level of political exploitation. President B. A. Eckhardt stood behind him and great things were done. The west parks still feel the momentum that Jens Jensen gave them. He does not care for such positions at this time.

He has worked for Chicago's small parks, big parks, and the forest preserves. Today he has a still greater vision of a system of forest preserves for the whole state.

This man has studied and discovered the beauty that is our natural heritage. He has expressed it in parks and forest preserves and private domains. He has communicated this loving sympathy to others, which is an even greater feat. Altogether Jens Jensen's career is an integral part of the development of western democratic art that the west needs to appreciate for its own good.

K. B.