LITH woman doffs business suit, dons frontier garb for Trail of History
To her neighbors in Lake in the Hills, Stacy Szymanski probably seems like any typical, modern young woman with a professional job and a nice suburban home.
But at this time each year, the insurance account manager admits that she can't resist the urge to pull on her hunting frock, buckskins, and beads, and head for the woods.
This weekend, Szymanski and dozens of other local volunteers will pack up their gear and head to Glacial Park near McHenry, where they'll live in tents and wigwams, cook on open fires, and re-create the lifestyles of their ancestors at "Trail of History," the annual living-history event hosted each October by the McHenry County Conservation District.
Szymanski will portray a frontier woman of the mid-18th century here in McHenry County, or what was then called the Northwest Territory. She says she has always loved history, and conservation, too.
"I visited (Trail of History), and this seemed like it was right up my alley. I thought, 'I want to do that!' and the next year I got started," Szymanski said.
Seven years later, she has become one of the event's most skilled and popular historic presenters. At this year's Trail of History, Szymanski will be interpreting life in the Métis Village, a 1763 frontier hunting camp that features trapping, trading, fur-lined wigwams, and a voyageur-style dugout canoe.
"The name 'Métis' comes from a French word meaning 'mixed blood,'" she explains. "They were a mix of French 'voyageurs' - fur traders and frontiersmen - and the native Potawotamis who lived here at the time."
"We'll have people doing cooking, and a wigwam showing different types of plants they used," she said. "There will be children playing and (authentic period) games for the kids."
Szymanski will lead visitors on a "living wigwam" tour, explaining how early fur-trade settlers lived, inside and out.
"We really try to portray 'a day in the life,'" she explains. "We have lots of people taking part, from small children to adults. My niece, Asia (Szymanski, of Chicago) is also involved. She is 11 years old, and has been doing it since she was six."
Until she discovered Trail of History, Stacy Szymanski says she didn't know much about our county's early pioneers. Now, that interest has gotten "in her blood," she says, and she has also started performing at MCCD's Festival of the Sugar Maples, held February or March at the Coral Woods Conservation Area near Marengo.
But Trail of History draws her back every year, and she's not the only one. Each event brings new volunteers and larger crowds, eager to experience this link with the past.
"From the number of people who attend, it seems like there are more and more every year. People are so fascinated by what they are seeing and learning, and it's close to home," Szymanski says.
"We're portraying life as it was right here in McHenry County, not someplace far away. It's important to gain an appreciation of the people who lived on this very same land, long before we did."