If you like maps, you’re going to have a certain fascination with borders, as imaginary and fluid as they may be. If you travel at all, you’re going to cross borders. If you have a fascination with maps and you travel at all, you’re going to be fascinated when you come face-to-face with a border.

Such as standing on state borders. Or national ones, which are harder to stand on, but not impossible.

On Saturday morning, when it was cool but before the cold rains that evening, I took a walk along a path, headed toward a border.
Actually, as you can see, the footpath was under construction, so I for 100 feet or so I followed the cut ground where pavement would soon be. Replacement pavement, since I’ve seen a path there for years. I can’t imagine it’s being replaced with anything else.

Not all of it is being rebuilt.
Soon I came to the border. Or at least a sign, if not the precise line.
The Schaumburg-Hoffman Estates Border. A simple map shows how convoluted it is, an echo of a competing annexation rush in the late ’50s and early ’60s.

On the back of the sign is the Hoffman Estates seal, or emblem or logo. I didn’t remember seeing it before. Edited from the original: “Growing to Greatness, and Those Schaumburg Bastards Aren’t Going To Stop Us.”
The blue diamond marks where I was, heading west into Hoffman Estates, and then back east into Schaumburg. The road is Illinois 72, but we never call it that. It’s Higgins Road. Just to the east of the blue diamond is a small office complex that includes our dentist as a tenant. I took Ann there Saturday morning for an appointment, but there’s no waiting in the waiting room, so I hit the footpath.

“Early records date the road back to 1851,” writes Pat Barch, Hoffman Estates historian. “It was identified as the Dundee Road on 1904 maps. Early settlers called it the Chicago-Dundee Rd. Today’s Higgins Road (Route 72) wasn’t opened as a state road until 1924. It runs for 110.71 miles from IL Rt 43 in Chicago to Lanark, IL.”

Also, the road might have been named for nearby landowner “F. Higgins.” Lots of early landowners gave their names to later suburban roads. As suburban roads go, I like Higgins, at least at this juncture. It’s usually less crowded than the similar-sized and nearby Golf Road, which runs past the Woodfield Mall, car dealerships and other traffic generators.

All the years I’ve been driving on Higgins, I’d never walked on the path. Or seen many other people doing so, or riding bikes. So I guess the current crisis is good for something — getting me out to see the territory.

This is the view across the border. Not much of a change in scenery.
Higgins to the left has some traffic, but only enough to be distracting when you’re on foot, until you start to ignore the sound. To the right are bushes and fences that separate the road and footpath from suburban back yards.

I got as far as the intersection of Higgins and Ash Road. Years ago, I used to turn on Ash to drive to the home of a babysitter we used occasionally, who had a daughter about Lilly’s age. Live in a place long enough and everywhere reminds you of something.