Recollections of Pier

Recollections of Pier
[Pier] (Clarinet)
A. Fascination
[Pier] (Bassoon)
B. Rumination
[Pier] (Tuba)
C. Gravitation
[Pier] (French Horn)
D. Transfiguration
[Pier] (Oboe)
E. Contemplation
[Pier] (Trumpet)
F. Introspection
Recollections of Pier: a background… We “discovered” Pier as first-year students at DePaul one late Saturday night/Sunday morning in early September 1991. From our residence hall off Fullerton Ave in Lincoln Park it was a mile walk east to Lake Michigan. Once we passed the bustle of activity of Halsted and Lincoln Ave the walk was a peaceful one; brownstones lined both sides of the street and the trees provided an almost uninterrupted blanket of green above us. Once we passed Clark, the sky opened to us, and we could see the traffic passing in the near distance on Lake Shore Drive; a constant traffic buzz. When we walked under LSD we arrived at Fullerton Beach. We had a choice to walk either north or south and something told us to hang a right and explore the beach to the south.
After walking about 5 minutes (0.5 mile) we came across the first of four cement “piers” which jutted out into Lake Michigan from the beach. As we approached, we could see that some of the cement blocks connecting the pier to the beach were broken and tilted into the water as if it were the submerged top of a pyramid. To the right of the “pyramid” top a bit of the metal support underneath was exposed. After a brief observation, we figured out that if you jumped at a 45-degree angle from the beach, you could get one foot on the top of the “pyramid” top, and then hop onto the pier itself, avoiding the metal support as it appeared slippery from the crashing waves. And just like a small group of lemmings, one after the other, we all made our way onto the pier.
We walked to the end of the pier and admired the view from there; from the end of the pier you could look south and see where Lake Shore Drive would curve to the east around the end of North Michigan Ave and continued south. We were not that far from the beach and Lake from Lake Shore Drive behind us, but it was far enough that the sounds of the traffic were muted, and the streetlights were dimmed. We all felt that we had “discovered” something special that evening and we proclaimed “Pier” as our own personal sanctuary; our place to come to in times when we needed to get away from our daily “stressors” of life as first-year students.
We all visited Pier throughout college and, for those of us staying in Chicago after graduation, beyond; sometimes in a group after a late night of studying and drinking coffee or by ourselves when we were just in need for some alone quiet time. On several occasions we would be up all-night studying for finals and would sometimes make our way down to Pier pre-dawn to watch the sun rise; still one of my all-time favorite things I did while a student there.
After graduation, I was living in the Lincoln Park area and would still visit Pier on occasion. Over the years though, getting onto Pier became more of a challenge as mother nature continued to pummel the cement pyramid which served as the lone dry steppingstone and eventually fully fell off from the metal support and sunk to the bottom of Lake Michigan. The metal support, too, had begun to corrode and eventually either fell off or was removed by the Park District, removing the last piece of foundation which connected it to the beach transforming Pier into an island just out of reach from the beach.
The first day I saw that Pier was no longer reachable from our usual entrance, I smiled a bit to myself and thought that it was apropos; maybe we had outgrown what it had provided us during our last years as pre-adults. Selfishly, I also thought, as a result, no other future college students would discover the wonder of Pier.
Even all these years later, Pier still holds a special place in my heart as I recall many times alone and with my friends there. “Recollections of Pier” begins and repeats a simple melody representing Pier and is followed by a section inspired by memories spent there, “philosophizing” with friends, looking out into the seemingly never-ending lake to the east, observing the never stopping traffic of the city, the stars and, of course, the sunrises.