Chicago High-Rises on a Clear April Day

Chicago, and the clearest April day the lake could have handed us. We went up the Sears Tower — 110 stories, finished in 1973, still Sears for another year before the renaming — and the Skydeck on 103 claims fifty miles and four states when the air cooperates. It held up: clear across Lake Michigan the steel mills on the Indiana shore sat right on the horizon, smoke going up off them in two thin columns you could count.

The rest of the day stayed high off the ground too. From a window over the mouth of the Chicago River, the Lake Shore Drive bridge ran straight below on its four stone towers, traffic stacked across the deck, and past the lock the long breakwater with its little lighthouse. The marina slips off DuSable Harbor were still empty, docks bare in rows, weeks yet before anyone puts a boat in. One boat did push out under the bridge toward the lock, dragging its wake the whole width of the river behind it.