Volunteer Spurs Passion for Nature Through Book

This week's Patch Portraits also features an from Des Plaines.

Steve Greenberg is not an environmentalist. But he understands why you might mistake him for one. Greenberg's passion has become his pursuit.

The Highland Park resident started a volunteer program at Heller Nature Reserve more than two decades ago on mission to remove the buckthorn that had infested the area.

He recently published a book of photos documenting the way Heller Nature Reserve has changed during his time devoted to the area. Titled Fire and Ice for a Local Planet, the book is a photo journal that educates readers about what the reserve has to offer.

"A lot of this exists in people's backyards and they go, 'Oh, it's the wild part of my backyard,'" Greenberg said, "But they don't really know what it is."

In explaining the volunteer program and its benefits to the reserve, Fire and Ice also works as nudge to get more people involved in ecological preservation.

"Not being an environmentalist, I'm not going to go and lay in front of the tractor," Greenberg said, "I'm just going to say, 'This is what we're doing here.'"