Giant City in the Wild

Upon further reflection, I wasn’t being completely fair to the southern portion of Illinois in my last post. There are, indeed, some lovely aspects to the region. We camped at Giant City State Park and went for a couple short hikes within the confines of the park. It was humid, it was insect-filled, but it was nice!

Apparently the sandstone cliffs and bluffs have been inhabitated by Native Americans for thousands of years. The ceilings of the caves are blackened from numberless fires burned in those depths. One trail that we explored circled a veritable sandstone fortress. What look like the ruins of a castle are simply the product of water and mineral merging together and emerging in a myriad of shapes. In fact, the whole valley where Giant City Park is located was formed by the movement of the Wisconsin glacier 10,000 years ago. Neat huh?

During the Civil War, the caves and the canyons in this region served as hiding places for soldiers from both sides. Amongst the trees, it’s easy to get lost if you accidently stray off the path. I’m used to my west coast rain forest, where if you’re not on the path, you’re knee deep in ferns and moss, making it obvious that you’ve gone astray. Here, one can just wander off and thinking nothing of it — dangerous grounds for a compulsive short-cut creator like myself But we survived, and now we’re in Nashville, Tennessee! Out of the wild city and back to the concrete jungle.