Column on Local Hikes

I felt more a living fossil than usual when I saw a young man at an Earth Day rally who was probably about the same age I was for the first earth day, 45 years ago. (Oh the pain). Not long ago, I checked out a book from the library, Weekend Walks in St Louis and Beyond. We are the Beyond part. (Why is it that people on this side of the river flow smoothly into Missouri, but folks on the other side of the river talk as if they are going to Europe when they cross the bridges, except for a trip to Fast Eddie’s?). With Earth Day on my heart and mind, I decided to use the warmer spring weather to advantage and move from being a slug to a more active posture. I have lived here since spring of 2011, but I have not taken advantage of the natural beauty of the area nearly enough.

I had to clear my head recently to prepare for a difficult funeral and too many other anxieties crowding in my head. I decided to get the book and make my way to Dresser Island. Surely Joliet and Marquette passed it on their great journey from Canada to the mouth of the Arkansas River. It is likely that Daniel Boone and family crossed the river there, as Boone felt cramped by the booming Kentucky population. It is difficult for me to conceive that such an act would be possible in t this community, but during prohibition, a still may have operated from the island. I saw turtles, an eagle, a flock of swans, and blooming wildflowers. My mind cleared.

Last weekend, we went to the Columbia Bottoms area off Riverview. The Department of Conservation has set a fine viewing area at the confluence of the Missouri and the Mississippi. I continue to be interested in education, I know a fifth grader who just watched a video on Lewis and Clark, but I wonder why they were not taken to this site, or other Lewis and Clark sites as well. A tall pole marks different flood stages u of the river, and then, at the top, is the mark for the flood of 1993. Other than annoying insects, we caught a whiff of mint; saw another eagle soaring by, and pictures of 100 pound catfish in the visitor’s center, with its all-important bathrooms.

I don’t know if I was supposed to go where I did, as a youth detention facility is in the Fort Belle Fontaine County Park. I love WPA sites. They built an elaborate grand staircase from the river to the bluff, a gazebo that has fallen into ruin, and a number of other structures and ornamental walls at the first fort built west of the Mississippi. When Lewis and Clark passed by the area, no fort was there. After their journey of thousands of miles, they spent their last night there and bought items, before going back to St Louis the next day on an adventure that can truly be called epic. Zebulon Pike (as in Pike’s Peak) started his expedition from the fort. The smell of honeysuckle was strong; purple flowers dotted the trail; ducks glided in a pool.

When the eagles are around, I almost always see them near the Brussels Ferry. Just a bit past is the Gilbert Lake trail, but I usually blow right past it. Not this year, as I plan to walk there and soon. I am all for travel, but it is a commonplace to note that we ignore what is in our own backyard. For a little while, a walk brings one into a sense of integration with the past and with the natural world of which we are a part.