Starved Rock: Flowers, Falls, Photos

Spring at Starved Rock State Park in Illinois. It was my third trip to this curious park and the first when I got the full effect of the fact that it gets 4 million visitors a year. I was there on Mother's Day and apparently a LOT of people think the park is a great place to take mothers for Mother's Day. But the flowers were lovely, the falls full of water, and the beautiful chorus of migrating birds, audible when I was not too close to the crowds.

Here's a sample of the pictures I shot. (You can see more on my flickr page.)

Flowers:

 The bluebells were not only lovely but spectacularly plentiful in many parts of the park.

The white (and red) trilliums were harder to find. This one was in a shady spot not far from the head of St. Louis Canyon where hundreds of people were clambering about the rocks.

The May Apple blossoms are always hard to spot, being hidden below the large leaves close to the ground. Here's a worm's-eye view. There were large swaths of May Apples throughout the park, but most people walked on by them without a second glance.

Falls:

 There were large falls, like this one in LaSalle Canyon...

And small ones, like this one in Illinois Canyon.

Photos:

There were kids shooting photos of other kids...

Parents shooting photos of their kids...

Lovers shooting photos of each other...

And strangers asked to shoot photos of lovers.

As the (presumed) parents stood there shooting, one of the three kids on the cliff called out, "Should we be doing this?" (There is abundant signage throughout the park prohibiting rock climbing.)

I went out early Monday morning, after the Mother's Day crowds had gone back home. For over two hours I had the park to myself. It was very peaceful.

To read my other posts from Starved Rock, click on the links below:
Off Season
The Abstract Wild

To see all of the photos from my three Starved Rock adventures, click here.

The Abstract Wild at Starved Rock State Park

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Starved Rock State Park is in Illinois, near the intersection of I-80 and I-39, just an hour an a half southwest of Chicago. This, along with the surprisingly spectacular natural features, makes it one of the busiest parks in the country. On a pleasant weekend in autumn the park can receive over 70,000 visitors.

I went to Starved Rock in November (read previous post) and just went back for a return visit. Not coincidentally, I’ve been reading a book by author and wilderness guide Jack Turner entitled “The Abstract Wild.” In it he suggests that our society has lost its understanding of value of wild nature and that our parks, far from being havens of wildness, “were created for, and by, tourism…. They are managed with two ends in mind: entertainment and preservation of the resource base for entertainment.”

As I hiked through the rugged canyons and enjoyed the icy waterfalls that are among the most popular winter attractions, I was struck once again by the often-surreal juxtapositions that result from our approach-avoidance relationship with wild nature. Here is a photo essay of a few things I observed, intermixed with quotes from Turner’s book.

“We treat the natural world according to our experience of it. Without aura, wildness, magic, spirit, holiness, the sacred, and soul, we treat flora, fauna, art, and landscape as resources and amusement.”

“Although the ecological crisis appears new (because it is now ‘news’), it is not new; only the scale and form are new. We lost the world bit by bit for ten thousand years and forgave each loss and then forgot.”

Most of us don’t talk of normal and abnormal or good and evil; we talk about what we like and dislike, as if discussing ice cream. Perhaps what I fear most is that the destruction of the natural world to serve human needs and ideals will become an issue decided by opinion polls and surveys that track the gentle undulations of the true, the good, and the beautiful among a people now ignorant of what was once their wild and beautiful home.”

“This is not the wild, not a wilderness. And yet we continue to accept it as wilderness and call our time there a wilderness experience. We believe we make contact with the wild, but this is an illusion. In both the…parks and wilderness areas we accept a reduced category of experience, a semblance of the wild nature, a fake. And no one complains.”

“When we deal in…abstractions, we blur boundaries—between the real and the fake, the wild and the tame, the independent and dependent, the original and the copy, the healthy and the diminished.”

“Alas, collections of acreage, species, and processes, however large or diverse, no more preserve wildness than large and diverse collections of sacred objects preserve the sacred. The wild and the sacred are simply not the kinds of things that can be collected.”

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Once the meaning of the wild is forgotten, because the relevant experience is lost, we abuse the word, literally, mis-use it. … Why do we associate the savage, the brutal, with the wild? The savagery of nature fades to nothing compared to the savagery of human agency.”

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“I believe a saner relation to the natural world must end our servitude to modernity [abstraction] by creating new practices that alter our daily routines. I also believe that no resolution to the crises facing the wild earth will achieve more than a modicum of success without an integration of spiritual practice into our lives.”

One final observation in closing: Along with the waterfalls, the other main attraction during this season are the eagles that winter on the Illinois River. I did see a few eagles, mostly on two islands where they could comfortably perch undisturbed by the human gawkers. I saw many more representations of eagles in the gift shops and on the walls in the lodge. One elderly gentleman lounged nonchalantly in the visitor's center wearing a felt eagle hat as if it were the most normal thing in the world. I wish I'd gotten a picture of that. At first glance I thought he was wearing a chicken!

This is one of three posts about Starved Rock State Park. See also Off Season and Flowers, Falls and Photos. 

Off Season

Snapshots and random thoughts from Starved Rock State Park, Illinois

The first surprise is the rugged terrain. Cliffs high enough to dwarf human visitors surround canyons deep enough to confound my expectations, extinguish all sense of being in the Midwest. Most of Illinois is as flat as a state can get. I’ve seen flat: Kansas, the Texas panhandle…. Illinois is pulled as tight as a military bed sheet.

The Illinois River has cut through this sheet, carved deeply into the underlying bedrock, a layer of sedimentary sandstone that dates back 425 million years. The sheer bluffs and dramatically eroded canyons would be pretty spectacular anywhere between the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians. In Illinois they are simply stunning.

As we drive in, nothing moves. The parking lot is vast and completely vacant. Brown and yellow leaves lie scattered on the pavement. The place seems deserted. Perfect!

Far out over the wide river, seemingly out of the open sky, a sycamore leaf wafts gently downward.

Pelicans huddle on the water like bundles of white laundry, deceptively small with distance. Another surprise: American White Pelicans, I learn, rival the California condor for longest wingspan in North America. With a flurry of black-tipped wings they leap-frog downstream.

In the Visitor’s Center I reach for one of the stack of trail maps. The uniformed woman behind the reception counter says, “you can take one of those but you won’t need it.” Pointing to the mural sized, highly detailed map on the wall nearby, she explains: “we have trail maps like this at trail crossings, so you’ll always know where you are.”

One of the things I seek in nature is an aura of mystery and the chance to explore. I keep it to myself.

Though her matter-of-fact tone fell short of boastful, she was not exaggerating. Two by four foot iterations of the green and blue map are securely framed and mounted at every trail intersection without fail, sometimes within sight of one another, even in the remotest parts of the park. An hour and a half from Chicago remote is a nuanced concept.

According to legend, in the 1760’s a band of Ottawa and Potawatomi laid siege to the butte that gives the park its name. A band of Illiniwek had sought refuge there. Instead of protection the rock brought starvation. So the story goes.

Today the tall chimney of rock is a maze of boardwalks and wooden railings reminiscent of the French colonial stockade reproduced in a diorama in the Visitor’s Center. Despite expansive views of the river and lake far below, I feel hemmed in. 

Mountaineer and author Jack Turner: “We treat the natural world according to our experience of it. Without aura, wildness, magic, spirit, holiness, the sacred, and soul, we treat flora, fauna, art, and landscape as resources and amusement.”

Starved Rock, like most parks, exists for the spectacle it provides, for its entertainment value. There may be wild places here, but innumerable signs make clear they are strictly off limits. It is equally evident that the public does not universally respect the posted rules.

Is a visit to the park the beginning of an appreciation for nature or a diversion?

Gratefully we walk in solitude. It is the off-season. Last year over 2.4 million people visited Starved Rock State Park, starved for something, whether a taste of nature or a diversion.

The afternoon is so warm we leave our jackets behind. We are surrounded by autumnal shades of brown and tan, as if this place were caught in amber, marvelously preserved.  A stand of pines relieves the monochrome. In contrast to the popular Starved Rock trail, which is paved with concrete, we stroll along the bluff trail on sandy soil and pungent pine needles.

Mysteriously, a boardwalk appears. The bluff is high. We are neither in a wetland nor crossing one of the many ravines. Reaching its end, a staircase dispels the notion of accessibility.

When nature became a place other than and distinct from where people lived, we no longer felt part of it. The false dichotomy that resulted has led to all kinds of environmental mischief. Roderick Frazier Nash says, “The dawn of civilization created powerful biases. We had settled down, developed an ecological superiority complex, and bet our evolutionary future on the idea of controlling nature.”

I step off onto the earth again.

Canyons are the creation of water. At certain times of the year the park is blessed with many waterfalls, one of its primary attractions. We have come off-season. The only waterfalls we see grace the postcards in the gift shop.  No matter. Just as I prefer the feel of the earth beneath my feet, so too do I prefer a dry solitude.

The silence in a box canyon lends poignancy and power to a single birdcall.

To see more photos from Starved Rock, go to my flickr page.