Cave-in-Rock State Park is a neat little place that contains a very short trail to the cave itself and a nice upland woods walk over the Ohio River. The place is a sort of a pilgrimage center to earth scientists and the day I visited I met a professor from Southern Illinois University who was exploring with his young son, although the boy was much more interested in the large Cliff Swallow colony on the limestone cliff just above the cave entrance.
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| Cave-in-Rock |
A mid-floor channel is evidence that an underground stream served as the origin source of cave formation though no water flows from the cave now. At the back of the cave is a large mud floored room that, according to local legend, contained a kind of "pirate's bar" or commercially crooked bar room. The commercial venture failed but it is known that river pirates did use the cave as a hiding place from which to launch raids on drift boats carrying settlers west in the mid-19th century. The large entrance with opposing level decks of limestone reach out and around to the river and are enhanced with historic graffiti. Even the high ceiling contains some old dates and initials as people drifting in on flood waters could reach the roof from small boats.
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| Limestone shelf deck |
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| No pirates back here |
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| Cliff Swallow colony |
The limestone here is embedded with large chert nodules that give it a raisin bread appearance. Indigenous people harvested chert from limestone beds or collected it loose from the river banks to make fine tools such as blades, hoes, hunting and fishing spear points. In my short essays about time, I found while writing that night, that holding a piece of river chert in my hands conveyed a sense deep history from the marine organisms that formed the sediments, to the geological processes that formed the stone, to the human hands that worked it to make dozens of specialized tools. The pain in my gut reminded me that everything is temporary, everything comes and goes in and out of our short lives which, in the grand scheme of life on earth, is already a memory in stone.
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| Chert nodules embedded in limestone |
Cave-in-Rock is different from Cave In Rock, the first being the state park and the latter being the town of the same name - but without the hyphens. I walked around the little riverfront town to learn that here and just downstream at Elizabethtown were the places where Cherokee refugees were unloaded from flatboats after crossing the broad Ohio River from Kentucky. They continued the brutal forced march west from here cutting through Southern Illinois to cross the Mississippi in a week's time. I stopped at a little mom-and-pop rock shop and was told that townsfolk offered the refugees food and water but were ordered to stop aiding them by federal troops who escorted them at gunpoint. Routes of the Cherokee passing are marked with historical signs for the Trail of Tears but I was told that there were a few different overland routes, not a single road.
I took to the Rim Rock National Recreational Trail upper and lower trail sections to explore this scenic rock bluff "city" with a combination of stairways, tight passages, and bluff-top vistas. A connecting trail (which I didn't do b/c I was starting to get sick) leads to Pounds Lake. I actually did the upper trail loop twice because of the rare limestone barrens communities and geology was so interesting.
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| Red Cedars up to 500 years old |
The trail encircles the escarpment along open bluff and enclosed forest. This area is protected as the Pounds Ecological Area and contains rare plants, ancient Red Cedars, and excellent examples of wave action captured in limestone. All sorts of fantastic erosional features graced the walls and boulders of the massive blocks of stone.
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| Massive overhang at the Pounds Hollow |
Wandering carefully around the edges of the escarpment revealed I was able to see the extent of the limestone barrens, the xeric calcareous habitat that supports flat rock plant communities anchored in patches of moss and Bluestem Grass sods. Prairie flowers including Aster and Boneset were just beginning to blossom but well beyond the shade of some very old Red Cedar that laid prostrate across the rock. Mounds of moss supported tiny whorls of Ebony Spleenwort and the edges of forest soils, hot from the direct sun, sprouted delicate tufts of Sidebeak Pencilflower,
Stylosanthes biflora, a new plant for me native to Mid-Western deciduous forests.
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| Sidebeak Pencilflower |
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| Cleft passageway |
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| Crossbedding formations indicate fast water laid these sediments |
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| Bridges and stairways |
Stumbling around the base of the escarpment in a bit of pain from ongoing gut and breathing issues, I decided to finish my hike for the day and head back to the campsite on the river and reassess whether I wanted to continue into a second week of Use-It-or-Lose-It Vacation. I felt worse at camp and decided that since I was far from my doctor and in a state where my not-so-great health insurance is not accepted anyway, I decided to end my Shawnee National Forest exploration that evening and head out early the next day. Driving home to PA from Illinois I was crunched over the steering wheel most of the way and in a pretty sad mood - not the first time this year I've been overcome with sadness. It's been a very hard year, working from home with two jobs to cover, in front of multiple computer screens for upwards of 14 hours a day. The sedentary lifestyle of work-from-home day and night has taken a toll on my health and heading home that day from the Shawnee I came to grips with that.
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| Wave-trenches |
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| CCC-built stairways |
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| Limestone honeycomb |
Not only did I reassess the situation for staying the second week in the Shawnee, but the drive allowed me time, even if scrunched over, to reassess how much my own lifestyle has changed these few years and how much of an impact those changes have had on my health. Though still on track to complete my "Five Year Plan" for leaving full time work, I had to rethink the two job routine (especially while home) and what sacrifices I am willing or not willing to make for "future me." I stopped for the night at a small motel east of Toledo where a wonderful front desk lady offered to run out and buy some garlic oil pills for the intestinal pain. She locked up and ran out only to return a few minutes later with a new bottle of pills. I gulped a handful down and slept almost pain free for the first time in a week that night.
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| Shortleaf Pine, Pinus echinata (endangered in Southern Illinois) |
It's now mid-July, many weeks since visiting the Shawnee National Forest and I know that I will go back and hike the 160 mile-long River-to-River Trail at some point and visit some of the places I had been and still need to see. Until then I am sorting out some health issues the result of this past year and will start training again to get my lung and joint function back and deal with work- related stress that drops me like a rock.
At home I got caught up with my friends who are vlogging their PCT hike and I remembered their decisions (all three of them) to end the cycle of poor physical and mental health (work-related) to retire healthy and adventurous into the wild life they have now. I'm at that point.
Notes:
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