50 @ 50 – Cahokia Mounds Trail, Collinsville, Illinois
Hiking through a place enables observation on a level which is eclipsed by car. For the purpose of these blogs, I use the noun “hike” rather loosely. It can mean anything from a one mile paved pathway to an eight mile mountain slope. But always within what I consider moderate or easy in difficulty.
The story begins on a trip back to where I grew up. Many people think of St. Louis as a decaying industrial city, but its revitalization effort received a World Leadership Award in 2006. The city grew through multiple waves of immigration, motivated by fertile land, major waterways, caves, and as the gateway of westward expansion, opportunity. In spite of the vast diversity of its still distinctive ethnicities and traditions, the cycle of THIS place – different, yet with similarities to that from which they came, the rivers, the flooding, summer’s stickiness, and winter’s wet chill – rolling hills, rocky cliffs, native hardwood trees and lakes. Place binds them together…
My first trail begins about eleven miles east of St. Louis, Cahokia Mounds, and the site of the largest prehistoric city north of Mexico. Hundreds of years ago, it’s estimated population numbered as high as 20,000; a figure not reached by St. Louis until nearly 1840.
Who knew??
This World Heritage Site contains a few short walking trails to an extensive 10 mile path. The terrain is easy; the only challenge is the number of steps up to the top of Monk’s Mound. The information booklet is provided in 13 languages, (13!) or in recorded form. As I stood atop the mound, looking at the St. Louis skyline on the horizon, I couldn’t help but think that these people were wise enough to build their city far enough from the mighty Mississippi to avoid flooding, but close enough to benefit from fertile farmland, and abundant wildlife.[1] The land enabled the development of a civilization complete with (in modern terms) a city center, “suburbs”, farms, and sophisticated enough to engineer sun calendars.
They left evidence of their art, but what did they sing? Standing where others stood, contemplating the landscape, in this case, dramatically altered by human hands, enables us to transcend time and humanize the historical facts.
[1] The proximity of Horseshoe Lake, a large oxbow lake, indicates that a bend of the Mississippi may have been much closer at one time, but there was no indication in the material that the river’s course was substantially different in Cahokia’s peak than now.