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Starved Rock: On the Nature of Growing Up
As thousands of gulls wheel in a cacophonous spiral above the open water where the Illinois River rushes over the dam just beyond Starved Rock, a bald eagle sweeps magnificently from its perch on a bare cottonwood and glides across the brown water, cutting the surface with its talons.
The moment’s hungry beauty makes me gasp. This is the dead of winter. The river is frozen all along its length except here, where the dam quickens the current, so it’s a spot of much excitement: a place to feed. I can feel the frenzy as soon as I get to the top of this naked outcropping of rock, a local wonder infused with blood legend, and my own current quickens.
Starved Rock State Park, two hours southwest of Chicago, has secrets it keeps revealing to me: canyons, waterfalls, a massive wood-beamed lodge built in the’30s by the Civilian Conservation Corps. And now this.
My heart wants to feed on the cries of the gulls and the patience of the eagles. We count nine of them in the trees on Plum Island, far more than I’ve ever seen at once in my life, and I wonder at my good fortune at coming upon them — great, rare, vulnerable birds. A sense of longing opens up in me, too big for my thoughts to accommodate.
The place was named after a 200-year-old massacre of Illiniwek Indians, several hundred of whom, men, women and children, starved to death atop this rock during a siege by neighboring tribes. Ancient tragedies lose their horror, however; they turn into the fodder of poetry and local color. Now it’s just a name. Starved Rock.
The eagle pulls up from its dive with its claws empty, flicks its wings a few times and lifts until it is no more than a small, black speck in the afternoon sky. Then it turns and heads back to us, finally reclaiming its perch in a high cottonwood branch. There is sits, with the others, watching.
My attempts to understand the moment and reduce it to something meaningful are just as empty; it is irreducible. Nevertheless, as I look on, at this live, noisy spot, permeated with legend and symbolism, I feel an enormous question pressing at me from the inside: Why isn’t this enough?
“There are souls … whose umbilicus has never been cut. They never got weaned from the universe.”
Perhaps Ursula LeGuin was thinking of such a place and such a moment when she wrote that passage, in The Dispossessed.She was describing people who are not isolated from the process of life: “They do not understand death as an enemy.”
If there is any wisdom to be gleaned from nature, surely this is it: impermanence, death, rebirth. Yet in our proclamation as a species that death is, indeed, the enemy, we have perfected violence to a degree almost beyond calculation. Humankind is on the brink of another war; it toys with weapons of mass destruction. And it does this out of a fear of death.
All that we have will pass, no matter what we do to try to stop it. But perhaps if we love deeply, fervently enough, this moment that we are alive — love it with the magnificence of the bald eagle — we can rise above our fear of death and re-enter the circle of life.
Though we cannot reattach the umbilical cord, we can decide to grow up.
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16 Comments so far
Show AllStarved Rock State Park is truly one of the most beautiful places I have been. Smaller than the Grand Canyon, but far greener. Possibly the most amazing jewel of nature in the Midwest...
herd, Starved Rock is nice, the sandstone bluffs exposed by erosion in the Illinois River valley are a wonder of Nature for sure, in spite of the new fancy dancy lodge that spoiled the earthy feel. I appreciate your appreciation, but calling it the midwest's crown jewel is going a little far. There are bigger more dynamic bluffs in Illinois alone; Mississippi Palisades (lots of eagles) and too many sites in the Shawnee to mention, but Garden of the Gods deserves a nod. Wish there was a way to communicate directly with you. You are the kind of person that could benefit from my exploration tips, a fellow Nature lover. There are great things to see northwest of you in the drift-less region.
I like the way Starved Rock is almost hidden until you are on top of it, Palisades are too big to not see them coming. Garden of the Gods is beyond what I think of as Midwest, But I do share your admiration for it as well. Badlands and Black Hills are often further west of what I think of as "Midwest". "Midwest" ends about where the deserts start for me I guess. I am hatching a new concept that is still in very formative stages at this point at turdtrade.org (started up after a conversation on this site about how we should have a new currency called a "turd") All the email in the contact links on that site goes to me at this point, and I even occasionally check that box too. Feel free to let me know what you think of the concept I am trying to get going with it (that goes for any other CD readers as well).
Must be more than one G of G. The one which was referred is in the eastern portion of southern Illinois.
Your's?
Tried to make contact.
I have not been to that one, the one I know is the one in Manitou Springs, CO.
It is not socially perceived that nature provides for us human beings; it is wealth that provides for us, and in the prospect for the smallest drop of that life-giving wealth, to appease those who own and dispense it, we are prepared to sacrifice the whole world.
hey, ClassAct!
excellent! you open with social perception...how wonderful...
therein lies hope...can perception be changed?
studies show facial expression, rather than reflecting mood, may actually direct mood...
as another group says: fake it 'til you make it...
what if we all decided to re-perceive, to begin a life within a new paradigm (oh, no...not the word paradigm?)
okay, then...say, perspective...or outlook (hey, Bill & Melinda) on a given date?
what if everyone decided to simply quit the current game on September 22, 2012?
globally rejecting the industrial, electrified, financed world...negating property ownership and returning to local management of local resources...
what if we don't?
the wealth that provides for us was ours to begin with, we were either overpowered, or coerced into rationalization and acceptance when the land was captured and fenced off...we have been but 'free' prisoners in denial ever since...
shall we bust out?
This article is touching and has some good insights, but we need to put the scene described into context.
Years ago, I helped do research on Bald Eagles along the Mississippi river and I am familiar with the Illinois river also.
The reason the scene described occurs is that these great rivers have been reduced by people to (while still immensely powerful) a series of "pools" and sewers for industry.
These used to be wild rivers with rapids and much more diverse ecologies.
The eagles and other species were not so limited to specific, man-made feeding sights.
What was fed upon by the eagles (and all of the other species, including our own) was not infused with petro-chemicals and other noxious run-off from cities, power plants, and farms.
The eagle's "magnificence" was not (and is not) any more or any less than than that of the "Winter" wrens which can be found in the adjacent wooded valleys.
I do not mean to be harsh. I too have felt that Rush.
What I am trying to say, I guess, is that, what is overlooked here is that the feeling of thrill we experience when seeing the eagles is also largely a man-made manipulation which is loaded with "patriotic" fervor and which has us focus on the spectacular and allows us to not see the forest.
What about those gulls? Is their association with garbage piles and predatory opportunism really that much different from what the eagles were doing?
Thank you Mr. Koehler for a beautiful beginning and an accurate assessment of our immaturity.
Please continue further.
Excellent, love the double Rush innuendo.
Remember when you had to go to the sea to see Sea Gulls?
A sarcastic question concerning the Illinois River:
How will they get coal to Chicago?
Well said, much appreciated.
i was born a little west of starved rock. i have such fond memories of grade school field trips there, experiences shared by two older sisters. the story of the illiniwek people who chose to starve and eventually jump to their deaths haunted my early childhood. although we moved away, over the years, in those times of need, we have all made our personal pilgrimages back to this sacred place. perhaps it is our way of renewing our faith in the spirituality of nature, or the reawakening of our souls. thank you for this wonderful post.
Gorgeous article.
I heard a Buddhist monk say that there are only three reasons any of us behave badly: Fear, pain, ignorance.
It would be so helpful if we would get to know ourselves--instead of running, hiding, avoiding. There's some good news: Fear most often disappears when it's faced head on.
Good comments, especially by Birdbrainalley.
I spend a fair amount of time out in the woods of Missouri, which has the premiere conservation department (MDC) out of all the states and most countries of the world. The people of Missouri were wise enough in the 1930's to set up the MDC (constitutional amendment) so that it's governing and finance (it has it's own designated tax on outdoor gear, boats etc. . . and in 76 an 1/8 cent tax for land acquisition) structures cannot be interfered with by the politicians and legislature.
I also have 12 acres in the Missouri river hill country of southern Warren County (north of the river about 60 miles west of St. Louis) so bald eagles are quite common. As referenced by BBA, I worry more about the small fauna and flora vs the Disneyesque mega fauna that seems to capture most people's fancy.
What I just started to do this winter (I love to be out in a snow fall-I call it "floating with the flakes") is to exist and enjoy the woods and nature without words. I try to cut out that running dialogue we all have in our heads to just "be without words". I deal with words all day (Spanish teacher) and read profusely so I am trying to force myself to not use words but just absorb what is going on around me through my senses. It's not easy and so far can only manage a 1/2 minute or minute before the words creep back in. It's not meant to be religious or spiritual, just a different mode of being.
OYE
Not fear of death. Lust for death; thanatomania; eroticization of death; hardons upon killing; thanatophilia. Infliction of death as the only true power; final, absolute, unequivocal...as opposed to real and uncontrollable life.
People so dead themselves, only the death of another can generate a pseudo-emotion, a tickle in the skivvies.
Hopeless.