Adventures in Shawnee: Rim Rock

It had been an overwhelming, happy tear inducing, exhausting and exhilarating five days at High Knob Campground in southern Illinois’s Shawnee National Forest. Riding Cinder in extreme, challenging terrain, sharing adventures with my daughter on horseback for the first time in five plus years, and being awed on a daily basis by the beauty of the area should have prepared me for Rim Rock’s effects. Yet, there I was again, surrounded by a view from high above the clouds, mouth agape in wonder. 

The flat stone walking path had been built in 1962 by the YACC’s and our group of four had made it about halfway around the quarter mile path without too much difficulty, teasing each other about the downhill slope and what that meant for our legs and lungs during the final portion of the trek. Seemingly out of nowhere, a stairway appeared to the left of the wooden observation deck. Clearly not built half a century ago, the treated lumber rails and steps led sharply downward where they disappeared into a narrow cave between the sheer, towering wall provided by nature on one side and massive, moss covered boulders on the other. Green boughs from trees that somehow found purchase in and around the rocky ground offered a canopy and added to the darkness waiting below.

 

I didn’t want to go down those stairs. I was tired. It was dark. I am old enough to know that what goes down must eventually climb back up! However, I am also stubborn, hate to be seen as weak, and couldn’t let my daughter and friends do more than I was willing to do on our ‘little’ after dinner hike. Downward I climbed, thinking I would reassess once I reached the darkness of the approaching cave.

My friends were further ahead, and I was okay with that, thinking I would stop at the first lower level, absorb the certain coolness that I knew rested around the rock faces, snap a few pics and head back upstairs. But then I reached that level and braved beyond the darkness. The wooden stairs ended, their job taken over by narrow steps carved out of the landscape itself, leading us down, down, down a winding path to the most spectacular view so far.

 

 

Noticeably cooler at this level, canyon walls soared into the heavens, shimmering and shining with mineral layers and moss. A river bed, barely filled with water, snaked a path parallel to the wall face, complete with a tree trunk bridge created when it fell who knows how many years ago. As we meandered, wondering aloud at those who had first come here, walked here, corralled oxen and ass in the pen nature provided, a lone bat flew out from an impossibly narrow crevice in the wall. 

All my earlier worries of dark spaces, narrow steps, and sheer drop offs dissipated as my heart soaked in all the wonder around me, made even better because I was experiencing it alongside my daughter, my own natural wonder. It was worth the sweat and strain of the uphill climb and final stretch of YACC’s path back to the truck. It was a reminder that good things don’t necessarily come easily, but they are worth the work, always.