Holy Land

Eight or nine months before I left New York, I started compiling a list of places in the U.S. that I wanted to visit. These weren't major cities, but out-of-the-way stops that had to be trekked to in something other than an airplane. I had the intention of driving back to California when I eventually moved out of the city, if not an actual idea of how that would work out, so I started keeping track of intriguing places that I would otherwise probably never have the opportunity to visit. And as tends to happen when you mix enough intention with good fortune, it worked out. When I started planning the move, I opened the list and saw that three or four lines down, just below some stops in Texas that it looked like I wasn't going to be able to hit, I had written "garden of the gods, southern illinois".

"Yes," I remember thinking, "I want to go there." This was immediately followed by, "What the hell is the garden of the gods?"

I had to do a Google Image search, and then some further Googling to determine that it was a national park within the Shawnee National Forest (separate from another (equally stunning) national park in Colorado going by the same name. The gods have many gardens, I suppose). I had no recollection of where or how or from whom I originally learned about the place, but when you collect as much miscellany as I have filed away on my computer, you will eventually bury and unearth something that actually has some use. It didn't take many pictures to convince me that yes, I did in fact want to go there, to the garden of the gods.

And so, after Louisville, we drove west from Kentucky, through Indiana, and into the southern tip of Illinois (the area, incidentally, is also known as the Tri-State Area). After passing through many small towns, we saw a horizon of trees sprout along the horizon and then grow steadily until they towered over us. The winding road swung back and away, leading -- almost inevitably it seemed -- to the Garden of the Gods. Summer having just ended and it being the middle of the week, the park was almost entirely deserted. A recent rain lent an added aura of calm. As we set out to hike around the trails, the sun founds its way back out from behind the exhausted rain clouds, and the landscape opened up, swallowing us whole because that's the only way I care to describe it.

Pump your own water.

Our lonely campsite.

Back into the woods.

Obligatory self-portraits.

And then some long-exposure fun at night. Those stars sure don't like to sit still.

The next morning, we packed up camp early, a little whole-r, a little fuller. There's a quiet kind of peace that comes with rising with the sun in a forest tended by gods, and I hope I find it again.