A little road trip with dogs in tow is getting to be an annual tradition.
Byron was ready to be out of the city.
Half an hour away, and like someone else’s world completely.
Ditto found his moment of serenity in mid-hike, middle of the trail.
I expected to marvel at the dunes, but the thing that really took my breath away was this vast sea, vast view of only trees. So deep that the brush of ten thousand years passed it right over.
From here, the city looked very far away.
| Am I excommunicated from the fellowship of city lovers if I admit that, from time to time, I want nothing more from my love than to get the hell away?For the first time in months, I headed beyond city limits to celebrate the long weekend at Starved Rock State Park. My good friend, confirmed urbanite and fellow volunteer piled me into her trusty little car along with two of the adoptable dogs from our animal shelter ARFhouse Chicago, Deck and Peach, and hit the road. Destination: cheap gas, cornfields and frolicking in the forest.
Starved Rock’s thirteen miles of trail wind through a series of sandstone canyons along the Illinois River. The well-marked paths are meticulously groomed, with solid wooden stairs at each change of elevation: all designed to keep it an easy hiking experience for families and for dogs. (We were clever enough to discover one notable exception, when our triumphant arrival at the final trail marker brought us within feet of our exit—facing a steep metal staircase edged in sharp, jagged scales. Great for steady footing if you’re hiking in foam flip-flops, but impassably cruel for dogs.) Peach flashed her lunkety pit-bull grin from the first minute to the last, while Deck bounced along like a champion on his three strong legs. And though it’s easy to get blasé about the brown old Midwestern temperate forests, the right combination of travelers can still feel, and share through each other’s eyes, a magic there. Glimmering spiderwebs, luminous emerald semaphore-flashes from slick black cavern walls, slender moon-headed mushrooms, the scent of soil and stone and water… Deck and Peach ended the evening back in their cages, where they’ll continue to wait for their families to come along. But for those few full hours together we clambered, and pointed, and basked, and bounced, and grinned the day away. |
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