Cahokia Equinox, March 20, 2005
Posted March 22, 2005
Inspired by the March feature of the Waterman & Hill Traveller's Companion, we drove to Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site in Collinsville, IL (near St. Louis, MO) for the Equinox sunrise.
Jim stayed up all night and we and some friends in a second car left a little after 3.
We lost our friends when they stopped for coffee, so when we pulled into the parking lot,
we were the only ones there. It's a small parking lot in a big field with trimmed tree trunks the size of telephone holes
arranged in a circle, and to our right we could see Monk's mound looming up like a shadow in the grey pre-dawn.
Behind us was another field, and trees between Woodhenge and the highway beyond it on the other side,
so it felt like being out in the middle of nowhere.
Here's what Woodhenge looks like by daylight. It's too big to get the whole thing in one picture, but this gives you an idea.
We waited for about 3 minutes, wondering where Charlie & Co were, and then a pick-up truck pulled up next to us. Two minutes later, another car, and then it became nonstop. It was like being in the X files, all these people coming to this odd place in the middle of the night.
It was cloudy, so we couldn't see the markers line up, but it was cool to be out in a field in the dark with a bunch of strangers. It was in the 30s. As the sky grew brighter we noticed the frost sparkling on the grass. Seeing it made my toes feel colder.
The sun got above the clouds before we left and it was very beautiful then. I may keep going back until I get to see it rise over the mound.
The chief of the Muskogee Creek was there! They're going to build a temple mound in Oklahoma, probably beginning next year.
He says I can carry a basket of dirt if I come visit!
I have a memory like a steel sieve. He's a deacon, a Methodist deacon, I think he said, and after he explained about his purpose in coming
there he sang two stanzas of a hymn (in Creek, I presume) and offered a brief prayer, which he repeated in English. It was very moving. It all sounded so exotic in a foreign language,
and then when it came down to the English it boiled down to just about what Uncle Wayne would have said.
Of course, I wasn't good for much after we got back, and Jim slept from 10 to 5, but there you have it!
I couldn't make my mind up between the two pictures, so I'm throwing this one in too.
Those are people on the far right, sitting on a lower mound between Woodhenge and Monk's Mound, for scale.
Photos by Ruby Jung. All rights reserved.