Bell Mountain and Elephant Rocks State Park

This weekend, my friend Katie and I went on an adventure! Saturday, we drove about 2 hours south of St. Louis to the Ozarks. We visited Elephant Rocks State Park and hiked Bell Mountain, Missouri’s second highest peak! 

Before I get to the photos, I want to share this resource with you. It’s a wonderful trip planner to the Ozark Trail system. You can choose what kind of hike you’d like to take and what length and the program suggests paths for you and provides detailed directions and maps. It was a great tool for us and helped us organize a fun 8-mile hike! 

The early settlers stumbled upon this rock formation and named them after the circus elephants the boulders resemble. 

Geology lesson: the granite boulders were once covered with loose sediment. Years of wind and water wore this covering away and eventually carved out the rounded boulders we see today. 

Katie tried to push the boulder. She couldn’t move it…

On top of Bell Mountain, Missouri’s second-highest point! 

 

Me, the mountaineer! 

Decisions…decisions

Being young is a luxury. Or, is it a burden? With so much ahead of us, we have many decisions to make, from the person we want to be to what we eat for lunch. We make so many choices each day…some important and others not so much. Without getting into too much detail about the intricacies of my mind and racing thoughts about the future, I will present you with the following from “The World According to Mister Rogers.”

“When I think of Robert Frost’s poems, like ‘The Road Not Taken,’ I feel the support of someone who is on my side, who understands what life’s choices are like, someone who says, ‘I’ve been there, and it’s okay to go on.’” – Fred Rogers

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost (1874-1963) Mountain Interval 1920
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

What Really Matters

The biography of Cheryl Long, Editor and Chief of Mother Earth News fascinated me. Most notably, the portion of her life spent living off the grid in northeast Washington with two friends, John Stuart and Carl Mack.

From there, I read this article written by Stuart. He reports back to Long on the unforeseen challenges and successes experienced in the 25 years he and Carol spent living and raising a family in their vertical log design home.

Stuart writes: “…the skills associated with sustainable rural living sometimes seem buried by popular culture, corporate farming and the commuting lifestyle…The hands-on approach to life is so visceral and pleasing however that it always survives in those of us who take the time and energy to seek out the traditions, information and companions who can help us see the light of day.”

I enjoy hearing Stuart speak to both those living on and those living off the grid. It’s too often we forget what really matters and sustains us.

I’m a big fan of John Muir

The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls. – John Muir