Lonely Jensen's Point

The day didn't know itself what it wanted: cloudy, uncertain, and so was I, trying to find Jensen's Point in Pacific, until I read that this reclaimed historic site's little park is next to the Red Cedar Inn, the red-and-white Route 66 old restaurant nobody can miss. Unfortunately the Red Cedar Inn isn't operating; everyone who sees it wishes it were.

I had Jensen's Point to myself. On private land for 25 years, and falling to pieces, Jensen's Point was finally bought and restored by the City of Pacific, absolutely ruining it as a teenage  drinking and make-out lair and shelter for vagrants.  It re-opened in 2016. Many stone steps lead up the bluff to this stone structure at the top, built in 1939 by the Civilian Conservation Corps, honoring Lars Peter Jensen, the first manager of Shaw's Arboretum in Gray Summit. He held the job for 18 years. The Missouri Botanical Gardens' Gardenway Association hoped people would take Route 66 from St. Louis to Gray Summit and see the Arboretum, now called Shaw Nature Reserve.

It's a useless structure except for its quaintness and view of distant hills toward the west, and toward the south, the trains that made Pacific what it is, between the mighty and temperamental Meramec River on one side and old Route 66 on the other.

New Loop Trail at Glassberg Conservation Area

As I geared up in the Glassberg Conservation Area parking lot for my traditional Thanksgiving hike, a hiker returning to his car cleaned mud from his hiking poles. I said, "Is the trail muddy?" He said, "There's a new trail," more than once because I didn't understand. But I found out.

Glassberg's former Trail "A," a quarter-mile which ended disappointingly in an open field, and Trail "C," terminating at the Meramec River overlook, are now joined in a loop measuring about 2.25 miles, marked simply "Trail." It rates moderate ups and downs, and at its highest elevations, at the forest's edge, yesterday's snow had left the trail slick and muddy. Having no idea of the trail's length or where it ended up (I hadn't asked whether it was a loop) I pressed onward, hoping to be the first to report this new trail to you and map it. The pamphlets and map at the site don't as yet show this loop. The trail itself was well marked. I enjoyed the hike but because pie was waiting at home, my favorite trail marker today was "Parking Lot" with an arrow pointing the way.

Trail marker and downed trees

You'll find the Department of Conservation has done extensive cutting, mostly of cedars, in a bid to restore native Missouri oak and hickory forest to this former private property of 429 acres.

Happy Thanksgiving!

River of Death

Someday when chips are implanted in all of our heads, officials will be able to keep folks from playing and swimming in said River of Death, the Meramec River, subject of this vivid new warning sign at Castlewood State Park, formerly a summer resort for the wealthy of St. Louis. Each year a family or a troop of kids comes to a Meramec River beach or bluffs, often at Castlewood, and tries swimming across, or swings over the water on a rope, having no idea that the Meramec (called by the Indians "river of ugly fish") runs more fiercely and deeply than its appearance would betray, and has powerful and temperamental currents. Somebody, usually a child, struggles horribly and drowns. A Fox-News-televised search (with weeping parents among their beer cans) commences, with the body being discovered downstream in a day or two. Common sense being scarcer now, and because people are no longer trained to read rivers, signs such as this must be erected. "Rio Mortal," people. The river is so lovely and summer so hot, but please, take the young ones to splash in a stream. The Meramec River, while ideal for canoeing and tubing many miles farther upstream, is not a swimming hole. If it will help deter anyone, the Meramec is home to eels--big ones-- and in addition to drowning the unfortunate person pictured will probably become eel food.

The View

"Let's hike at Castlewood State Park at 2 p.m. Sunday," said the hiking group. When I got to the park, a former resort for the swells of old St. Louis, I saw that everyone on the planet had the same idea. Castlewood has three parking lots. They were all filled. I drove around for 10 minutes, more slowly than the pedestrians walking their dogs, enjoying the 58-degree winter sunshine, sporting shades and shorts (always, someone prematurely wears shorts because it's very important to identify oneself on all possible occasions as a party animal). I gave up and was backing out -- couldn't hike if I couldn't park -- when I found and seized a spot. Children ran around. Cars nosed along the road in a long slow line. Bikers and cyclists powered through. A woman fished in the little creek. The park was crowded and we -- 20 hikers -- were only making it worse.

The trail we chose had been churned into mud by other hikers and big dogs and off-road bicycles. Almost nothing is more slippery than mud except for the watery ice we encountered on the next section of our trail. Traction was impossible. Some hikers turned back. Leaning on my hiking poles I bypassed this through a netting of brush. When regrouped, we took an alternate trail known to be rocky rather than muddy. Then approaching the cliff top we met with, like, a runway of mud again, and dozens upon dozens of people and dogs enjoying, in the rare sunshine, the view of the Meramec River. The way back down was a wooden staircase, thank God, but the path along the riverbank was muddy. At least it was level. We got our hike in, and the bluff-top view that the swells of old St. Louis thought would be forever theirs alone.

High Water

My Weather Radar app forwards National Weather Service warnings by making the smartphone shriek and vibrate. It's been issuing flood warnings for this area since Sunday's heavy rain. This was taken where LaBarque Creek empties into the Meramec River -- the flood's peak, if it doesn't rain again today. A foot or two higher and the water'd crawl up over Highway FF as it did in '08, when all my three possible routes home, including the Interstate, flooded and the National Guard turned us back and I couldn't get home for four days. When the water gets up about this high I try not to leave home (which I'm grateful is on high ground). Flooding is a growing problem as more land is developed and paved. Jeff County Highway W is under water -- don't plan on going there.

Dead Man's Curve

I'm usually lighthearted but a couple things about country living are serious and one is flash-flooding; another is road conditions. After two fatalities in one year people around here organized to petition Missouri Dept of Transportation to "straighten out" Highway FF, a road most of us drive every day.

FF, five miles long, parallels the curves in LaBarque Creek, resulting in three significant curves and a low spot where the creek empties into the Meramec (photo was taken while standing on that bridge), and then it curves again, away from the Meramec toward the bigger highway. For most of its length it doesn't have shoulders and can't be widened. Used to be okay when fewer people lived here and parents didn't hand out cars to their kids, and people weren't so harried as to wait until the last minute to drive anywhere. FF was probably once a footpath and then a horse-and-buggy road. I appreciate that it respects the creek and hated hearing about "straightening" it, even after I had my life's first-ever wreck, on FF during a snowstorm, sliding off into the road shoulder just after the third curve. $4000 in damage but not a scratch on me, thank God. Another gift was in it: a good excuse not to show up at work.

So after a 20-year-old and then a well-liked local merchant (who wasn't buckled) were killed on FF, both in broad daylight and at the same curve, the campaign began with a billboard and some publicity, and because MoDOT doesn't have funds to "straighten" the curves it's going to change the way they're paved to reduce the amount of "super elevation" (slope across roadway) that you can see here is significantly banked. Work begins in 2013. At that time all who use Highway FF will be taking that 18-mile detour I took in '02 during the widening of Highway F (which is different from FF).

Hitching a Ride

The Shaw Nature Reserve is 3000 acres in the next county over, and today I renewed my membership there and went for a camera hike. Walked an hour and a quarter just to get to my planned starting point, the picnic shelter, then down the bluff to the gravel bar on a bend in the Meramec River (above). Enjoyed my visit. Hiked back up the bluff to the shelter. By then I had been walking for three hours and was worn to a thread. After drinking water and resting I faced the hour-and-a-quarter walk back to my car, in the noon sun. For once I didn't relish the thought.

Somebody else was up there in the shelter, a staffer, packing up his janitorial stuff and getting into his Shaw Nature Reserve pickup truck when I got inspired (or desperate) and called to him, "Can I have a ride?"

He said, "Why, sure!" And he cleaned off the passenger seat and, hallelujah, I got a ten-minute ride back to my car.

My escort was Mr. Thurman. He said he'd never cared for flowers or gardening until he visited the fabulous Missouri Botanical Gardens in St. Louis. Next day he dug up his back yard and planted roses. He'd worked 27 years in a factory, quit, found this janitorial job in the paper and worked it full-time. Turns out he also rescues people: moms with double strollers who've miscalculated how exhausting it would be to push the kids around 3000 acres, and he looks for and gathers up hikers from the trails when a thunderstorm threatens. And grants rides to tired middle-aged lady hikers wearing dumb-looking sunhats. And I learned I hadn't had to walk that first hour at all. Mr. Thurman said visitors could drive up to the picnic shelter Mondays through Thursdays, and start from there.

He took me straight to my car and waited until I had my keys in hand. Priceless!