Rocky Hollow Nature Preserve

No Choices?

The water that formed the canyon in the Rocky Hollow Nature Preserve in Turkey Run State Park had no choice; it had to follow gravity.

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Following the path the water took backwards is like going back in time and being able to contemplate earlier choices.

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There are places where we seemed to have a choice which only turns out to be a detour. How should we know?

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Worse, there are also places that prevent us from going back further, dead ends of our past, inaccessible parts of our memory, like here in Devil’s Punchbowl.

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The further we go back, memory is being reduced to form.

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Does it truly make sense to look into this lifeless past?

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Catch me later, says the leaf.

Wood and Stone

Even more than the near Shades State Park, Turkey Run State Park offers a maze of narrow canyons filled with remnants from the retreating glaciers of some 20,000 years ago.

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A common theme is the presence of wood and stone. Most of us are surrounded by their shaped presence more or less permanently, but here we can watch them grow and decay in their raw and untamed state.

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This place has something special at any season. In early spring, the abundant vegetation is still dormant, and the damage done by the melting ice and snow has not been cleaned up yet.

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This will just look like devastation to most, reminding us that building with wood or rock is, in the long run, nothing but building on sand.

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Occasionally, there is a view that seems to contradict the chaos. While such views are nothing but rare byproducts of the greater erosive randomness, they still remind us that there is purpose, as long as we pursue it.

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