 |
| Starved Rock State Park, Oct. 1, 2025. |
My first instinct was to simply post this photo without comment. Let the headline be the punchline.
But that seemed perhaps a touch too wry, for the matter at hand. Death by falling is a perennial problem at Starved Rock, whose dramatic precipices make it a place of beauty and danger. Accidentally and intentionally. In 2022 the Operation Disrupt Signs went up, in Starved Rock and 16 other locations around the state. But the signs — which are not just at this overlook — did not prevent two people from committing suicide at Starved Rock in 2024.
So I thought a few words were in order. The boardwalk helps a lot — stay on the wooden paths, behind the rails, and you won't slide off any precipices. Not unconstrained nature in the usual sense, not the deeply-ravined woods you got in the pre-boardwalk days — which I remember, scarily, and not just out of fear of falling. But better to stay on the pre-approved route than boldly forge your own path off a cliff.
I was mildly curious as to whether there was any history to this "Lover's Leap" — I assume it's a common mythic local place name, like "Dead Man's Curve," and is a reflection of danger more than any association with specific death. None presented itself to me but, then again, I didn't look that hard. This is one of those moments in our nation's history when to reflect on anything other than gathering doom feels terribly beside the point. Twiddling your thumbs on a sinking ship. I'm not a believer in leaping to one's death. Life is but the once, and we should all tough it out, no matter the hardships of our public or private conditions. But I understand why people do it.
I was mildly curious as to whether there was any history to this "Lover's Leap" — I assume it's a common mythic local place name, like "Dead Man's Curve," and is a reflection of danger more than any association with specific death. None presented itself to me but, then again, I didn't look that hard. This is one of those moments in our nation's history when to reflect on anything other than gathering doom feels terribly beside the point. Twiddling your thumbs on a sinking ship. I'm not a believer in leaping to one's death. Life is but the once, and we should all tough it out, no matter the hardships of our public or private conditions. But I understand why people do it.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments are vetted and posted at the discretion of the proprietor. Comments that are not submitted under a name of some sort run the risk of being deleted without being read.