Just Me, a Canyon, and a Gas Station Hot Chocolate

Tuesday. Woke up at 6:30, packed a bag, and drove myself to Starved Rock. No plan beyond 'go somewhere with actual nature.' Spring break has been sitting quietly in the apartment and I needed to not do that anymore.

I have driven past the exit for Starved Rock probably fifty times in my life and never once stopped. It's only two hours. I don't know why it took until I was eighteen and had a free week to finally just go. The sandstone canyons are genuinely unreal, these tall narrow walls with water stains running down them in stripes, and little frozen waterfalls that are barely starting to melt. I had my iPod in my pocket and I mostly just walked and didn't skip a single song the whole time, which felt significant somehow.

There was a stretch on one of the canyon trails where I was completely alone for almost twenty minutes. Not another person in either direction. I put one hand on the rock wall and it was cold and rough and solid and I just stood there for a second feeling very aware that I was a person standing in a canyon in Illinois on a Tuesday in March. That sentence sounds dumb but it was actually a really good moment.

the canyon walls honestly made me feel very small in the best way

A couple hiking the other direction took a few photos for me, which was nice of them.

I stopped at a Speedway on the way in and got a hot chocolate in one of those paper cups and carried it in my jacket pocket until I found a ledge overlooking the river valley and just sat there and drank it.

gas station hot cocoa hits different at 800 feet

Cold air, pale sky, trees that are almost-but-not-quite budding out. Marcus's birthday is tomorrow and I'll be back in town for that, but today was entirely mine and I think I needed that more than I knew.