View over the Mississippi River from the scenic outlook in the Trail of Tears State Park. The outlook juts out over rocky bluffs, which allows you to see the flood plain across the river.
Driving through Missouri last week, I stopped at the Trail of Tears State Park, which may be an excellent place to study the post-colonial history of Native Americans (perhaps as part of our civil rights discussions), and observed the Mississippi River and its flood plain before it becomes engorged at its confluence with the Ohio River.
In 1830, President Andrew Jackson passed the Indian Removal Act, which called for the removal of American Indians living east of the Mississippi River to relocate west of the Mississippi River. …
While some of the Cherokees left on their own, more than 16,000 were forced out against their will. In winter 1838-39, an endless procession of wagons, horsemen and people on foot traveled 800 miles west to Indian Territory. Others traveled by boat along river routes. Most of the Cherokee detachments made their way through Cape Girardeau County, home of Trail of Tears State Park. While there, the Indians endured brutal conditions; they dealt with rain, snow, freezing cold, hunger and disease. Floating ice stopped the attempted Mississippi River crossing, so the detachments had to set up camps on both sides of the river. It is estimated that over 4,000 Cherokees lost their lives on the march, nearly a fifth of the population.
Taking a break on the Nature Walk behind the park's museum.
There’s a short, 1 km nature walk behind the building that was nice on a beautiful, sunny day in early spring. Warm, with the trees just barely beginning to bud you can get a feel for the ridge-and-valley topography of the park, which is in stark contrast to the flat floodplain of the Mississippi on the other side of the river. The park’s roads weave up and down the ridges, and I wished I’d had my bike with me.
Barge going downstream on the Mississippi River, past the river-side campground.
This early in the year (mid-March) most of the campgrounds in the interior of the park seem to be closed, but there is one down on a beach of the Mississippi River that was empty but open. This one has electrical hookups which is not a bad thing if you have the place all to yourself.
The scenic outlook is a wooden platform that juts out through the trees so you can see across the Mississippi to the flat floodplain and farmland beyond. Sitting on a cliff of sedimentary rock (it looked like limestone from a distance), the outlook is high enough that you can just make out the shapes of old meander bends and ox-bow lakes.
It’s a small park, probably worth a visit for the museum, and the outlook is nice, but probably not somewhere you’ll want to spend the night unless some of the upland campgrounds are open.
The museum’s focus on the relocation of the Cherokee would be a nice followup to the pre-Columbian focus of the Chucalissa Museum in Memphis.
Cape Girardeau River Wall.
If you’re looking at river processes, you’ll probably also want to stop in Cape Giradeau, which boasts a fromidable wall to protect the downtown from the Mississippi River’s spring floods.
This short hike that follows a limestone bedded creek, will likely take a while because there’s quite a bit of geology to see.
The start of the hike is on the eastern side of the bridge between the villas and the hotel. Head north (left in the image) toward the lake.
This year, it was on a chilly, rainy morning in February, that we started on our hike. We took a left off the concrete stairway onto the trail that runs parallel to the river flowing in the ravine just below our cabins.
We’d stayed at the villas at Montgomery Bell State Park, which is about an hour east of Nashville. The villas are quite nice. Built into the side of the valley, sitting just across a small river from the park’s hotel/conference center, and designed to be energy efficient, they’re quite comfortable with their geothermal heating and vaulted ceilings.
They’re so nice that some wanted to stay in the warm. Others, however, were eager to get outside, despite, or perhaps even because of, the rain. I gave them the choice, but everyone came.
With the rain, we soon ran into trouble. Runoff from the road and building uphill converted part of the trail into a small stream. The first few brave souls committed to wet feet, and waded through.
The dam and lake at Montgomery Bell.
But the stream along the trail did not last long. Pretty soon we left it behind, and coming out of the valley the lake and dam opened up to the right and left. Though it had been raining for much of the previous night, the lake was still very low after the dry autumn and winter. The line of grass that marks its usual shoreline was over a meter above the level of the water.
Short concrete wall that acts as the outlet level for the dam.
So we crept along the southern edge of the dam to follow the path of the overflow channel. It was quite interesting to see the sediment and debris that choked the reservoir side of the concrete wall that regulates the level of the lake. The other side of the wall, where the water must accelerate as it overtops the barrier, was clean, bare and smooth, looking a lot like concrete until you get close enough to see that it’s hard, dark, limestone bedrock.
Drill-hole with radial shatter pattern.
But not hard enough. Small, round holes pockmark the rock. Clearly artificial, with radial cracks diverging from the center, they remind me of Sarajevo roses.
They’re probably contemporaneous with the building of the dam. In order to have their outflow channel, the dam builders needed to blast away some of the rock, so they drilled holes and filled them with explosives. The blasts crushed the upper layers of rock, but the bedding plane, upon which we are walking, dissipated the force and remained, mostly, intact.
Following the reservoir outflow channel.
The bedding plane is a bit slippery with the rain and light coating of moss, so we take a bit more care with our footing. The sides of the outflow channel are steep, with nice exposures of horizontal layers of limestone rocks.
Though I don’t go into it in detail, the different layers, with their different colors, hardness, and fossils, show the changing environment in which the sediments that created these rocks were deposited. The more friable, tan-colored layers were likely formed at a time when sea-level was lower, when this area was closer to the coastline so more sand and clays could settle out of the muddy waters emerging from fecund deltas. On the other hand, the dark, dense, grey limestone rocks are much more typical of deeper seas, offshore environments.
Tree roots prying apart the bedrock: biological weathering.
I did take the time to elaborate on the topic of weathering when my students pointed out the tree growing on the side of the cliff, with its roots entwining and pulling apart the limestone rock. It’s a part of the rock cycle that we had not spent a whole lot of time talking about in the classroom so I was glad for the opportunity.
Joints in limestone. Notice how the layers on either side of the joint line up.
Weathering also plays a part in the widening of joints, and the joints we saw were obvious and important in shaping the course of the channel. Joints are simply breaks in the rocks. When this region was uplifted, the rocks were squeezed and fractured by tectonic forces. There was not enough tectonism to seriously deform the region, the rocks are after all still close to horizontal, but they did break, creating joints that cut right through the bed of our channel and straight through the wall.
You’ll notice that the layers on either side of the joint line up, so this is just a fracture in the rock. Often, the rock will break and one side will be pushed up relative to the other; that would be considered a fault.
Runnoff from the rain, flowing along and widening joint in limestone.
One of the nice things about being out in the rain, was that you could see the water in action. Gliding along the joints, picking up and eroding small pieces of debris, while slowly, imperceptibly, dissolving away the rock and enlarging the joints. It’s the same process that created the caves we saw last year at Merimec; the reprecipitation of dissolved calcium carbonate from the limestone rocks is what creates the stalactites, stalagmites and other cave formations.
Looking up the channel at exposed bedding planes and joints.
It took a bit of care to follow the channel down. It also took teamwork. We’ve been practicing all year and it’s under these conditions that all the teambuilding, from the challenge course onward, really pays off.
Committing to wet feet.
At the bottom of the bedrock traverse was a big puddle. The water from the regular outflow of the dam creates pushes up sediment that blocks the free flow of the runoff from the current rainfall. Undoubtedly, this gets washed away when the reservoir overflows through the outlet channel, but today there was just a big puddle.
Here we faced a choice. We could have taken a hard right and walked back up to the dam along the edge of the small cliff that overlooked the outlet channel we’d just come down. It’s a nice walk, through last year’s leaf litter, and the overhang is just high enough to provide a small taste of vertigo. But the students wanted to push on, past the confluence, and follow the stream downhill. A second set of students had made the full commitment to wet feet, and any initial reluctance to be outside on a rainy day had disappeared. We followed the stream.
Convergence of the overflow channel and the drainage stream for the reservoir.
Just a few meters downstream from our decision puddle, we ran into the confluence of the regular outflow from the dam and the ephemeral, rainfall driven stream we’d been following. It’s a good place to talk about tributaries, deltas, and sediment transport, deposition and erosion, because the channel deepens into a little pool with lots of small scale features.
Following the stream.
Past the confluence the stream straightens out. It’s remarkably straight. If it weren’t for the fact that we’re in limestone rocks, it would be easy to assume, given the dam and all, that the lack of sinuosity is artificial. But it seemed like the stream was flowing parallel to the joints we’d seen earlier, so it’s not unlikely that the water is following a fracture in the rock. When convergent, tectonic forces fracture rocks, the rocks tend to break at an angle to the direction of the forces (somewhere around 60 degrees to the direction of the forces, if I remember correctly).
Climbing up to the trail that follows the ridge.
Following the stream brought us close to the picnic shelter near the entrance to the park. Just across the water is a pathway up the rocks on the side of the valley that takes you up to the trail that follows the ridge that parallels the valley.
Looking down at the stream and its floodplain from the top of the ridge.
It’s quite peaceful, standing on the ridge while water droplets drip through the sparse winter canopy, with last fall’s leaf litter beneath your feet.
Looking back down into the valley you could see (and talk about) the stream and its flat flood plain. It’s a chance to anthropomorphize. The stream “wants” to meander. It has to be constrained to one side for a reason.
Crossing the dam on the way back to the cabins (upper left).
The ridge trail takes us back to the reservoir and dam, which are quite noticeable if you’re paying attention. We traipsed down the hill and walked a narrow path between the tall, reddish-tan grass that tops the dam, and the bouldery rip-rap that protects the earthen structure from the force of the waves.
Our bi-annual trip to Little Rock and environs could easily include a stop in Hot Springs. I swung by the Hot Springs National Park there last weekend and really liked the potential of the observation tower as a place to tie in the themes of geography. The town is small enough that you can see it all, including the reservoirs supplying it with water, from the tower. It’s something to consider.
I’ve also just noticed that the National Park Service has, on their Teachers page, a two for one deal where you can visit the Hot Springs National Park and Central High School and have your costs reimbursed. I’m pretty sure, however, that this does not include the tower.
I decided that we would read our memoirs, the ones my students had been working on for the last five weeks, on our immersion trip down to Mississippi. The idea of sitting around the fire, sharing memories was just too enticing to pass up.
I was a little surprised that no one objected, or even hesitated, when I made the suggestion the week before. We’d just come in from soccer and I was trying to figure out how we’d fit the projects, the tests and the presentations into the time we had left. There was a precedent. They’d read their first stories, the ones from the orientation cycle, on our first immersion and that had worked out well because it had given us an entire afternoon to have a great discussion. They seem actually to look forward to, what’s come to be called, “Teatime with Doctor.”
“What if,” I asked, a little quietly to one of the 8th graders, who’d been on the challenge course immersion the year before and happened to be walking by, “you read your memoirs around the campfire on immersion?”
“Yes.” Declarative and succinct. I raised an eyebrow, but he just continued on his way. I was a little surprised he did not have more to say. I’m always surprised when my students don’t have more to say. My students can be quite loquacious given any opportunity, and this one in particular tended to have strong opinions that he was usually more that willing to share.
The discussion with the rest of the class took barely longer. The larger the group, the more likely you are to have people who need to think out loud, but there were unanimous thumbs up in less than two minutes.
I think that there’s some primal need that gets stirred up by even the thought of sitting around a fire and sharing stories. Of course this plan of action also fulfilled that other fundamental need of the adolescent, the need to procrastinate.
II
We get to Camp H., have lunch, and an afternoon of community building games. Lamplighter’s been working with the camp leader here for years and Ms. A’s impressed by how well this group works together. No surreptitious sabotage, no subtle denigration, no stubborn unwillingness to participate.
We talk about the group, she and I, as we walk back to the cabin, red gravel crunching under our feet, oak leaves turning color overhead, and myself getting slightly out of breath on the last climb. I’m perhaps a little more impressed than she is because I can see the conflict in those by now familiar faces; glimpses of of baser instincts being overruled by the prefrontal cortex. It is a sight that is ambrosia to the middle school teacher.
I get back to our cabin and I find V., one of the two students I’d promised they could get the campfire going.
“Are you guys getting the fire started?” I ask.
“We’re just going to play football for a little while, then start on the fire,” he replies. V’s been our main supervisor for Student Run Business this cycle and it shows. He’s been breaking out his calm, clear, confident, supervisor voice on the challenges all afternoon.
“We have half an hour until dinner and it will probably be dark afterward,” I say.
He just nods, seething competence.
It’s 5:45 and they’re still playing football. I look at my watch more and more frequently. I’m not going to remind them of what they have to do. We’re Montessori after all.
Two of the girls start working on the fire pit. Aha, I think to myself, this is going to get interesting. I saunter outside and my path nonchalantly takes me down to the fire pit. I suggest more kindling, they never get enough kindling. The boys realize other people are working on “their” fire.
Dissension in the ranks. Conflict. I tell them they should work together. Harsh words are spoken. A covenant broken. The poignant cry of impassioned idealism, “injustice”. Things fall apart; the center does not hold; Bethlehem is apparently somewhere on the other side of the playing field.
Ten minutes later it’s time to go to dinner, but first it’s time to rebuild, time to remind them of the covenant they came up with that very afternoon, time to have a short, quiet talk about the use of language.
Over dinner the laughter starts up again. I’m at the other table with Ms. A and her family, all of whom work at the camp in some degree or the other. After the last fifteen minutes I’m extra impressed by the calmness of her teenagers.
When we get back to the fire pit the laughter is perhaps a bit too loud, but the group seems back together again. The fire is started without recrimination (eventually because they did not have enough kindling).
We sit around the fire, reading stories, finding issues, being helpful writing partners, and learning how important it is to be critical, brutal even, to our own work. There are some really good writers in the group, and there’s nothing better than learning from your peers.
“Can we put our memoirs in the fire when we’re done?”
“Sure,” I say. Sharing our writing is supposed to be a celebration. Something strikes me as just about right about liberating these memories in flame, letting them take on a new, ethereal life. Burning pages in dancing flame, marking the putting away of cherished, childhood things; an adolescent rite of passage.
As the last few stragglers work on putting out the fire I sit there, on a cool fall night, thinking about cycles and the seasons. I wish I was on the beach, watching the tide come in, small waves advancing and retreating, bigger waves pushing them farther from time to time, every time a little closer to where they need to be.
One of the most powerful aspects of a multi-aged classroom is the institutional memory that develops and makes learning a whole lot easier than starting off, every year, from scratch. All the aches and toil of last year did not just disappear when the new crop of students started. The new kids look to the older students for cues about how to behave and it has been saving me a whole lot of time and energy.
That’s not to say that bad habits don’t persist too. But having a slew of new students mixes things up enough so that even the returning students are receptive to some change.
So now I have a bit more time and energy that I can now put into new projects and tailoring the curriculum to make life a little more interesting for one and all.
Well we’re on our first immersion now and I’m getting a little reflective. Probably because it’s close to 2 am and they’re still not asleep.
After the caves at Meramec Caverns we took a rafting trip down the Meramec with the same company that runs the Caverns. They drove us to a put-in point a couple kilometers upstream in an old yellow schoolbus and left us with two rafts and the full kit and we floated down the stream back to the cavern’s parking lot.
The stream was quiet and it was an easy float, especially with the nice weather. We saw turtles sunning on the logs, a bald eagle flew across of the bows of the leading boat, and we chatted with a few of the other boaters on the river.
I had not particularly wanted to go up into the St. Louis Arch myself, but the students really wanted to and we had a little time to spare after the Science Museum. So I grabbed tickets for the last tram to the top, and I’m glad I did. Looking down on the city and river from above you could, in an almost tactile way, reconcile the geographic elements with the history that we’d talked so much about at Anheuser-Busch.
Eads Bridge across the Mississipi River in St. Louis.
Standing in line, waiting for the tram to the top, we were treated to a short documentary on the Eads Bridge, the first across the Mississippi in St. Louis. The video stressed the importance of the bridge in allowing the city to become the gateway for westward expansion.
The tram arrived and small rectangular doors opened up to reveal tiny escape pods fit for a spaceship. Five of us squeezed in, fortunately we were all friendly. The distinct possibility of claustrophobia tinged the air. Three minutes 47 seconds later we reached the top. Forty-five degree rain was pouring down outside. The wind was so strong you could, if you held still and waited for it, feel a slight sway in the Arch itself.
Barges in the distance.Grain silos and transhipment docks.
Looking east we saw the mighty Mississippi. Not quite so mighty as it is in Memphis, which is downstream of the confluence with the Ohio River, but enormous nonetheless. On the river, huge barges carried freight cars with unknown cargo south toward New Orleans. Just below, an helicopter sat on an helipad barge waiting for an emergency call. Directly across the water, on the east bank, enormous silos with their own docks waited to load barges with grain collected from across the mid-west.
It was still pouring when we left the Arch, and the rain continued on even during dinner. But leaving the restaurant, heading back to the hotel, the setting sun to the west, refracted through raindrops over the river, created one of nature’s own ephemeral monuments. A poignant reminder that forty-five, or even one hundred and forty-five years are but a moment in the deep span of geologic time.
From playing with robots we tried an actual application of robotics. We had the Segways 101 course at the St. Louis Science Center.
The lesson itself was fun, with an entertaining video of people falling off Segways. They also had a little obstacle course to let you try doing all of the things the video told you not to do (but most of it was for the more advanced class).
Afterward, we discussed the fact that this too was robotics and a pretty advanced application at that. We did not talk much about how the Segways were supposed to revolutionize urban transportation but students did recognize the fact that aesthetics were a major impediment to their broader adoption.
The price was a bit steep however, and I’m a little conflicted about if it was worth it.
