My feet upon the rocks

Traipsing upon the natural wonders of Southeast Missouri

If you aren’t exploring adventurous parts of the outdoors in your own state, then what are you even doing? I want to hit them all eventually, and fortunately, Missouri is the underrated home of many underrated natural delights. 

Many of them are located in close proximity to one another in the southeast region of the state, which for all intents and purposes is the middle of nowhere. There are so many that you really can’t get to them all in one shot, but I recently managed to enjoy three of them in one go: Hughes Mountain, Johnson’s Shut Ins, and Elephant Rocks. 

I’ll be back for the rest of them later. 

“Mountain” is a generous term 

Mountaintop experiences tend to happen only on mountaintops. Missouri is not known for them. But there are a few. 

One of them is Hughes “Mountain” (using “mountain” generously here), a bump that rises just 380-430 feet above the floodplain in SE Missouri. But its defining feature is a rare formation of Precambrian rhyolite, the result of ancient lava flow that cooled to form columnar rocks. I hear tell the only other such formation in the world is in New Zealand or somewhere. They call it the Devil’s Honeycomb. 

We’d been AirBnBing at a nearby farm, and while the Momcats snoozed & lazed with wine & kids & rocking chairs, a couple of us got the wiggles. A quick chat with the farm owner led us to a couple of options, and we chose Hughes Mountain over a nearby popular hiking trail. (Life Pro Tip: When you have a chance to climb a mountain, take it.)

It’s a hard but brief walk. You think you’re near the top, then you aren’t, then you are, then you aren’t. On the way up, there was evidence of a fairly recent fire that claimed many of the skinny pines. I made a note to myself to look up what happened. [Narrator: He forgot.] 

The rocky, piney trail gives way to a wide open stretch of gray and red rocks, peppered with grayish-green moss. The frolic-friendly landscape goes on forever. There are rock cairns all over the place. As well as Satan’s precious honeycombs.

It was windy at the top, and because the leaves hadn’t popped yet, we could see for miles. We had the place to ourselves. My pal Toph opted to take a mountaintop nap. I am envious of this ability. 

I’m told there’s power in grounding oneself by physically connecting your body to the Earth. With that in mind, I peeled off my shoes and socks and padded over the honeycomb rocks. L’il dangerous to go barefoot on rocks and moss. Every step is a risk. Every step is a gift. I dipped my toes into cold rainwater puddles and thought about how old these stones are. 

I wandered around for what seemed like an hour. I felt connected and calm. Toph woke up from his nap, and we trekked back down in peaceful silence.

What Is A Johnson’s Shut-In? 

Apparently we have something called “Johnsons’s Shut-Ins” in Missouri. I’ve heard the name many times before, but I never understood what exactly it was.

It sounds like a terrible old homestead from yesteryore where Old Man Johnson lived alone for 50 years and then was trapped inside for another 20. Or a ramshackle prairie prison where he locked up the townsfolk when they got too ornery. Or an old-timey-themed old folks home. 

This is the sort of creepy frontier nonsense that was in my head whenever I tried to look up pictures of it, none of which never clicked for me: It’s just...like...water and stuff, I would think. Where’s the ruins of the ‘ol homestead or whatever? 

I insisted that we swing by Johnson’s Shut Ins to learn once and for all what it is. 

The buildings and parking areas are new and clean. There was a li’l store with adjacent showers and lockers. Hm. Clues!

A wide, accessible trail led from the store into the woods. It was marked as very short. Mmk. So there’s a destination. At the head of the trail is a sign with a colored flag atop it. The sign explained a color scheme—green, yellow, and red flags, which indicated the level of danger in the river for that day. This particular day? Red. Mmk. Not a great sign.

We walked down the trail, off to hunt whatever a Shut In is. Then we found THE SIGN, with the explanation I’ve always wanted: Turns out a “shut in” is a geological Thing—”a narrow constriction, or gorge, in a steam.” 

A river cuts through softer sedimentary rock and carries bits of sand and gravel along downstream, where there’s harder igneous rock (in this case, rhyolite), which doesn’t erode as fast. But all that sediment from upstream, combined with the flowing water, forms a sand blaster. It chews up a lot of the surrounding bedrock, but the rhyolite still holds up. As a result, you get these hundreds of narrow, angry channels where whitewater gashes through. The water is thus “shut in” to the rock. 

The flag-based warning system, it turns out, is for swimmers, because you can frolic in the shut-ins (except on red flag days)! Hence the showers and lockers and such.

MYSTERY SOLVED!  

Elephant Rocks Rocks

Ah, names. Sometimes they’re misleading like Johnson’s Shut Ins, but sometimes they’re perfectly descriptive, like Elephant Rocks. 

What comes to mind when you think “elephant rocks”? You’re picturing it correctly: A whole big bunch of giant rocks that resemble elephants in color, size, and shape. If it sounds perfect for an afternoon of romping, that’s because it is. It’s kid paradise. 

When you pull into the parking lot of Elephant Rocks State Park, it’s just giant rocks rocks rocks everywhere. Almost overwhelming. So of course, in the shadow of these wonders, our small children immediately...started playing in the dirt with sticks.

On the right side of the park is a ton of boulders to clamber upon, and then you face a sharp dropoff where the bluffs tower above a deep pool of water.

I tried to be cool and slide down part of the bluff face, but I got...kind of...stuck. While I was carefully choosing a way back up, my 7-yr-old used my own camera to document my struggle. Thanks, kid.

If you wend around the little trail skirting the pool, you’ll come to EVEN BIGGER rocks that are EVEN MORE clamber-worthy. It feels like one big stone mountain, smooth and almost entirely devoid of foliage. It’s peppered by smaller boulders that lean on one another precariously, almost as if they’re in mid-roll, and between them are little cave-like openings that you can slither through. 

Before we went up on round two of the rocks, we sat at a picnic table to nosh on healthy-ish snacks and call upon more energy for more adventures. We lost some of the littles at this point—all they could muster was hitting up the little playground at the foot of the rocks.

I have to admit, the top of Elephant Rocks is unlike anything else I’ve seen in Missouri so far. You can see forever. And it’s so smooth—perfect for going barefoot. And when you take off your shoes and socks and connect the soles of your bare feet with the giant old rocks while the wind blows your hair into the sky, and you feel gently pulled between two ancient forces, it at once feels serene and dangerous, like the top of a mountain should be.