400 Miles from Home

Our best man, Rob, is visiting for a few days this long holiday weekend and it has been one full of reminiscing. Yesterday we went hiking at Giant City State Park and he became overwhelmed with the silence of the forest. He commented on how weird his ears felt with the absence of city noise. Even with the sounds of birds and locusts, the silence was deafening to him. He is used to honking horns and jets overhead. It has been too long since Rob walked in the southern Illinois forests amidst sandstone bluffs.

It reminded me of a time about 25 years ago when Rob took us hiking in his neck of the woods in northern Illinois. We drove to a nearby place he called Marengo Ridge. When I found out the name of the area, I said I had a cousin living in Marengo. I had no idea how far something called Marengo Ridge Conservation Area would be from the town of Marengo, nor did I know how to find my cousin’s house. This was long before we owned cell phones.

We walked into the cool woods and hiked the 5-mile trail up and down hills and through meadows. Somewhere during the hike, we came upon a sign indicating we were at the intersection of Kelly Hertel Nature Trail. My head nearly twisted off because I knew I could probably walk into my Hertel cousin’s backyard from that sign. Was it possible to be almost 400 miles from home, on a random trail, and walk up to a relative’s door I had only visited once, years before? Yep. It was and we did. We finished hiking the loop and drove the car a short distance down the road where I told Rob to turn onto another road and into a driveway.

What a surprise. We rang my cousin’s doorbell and got hugs while she and her husband were frantically unpacking from a trip to the Caribbean. They had just walked into their own house from the airport. It was the shortest, craziest, most unexpected visit ever, but we did it, and I’m grateful for another sweet, ridiculous memory to have. As I said in a blog a few weeks ago, it is a vast planet but tiny world.

Yes! Tiny world! As I was about to publish this blog, I looked online to include a link to Marengo Ridge. With Rob looking over my shoulder, we saw a picture of him taking his niece and nephew down one of the trails in the ’90s on the website.