A Visit to Cahokia Mounds

I grew up on the Illinois side of St. Louis, MO; northeast, across the Mississippi. I went to the Cahokia Mounds a couple of times as a boy, once on a field trip for school. I had not been back in years. I wanted to go back and take my two boys.

On December 26, 2023 we went there while I was visiting my parents for the holidays. My oldest son filmed a few videos. He did alright, not quite Kubrick when he filmed Fear and Desire, but it will do.

If you are ever in the St. Louis area, and the weather is decent, I highly recommend going. The mounds are the site of a Native American city, the largest prehistoric earthen construction in the Americas north of Mexico. Mound building at this particular location began with the emergent Mississippian cultural period. The park covers about 3.5 miles. We didn’t walk all of it but a good amount. We ended our day on Monks Mound, the largest earthen structure at Cahokia. Monks Mound is the only mound with steps to the top. The picture above is on top of Monks Mound, just after sunset. You can see the moon over our shoulders.

The gentleman who took our picture told me he was there recently for the Winter Solstice and there is always a good gathering for that and the Summer Solstice. Maybe I will go back for Summer, I’ll have free lodging.

Cahokia was an important center for the Mississippian culture and was a strategic position near the confluence of the Mississippi, Missouri, and Illinois rivers. It maintained trade links with communities as far away as the Great Lakes to the north and the Gulf Coast to the south. Mound building began in the 9th Century CE, the rise and peak in the 11th and 12th centuries.

There is a sense of wonder there and walking around you take yourself back to that time. There is so much we can learn from the ancients and the prehistoric natives.

I am including some videos below but I realized something driving back to my parents that night. Three years to the date, December 26, 2020, my ex wife and I had separated, our family torn apart. It didn’t hit me until then that it was three years. Then I thought about a few things.

The number 3. Three of us on the top of that mound, Monk’s mound. I went into monk mode pretty much all of 2023. I quit drinking and worked intensely on myself. I did a 360 last year.

At the end of our day, the sun starting to go down, we drove from the main area of the mounds over to Monk’s mound. Monk’s mound is across Collinsville Road from the 10 mile trail. We had been walking along the trail that day for 2.5 hours, no coats. I travel light if I can help it. It wasn’t THAT cold, but a decent enough time to start feeling it. So when we drove over to Monk’s mound, we sat in the car to warm up a bit. We knew the sun was going down and Monk’s Mound was high up.

Well I was slipping because we wanted to get up there and see the sunset, film it. We spent too much time warming up. So we got out and I sprinted up the stairs to make it. It went down as I was 80% to the top, took a quick picture cause that’s all I could muster. Sprinted those stairs, wasn’t out of breath in the least; middle aged, whatever that means.

Sprinting to that summit, feeling alive on Monk’s Mound like a kid. Standing around and taking it all in. Looking back at the steep climb to the summit. Smiling at my boys as they come up in wonder.

The rays of the sun melting behind the St. Louis skyline. Behind us, the moon. Three males, 3 years, standing atop a peak (33 vertebrae), with the spirit of the past and the moon (feminine aspect, intuitive) over our shoulders. Our tribe. A day to remember.

The official website for the mounds can be found here. I’ll leave the videos. One note, I messed up saying the waterway was the Mississippi and I realized it about two seconds after. I wasn’t going to reshoot though, brothers were cold. The waterway is actually the Cahokia Canal.