The Summer Sun Arises

It was 4:30 AM on the first Sunday of the Summer Solstice and my friend, true to her word, was there to pick me up for our trip across the river to Cahokia Mounds and the viewing of the sunrise celebrating the return of summer. Not much traffic eastbound across the Mississippi compared to the westbound flow at that time of the morning. Hmmm, wonder where everyone is coming from.

I had never visited Cahokia Mounds during my brief thirty-four year stay in the Metro area. I knew that Indians once settled there and that the area is not only a National Historic Landmark but also a World Heritage site, but I never realized nor appreciated the significance of it all. After all, I originated in Chicago which meant “smelly onions” to the Indians of that venue.

When we arrived, our guide for the celebration, perched on a ladder in front of an assembled group of 25-30 fellow insomniacs, provided information about the Indians, the Mounds and Woodhenge. Woodhenge? I seem to remember a Stonehenge and their celebration the previous day, but I never heard of this Woodhenge. So I looked around and it suddenly dawned on me as the dawn was breaking, that we were standing in the middle of a field where posts outlined the perimeter and a large post stood at the center of the circle. Two of the posts, red cedar trees, mark the points of the sunrise of the summer and winter solstices, while a third aligns due east with the major mound and the spring and autumn equinox.

We stood at the center post, which at one time might have been the observation tower of the sun priest, looking at the sky and waiting for the sun to rise over the designated post. As I stood waiting for the sun to peak over the trees, I couldn’t help but think how sacred this land and this time were to those standing at the same location hundreds of years ago. Our generations have advanced from horse and buggy to cars, airplanes and space shuttles. Our engineers armed with technological savvy have moved us from the day of telegraph to radio, television, world wide cell phone usage and the wonder of instant retrieval of information over the Internet. My friend so sagely summed it up with a simple thought: back then, they just figured things out.

The weather cooperated this morning and we were rewarded with the sight of a brilliant fireball rising in the sky where the Indians said it would over 900 years ago. The trip was well worth it.