state parks project, part 13: mounds

After a long hiatus, we're back on the state parks trail! We had actually intended to spend the holiday weekend at Spring Mill State Park, but life has been really, really, really busy lately, and we're all a little overwhelmed by it, so we took a vote and unanimously decided to change our reservation at Spring Mill to a weekend later in the year. Instead, we thought we would stay (a little) closer to home, take a day to explore some state park goodness, and spend the other two days just hanging out at home.

Our first stop was Mounds State Park near Anderson. It's a smaller park, easy to explore, but it's got a serious attraction: Native American ceremonial mounds. Specifically, the Adena-Hopewell people built these 10 earthworks beginning sometime around 250 B.C. The biggest one is the Great Mound, which was used to view astrological alignments ... and as party central to celebrate the summer solstice, winter solstice, and spring and fall equinoxes. There is a small burial site in the Great Mound, but it wasn't used primarily for that purpose.

Today, there are lots of trees all around, so we didn't have a great view of the sky, but it was easy to imagine what it could have been like when the mounds were being used. And we have one very cool family to thank for that. Around 1820, the Bronnenberg family settled on the land that is now Mounds State Park. Mr. and Mrs. Bronnenberg built a big house and had 12 kids (a story I can relate to!) and ran their own businesses (saw mill, grist mill, farming operation) and became pretty wealthy, but early on recognized the importance of the mounds and fought to preserve them. Their children did the same, and eventually, though parts of the land were leased to a company that built an amusement park there in the 1920s, the land was donated to the state to become a park (it opened in 1930).

So that's your history lesson for the day: Be kind to your land and protect important sites. I would imagine that must have been a pretty hard sell for those hundred or so years the Bronnenbergs were stewards of Mounds, but I'm so grateful for their foresight and determination. Kind of makes me wish I had a mound to watch over and protect from encroaching development.

Anyway, we loved walking around here! We stopped at the nature center, where we had a lively conversation with a volunteer who was there before her shift started, so she sat in the wildlife viewing area doing some knitting. Henry made friends with her (like he does), and she told us all about the property and the Bronnenberg house. Later on, we actually ran into her on her way to open up the house for visitors, and she opened it early so we could go in and look around. Very nice!

After checking out the nature center, we went outside and got a hunting lesson. The atlatl is a spear that was used by the Adena-Hopewell, and the park rangers were giving demonstrations. As you can imagine, the boys were really into the idea of launching a spear at a wooden buffalo target, and they got to try it several times. Mike and I both tried it too, and surprisingly were not bad at it. It's sort of a two-piece apparatus, the spear itself and the launcher, which is a shorter stick with a tab at one end and a fork at the other. The tab fits into the edge of the spear, and the fork rests underneath the spear and slides along it when you use the launcher to fling the spear. There's definitely a lot of skill involved, and I am thankful I don't have to catch my dinner that way.

After our atlatl lesson, we took a hike that was advertised as featuring the twenty most common trees in Indiana, and there were guideposts along the way numbered 1 through 20 ... but we never found a guide/key to tell us which tree was which! Apparently we were supposed to get one at the visitors center, but we didn't realize until we were out on the trail, so we just admired the trees for their beauty without knowing all their names. The hike wound around and finished at the Great Mound, so we got to get up close and personal with history. A quick visit but a pretty great one! Mike and I would both be interested in going back, especially to take part in a program to learn more about the history of the region.

See also: SPP1, SPP2, SPP3, SPP4, SPP5, SPP6, SPP7, SPP8, SPP9, SPP10, SPP11, SPP12.