Layers of Table Rock
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Hello friends. Today's story is about Table Rock. It's one of the most popular hikes in Boise and the cross sitting atop the mesa can be seen from across the Treasure Valley. Table Rock is considered a Boise icon, yet it's history is complex and layered. Amanda Patchin takes us through that history in today's story. Enjoy! Layers of Table RockBy Amanda Patchin Table Rock. It is a natural formation (mostly sandstone) that lends its name to neighborhoods, a trail system, local businesses, and at least one local church. Standing above the city, its prominence, steep sides, and flat peak, would probably warrant plenty of attention alone, but it is also lit at night by a great big glowing white cross, has dozens of trails around and up it, and is the center of much local history. Table Rock (yes, it is two words, not one) is 3,650 feet above sea level and rises about 900 feet above Boise. That elevation gain provides a variety of challenging hiking and mountain biking trails. Typically people access them via the dirt parking lot behind the old Idaho Penitentiary off of Warm Springs Avenue or from the parking lot adjacent to Warm Springs Golf Course, but they are also accessible via the rest of the Ridge to Rivers trail system as it is all pretty well interconnected. It used to be accessible via car until the road was gated some years ago but it’s far more rewarding to hike or mountain bike up anyway. You can read more about the trails and how and when to use them via the Ridge to Rivers website, but I do just have to mention trail care here because of the delicacy and value of them! Muddy trails should be left alone to dry out as tracks in the mud cause long term problems. Likewise, never leave trash, dog poo, or other debris along the trails. The trail themselves should not be damaged and the desert ecosystem they thread through needs to be treated with respect. The main trail is steep but variable and while you will be out of breath several times before summiting, you will also get to see into the old Penitentiary, enjoy the wildflowers and shrubs that grow along the way, and you can also explore some of the easier loops if you prefer an easier path. If you do choose to hike all the way up, you will be rewarded with a wonderful view across the valley. I especially like it in Fall when the leaves are changing, but late Spring once all the trees are full and showing their variegated greens is lovely as well. Table Rock itself is quite interesting. Much of the sandstone around our city was quarried from the mesa and its soft creamy color and texture beautifies many local buildings. You can sit at the top and look out over the valley or you can walk around the base of the “table” and observe the interesting rock formations, old quarry, and the views into the foothills. The Assay Office at 210 Main Street is entirely clad in Table Rock sandstone and likewise the Statehouse sports the local “clothing” of sandstone, but did you know that we had sandstone curbs in downtown? While most of our curbs are mundane concrete today, there are still a few surviving sandstone curbs along Main Street and near Boise High. If you walk along Main Street, starting at the Assay Office and heading west, you will see that while the corners are poured concrete, a few feet in from the curve there are shaped sandstone blocks forming the length of the curbing. It’s stained with old paint, a little mossy, and grubby, but also warm and welcoming. Sandstone also dots downtown in the form of various kinds of street furniture. A few “mounting blocks” for getting on horseback still survive as do quite a few pillars and hitching posts. Warm Springs Avenue has many, but you can also spot them in various places in the downtown core. Sandstone is a deeply humanizing material. Like canvas, linen, soft bricks, and good leather, sandstone shows wear and becomes more beautiful as it accumulates the weathering of age. Christopher Alexander, an Austrian-born British-American architect and design theorist, argues that such building materials are important because they are gentle reminders of our mortality as well as instruction in the art of aging. Some materials like glass and steel resist signs of aging and so make us feel alienated from a timeless future we cannot see. Other materials, like plastic and asphalt show their age but are uglier for it rather than more beautiful and so we feel our mortality as a hideous thing rather than a lovely thing. On a subconscious level the soft old bricks at the corner of Eighth and Myrtle tell me that it will be no bad thing to be a grandmother with white hair and wrinkles. Likewise the sandstone curbs are a humble statement that a hundred years of stains and scars are both ordinary and a wonderful gift. The quarry remnants also provide challenging climbs for local bouldering enthusiasts as well as a few taller pitches for traditional and sport climbers. A helpful friend, a crash pad, and a pair of climbing shoes is all you need for an afternoon of athletic adventure (at your own risk, of course). My friends first took me climbing there in 2002 and it was a quick and exhilarating introduction to the sport! Table Rock has also been the center of local controversy ever since the Jaycees purchased a few square feet of the land from the local land board in order to put up the 60 foot cross that still stands there. The cross was put up as part of the cultural and social conflict around fears of communism and atheism in the 1950s. Founded as a civic organization, the Jaycees turned toward defense of Christianity and the Boise Chapter seized on the idea of a cross on a hill as a symbolic statement for the community. By the 1970s the dubious legality of displaying a religious symbol on public land was apparent and so the organization arranged to purchase the tiny plot the cross stands on. The further legality of that move has been disputed and because the disputes have been provoked by various activists from out of state, even non-religious locals have felt inspired to defend it because it is “ours” and for now it remains. Both the fervor that placed the cross there and the one that agitated for its removal seem to have calmed. Up close the cross is not exactly impressive. Steel and plastic house the LED lights that illuminate it and they are worn and weathered, as is the concrete base it rests on. At night, however, the glow is visible across the valley, a familiar and comfortable sign. Long before it carried a Christian religious symbol, Table Rock was a sacred site to the native tribes of the region. It is hard to imagine the time before the dams on the river, before the settlement and build-up of the region, but the Boise Valley was a very different place just a couple hundred years ago. There were people here, many people, but they lived a seasonal and ambulatory life, sensitive to the gifts of the land and the variations of its hospitality. Before the sandstone was quarried for buildings, before the hot springs were piped into buildings and under streets, Table Rock and the nearby formation Castle Rock were ceremonial and sacred places. The discovery of obsidian artifacts around Table Rock is evidence of the use of the site, however, it seems quite obvious that such a prominent natural formation, especially one essentially surrounded by various hot springs, would be a natural gathering point, and likewise obvious that such a fortuitous setting would carry spiritual significance for inhabitants. It is easy to imagine periodic gatherings on the flat hilltop, funerals, weddings, and other rituals, excursions down to the hot springs for baths, initiations, or purifications. Easy to imagine generational memories now lost and children looking forward to annual games as elders look forward to long conversations and everyone excitedly waits for their favorite songs and stories. Easy to imagine, though hard to know. One of the challenges we face in the 21st century (among many) is how to handle the complexity of our present knowledge. Five hundred years ago it was possible to be ambitious for all learning. A person, in western society, could reasonably hope to read the majority of available literature and understand the majority of known history. Even a short while later, it became impossible to even imagine such a thing, much less do it. Now, humanity has not only extended the bounds of knowledge, we have increased communication so much that it is possible to be aware of much, much more than any one individual can cope with. And so it is with our understanding that Table Rock was once a sacred site to ancient peoples, that it was important to anti-communist activists of the fifties, that it was important to the secular activists of the late 1990s. How should we integrate such a complex history? We would most easily resist one or more of these histories as wrong or irrelevant, as misguided, or evil. What are the Jaycees and their overblown fears to me? Or what is the importance of 1000 or 5000 year old traditions of burial, the earth itself, after all, is one gigantic grave for all the lifeforms that came before me? And there isn’t an easy answer, at least not so far as I can tell. There is an old graveyard there, buried deep in the soil and in memory. The people whose ancestors lived and died and honored the place were forcibly removed and many of them were murdered to appropriate the land and its use. The Jaycees faced a dramatically changed world in the aftermath of two huge wars and many smaller conflicts contesting the meaning of life and proper governance of human societies. Their symbolic action resonated for them and for many others. Meanwhile the secularizing movement of the late 20th century has borne its own fruit, granting rights and protections to previously marginalized persons. And then we are back again with no easy answer, because each of these brief descriptions, carefully as I have composed them, are each arguable, contestable, and much more complex. So how to live in a genuinely complicated reality where communism is both hope and horror, where faith is both naively foolish and the meaning of everything, where a symbol is unifying and divisive, where the past is oppression and liberation. Perhaps some of it is just as simple as the beginning of this article: there is a lovely hike, please don’t damage the trails, clean up after yourself, see how beautiful it is! Let us, at least attend to reality, see what is in front of us and love it the best we may. Thanks for reading! With love from Boise, Marissa This story was written by Amanda Patchin. Amanda has a monthly-ish newsletter where she shares her booklist, selections from her fiction, and updates on what books she has for sale in the Zed Bookshop.
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From Boise
Every Tuesday, read a story about a person, place, piece of Boise history, or local happening. Every Thursday, get a huge list of things to do over the weekend. No news, no politics - just the fun stuff.