万分感谢
Bedtime came early for the Toops family at their three-bedroom brick ranch house nestled in a forested valley in Johnson’s Shut-Ins State Park. At 8 p.m. Lisa Toops put the three kids to bed. She and Jerry, superintendent of the park, followed soon after. Selfreliant and religious, they were used to a work cycle that more closely followed the sun than the flow of commuter traffic. Jerry was a real “ranger type,” rugged, fit, good with his hands. His outdoorsman’s beard was just beginning to gray at the edges.
The 42-year-old naturalist loved the park, with its strange formations of igneous rock called shut-ins. A billion years ago volcanic activity caused a granite upheaval and confined, or “shut-in,” the Black River in southeast Missouri. Over the ages, the trapped water carved spectacular gorges, natural water slides and potholes in the hard rock. In the summertime, the park was a magnet for swimming, camping and hiking, but now, in the weeks before Christmas, all was quiet