Favorite Ozarks Places – 21 (or 4 revisited)

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hiking, Leland Payton, Lover's Leap, Mina Sauk Falls, Missouri, Missouri State Parks, Ozarks, Taum Sauk, waterfalls

Witch Hazel, with Mina Sauk Falls behind

I wrote about Mina Sauk Falls a long time ago, but recently had the opportunity to revisit that beautiful landscape with my friend Randy Hyman. It was a memorable experience to hike to the falls, something I hadn’t done in perhaps three or four decades.

Although the falls are now in the state park system, part of Taum Sauk Mountain State Park, they’re still pretty hard to get to. I had forgotten just how rugged the trail down to the falls is (or perhaps it didn’t seem so rugged when I was in my twenties), But we made it down and back without incident, enjoying the immense profusion of spring wildflowers along the way.

Sand phlox along the Mina Sauk Falls trail

Mina Sauk Falls is notoriously hard to photograph, first because it descends in a series of small cascades at first, before it reaches the main falls, and second because photographing the main falls from below requires you to scramble down a perilous heap of boulders to reach a vantage point from which you can see them. I didn’t make that effort, but here’s a photo by Skye Marthaler, available from Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons license:

Falling water draws us, whether it’s the massive flow of one of the world’s great waterfalls or a wet-weather tumble like this one. I think their appeal comes from two things. First, there’s the elemental quality, water flowing over rock. How much simpler does it get? All that force, all that power, laid out before us in a simple display of nature’s magnitude. Then there’s the timelessness of it. Watching a waterfall you sense that other people from other centuries, other millennia, have likely done the same thing. That may be why waterfalls tend to attract mythology so strongly. Leland and Crystal Payton have written an entire book, Lover’s Leap Legends, about how practically every high place in North America has generated a story about an Indian maiden leaping to her death, sometimes in mourning over her lost love and sometimes accompanied by him, and how all of these stories are essentially fictional. Mina Sauk Falls is no exception to that tendency, with an early ethnologist gently describing the existence of Mina Sauk and the origin of the fall’s name as a “romancer’s creation.”

But even if you’re not tempted to jump off the overlook, you have to admit that it offers some magnificent views. Even if you can’t see the entire waterfall in one easy sweep, you can see for miles down the valley of Taum Sauk Creek, with a glimpse of the Proffitt Mountain reservoir from a few points along the way.

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A Mind-Boggling Work of Research

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Crystal Payton, folklore, history, Leland Payton, Lover's Leap

You’ve seen them along the roadside, those statues and markers that purport to represent the spot where an Indian maiden leaped to her death, typically from a high bluff overlooking a river or lake. Whether the cause was pursuit by an enemy tribe, pursuit by members of her own tribe because of a romance with an enemy, or just general lovelorn sadness, the maiden finds life unbearable. So off the cliff she goes, the heroine of a tragic, sentimental tale of love and longing, with the details of the incident lost in the swirl of time.

You’ve seen those markers and statues because, as we now know, hundreds of locations across the country – and the world – have borne the name “Lover’s Leap.” We know this because the photography/writing/collecting team of Leland and Crystal Payton have produced Lover’s Leap Legends: From Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-Tee of Waco, an astonishingly researched book that takes these legends, painstakingly documents their origins, identifies their probable original author, and tracks their variations from the general theme.

How the Paytons managed to track down all these stories, and to collect an amazing variety of postcards, souvenir spoons, posters, sheet music, brochures, souvenir pebbles (yes, I remember those souvenir pebbles, a.k.a “Apache Tears,” from a childhood trip to Arizona), and other memorabilia, is nothing short of amazing. If you’ve seen their other books, such as Damming the Osage, Mystery of the Irish Wilderness, or James Fork of the White, you know what you’re in for with this book: an exhaustive, copiously illustrated book that weighs in at 352 larger-than-ordinary pages  and traces every anecdote back to its first appearance, then for good measure throws in a reproduction of the 19th-century newspaper article where the story first appeared. This is clearly a labor of love.

The Paytons delve into the cultural implications of these stories, the restrospective positioning of Indian tribes as doomed and suicidal, without falling prey to academic jargon or overinterpretation. Though comprehensive, the book is down to earth, written in a conversational style that presents its research matter-of-factly. The 545 illustrations are sometimes smaller than I would have liked, but that’s the trade-off in getting 545 illustrations onto 352 pages. Unlike their earlier books, which tended to focus on Ozarks stories and locations, this book is nationwide in scope, and even devotes a chapter to international lovers’ leaps. While it is true that suicide by jumping from a high place is a real thing, and sometimes the Paytons do document an actual suicide attempt from a particular bluff or waterfall, the vast majority of these incidents fall into the category they call “fakelore” – bogus legends invented by a local storyteller or tourism promoter, intended to cast an air of mystery over the dramatic location.

Interestingly enough, the Paytons also document in great detail the almost immediate efforts at mockery and debunking. The book is dedicated to Mark Twain, the great anti-sentimentalist, and rarely does a legend emerge without a satiric poem or comedic play to make fun of it. To quote a 1906 filler in The Scranton Republican, “Judging from the number of ‘Lover’s Leaps’ at the various mountain resorts, the favorite amusement of the aboriginal maiden must have been jumping over precipices.”

This is, I believe, the only book-length account of Lover’s Leap legends in the United States and beyond, and it’s a terrific one. Folklorists both amateur and professional will find much to savor in this book. And did I mention that it has an excellent index, the sign of an author who has truly taken care?

You can browse the book at http://hypercommon.com/.