How the St. Louis Great Rivers Greenway cultivates connections.
I pedaled through the dark gray of a summer morning. A breeze tickled my arms. The dull roar of traffic followed me as I crossed a bridge and followed a cloverleaf under it to join the greenway as it entered a wooded park.
After I rode under the bridge but before I entered the woods, I enjoyed 100 yards of silence. Then the screech of bugs turned overpowering. I was smack dab in the middle of suburban St. Louis, but it felt remote. I cranked on the pedals —right, left, right, left—until my headlight reflected off three sets of glowing eyes. The deer standing on the asphalt path looked at me, waited a beat, and then bounded into the woods.
A fourth one crossed the trail so suddenly I almost hit it. I skidded to a halt, caught my breath, and realized right then that I was in love with the greenway.
This love affair has been going on for eight years and shows no sign of abating. I have spent hundreds of hours and covered thousands of miles walking, biking, hiking, running, and bear crawling on my beloved Dardenne Greenway, part of the Great Rivers Greenway, a network of 30 trails covering 135 miles across the greater St. Louis area.
I have been on the greenway in every hour of the day (yes, literally) and in every weather condition. Once I was part of an event that was a mix of an overnight hike and a leadership seminar, in which participants carried telephone poles, sandbags, and wooden pallets. Another time I walked the greenway during an ice storm. Or tried to. I arrived at a footbridge that goes over Dardenne Creek, started to walk up it … and slid back down. I started to walk up it again … and slid back down again. Finally, I dropped to my hands and knees, crawled until I reached the handrail, and ascended the bridge by holding tight as I shuffled my feet.
I use the greenway mostly for exercise, but I’ve also taken it to a coffee shop, hardware store, grocery store, church, and more, including creating what I’ve dubbed “a self-made pop-up breakfast restaurant,” which I’ll explain in a minute.
But it’s not how I use the greenway that makes me love it. It’s what happens while I’m using it. I love the greenway because it connects me to my community, nature, other users, friends, my kids, and my wife. I love the greenway because those connections solve one of modern life’s biggest problems—loneliness.
Starting before the pandemic, the world has become an increasingly lonely place, and St. Louis rates as particularly bad for loneliness. St. Louis is among the top five loneliest cities in the country, according to a recent 2024 study from ChamberofCommerce.org, an organization that offers resources to business owners.
Fifty-one percent of young mothers and 61 percent of young adults (ages 18 to 25) feel “serious loneliness,” Harvard’s Making Caring Common project reports. In 2021, 15 percent of men had no close friendships—a fivefold increase from 1990, according to a study conducted by the American Perspectives Survey.
We’re lonely, and it’s killing us. “Social isolation significantly increased a person’s risk of premature death from all causes,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
And all of that is going to get worse because our loneliness epidemic is going to get worse. We are treating the problem with more of the problem: More of us are working remotely than ever before. We lock ourselves in our home offices, and we rarely venture out.
I see the greenway as a cure.
Now more than ever, we need what experts call “third places.” First places are our homes, second places are our worksites, and third places are public facilities where we gather—coffee shops, malls, parks, and yes, greenways.
The greenway was designed as if it knew this loneliness epidemic was coming. Great Rivers Greenway began in 2000 when voters in St. Charles County, St. Louis County, and St. Louis City approved a sales tax to pay for the series of trails. Early projects included the Missouri Greenway, Mississippi Greenway, and River Des Peres Greenway.
The Great Rivers Greenway has grown steadily ever since and now includes 135 miles of trail across 30 greenways, including eight that opened in 2023. The long-term plan calls for the network to eventually feature 45 greenways covering 600 miles.
The greenway has played a crucial role in helping me form the most important friendships of my adult life. By my calculations, counting organized events such as 5Ks and adventure races, I have hit the greenway with more than 1,000 people. I use it a couple of times a week to get to outdoor workouts with the men I love most in the world.
When I called and spoke to Emma Klues, the president of communications and outreach of the Great Rivers Greenway (the entity that oversees the trail), I was almost embarrassed to tell her all of this. It seemed too heavy, deep, and profound for what is essentially a strip of asphalt.
But she loved to hear it. When I told Emma I summed up my love of the greenway with one word—connect—it was as if I called a slipper company to report their product keeps my feet warm.
“I knew you were going to say that word because that’s our word,” she says. “Connecting people to each other, connecting people to nature, connecting communities together, connecting you to wherever you’re trying to go—work or school or running an errand. You’re connecting to the place, connecting to the land. Some people say connecting to themselves, connecting to their mental, physical, emotional, spiritual health, you name it. There is no shortage of ways to use that word.”
“No shortage of ways”—I’m glad she put it that way because some of the most powerful connections I’ve made using the greenway have been at my self-made pop-up restaurant.
If riding my bike on the greenway planted seeds of love, eating breakfast along its path watered them and made them grow.
Every Friday at 6:30 AM, two friends and I arrive at Legacy Park, a trailhead of my beloved Dardenne Greenway. Rob, Joel, and I hug, warm up, and then do a 45-minute “park bench” workout in which we run along the greenway and stop at each bench for exercises.
A man we see weekly on the trail dubbed us the “Park Bench Boys.”
But we prefer the CBH Boys.
After our workout, I plug in my griddle under a park pavilion and make fried eggs and corned beef hash—or CBH, as we call it. Rob’s job is to make coffee. Joel’s job is to make us laugh.
Something amazing happens when we cook breakfast outside together, a bonding that is both ineffable and obvious. It’s as simple as the fellowship that arises as food cooks, as profound as scooping a man’s breakfast onto his plate for him, and as fulfilling as watching friends devour a meal you made for them.
As sweat drips off our bodies, we wrestle with life’s problems, which are abundant, as between us we have seven teenagers. We discuss careers and kids, tragedies and triumphs, and dreams hoped for, deferred, and dashed.
We feast, we talk, we laugh, we grow.
And, of course, we connect.
This article was originally published in the March/April 2025 edition of Missouri Life.
Trails Across Missouri, the Katy and Rock Island, has a chapter on the St. Louis Greenways. Find it at MissouriLife .com/shop.
