Highs and Lows

It’s a long way to the top … and it’s a long way to the bottom. Roving reporter Matt Crossman takes us on a journey to the highest and lowest elevations in Missouri—Taum Sauk Mountain and the banks of the St. Francis River, respectively.

I arrived near Missouri’s lowest elevation point on a hot Sunday afternoon. Except for drivers zipping along an adjacent highway that crosses the St. Francis River, it was deserted. This was not surprising, because while amateur and veteran adventurers alike wax poetic about conquering a state’s highest peaks, nobody ever brags about visiting a state’s lowest point.

But life is about bouncing between highs and lows and how we handle everything in between, so I spent two days on an adventure I called the “Lowest of Lows and the Highest of Highs.” I visited Missouri’s lowest point—on the banks of St. Francis, bordering Arkansas—and its highest point—Taum Sauk Mountain. 

Or tried to, at least. 

Hitting Rock Bottom

It’s easy to find the highest point in Missouri. There’s a parking lot and signs and a sidewalk that lead you right to a plaque marking the Show-Me State’s topmost point. The lowest point, as far as I could tell, has none of that. 

All that I could find was a US Geological Survey (USGS) report that names the banks of St. Francis River near Cardwell in Dunklin County as Missouri’s nadir. But where, exactly, Missouri drops to 230 feet above sea level, the USGS report doesn’t say (nor does it give the precise location for the other 49 states’ lowest points.)

Using a Google app that reports elevation, I found several spots at that level and chose to visit the most accessible. I pulled off US Highway 412 and parked on an abandoned levee road. I got out, started walking, and immediately thought uh-oh. 

Trees that normally stood on dry land were instead in what appeared to be a couple of feet of water. I could get close to, but not stand exactly on, the Lowest of Lows. 

Thus ended attempt No. 1 to reach the lowest point.

Undeterred, I drove over a bridge into Arkansas and stopped at a boat launch. I hoped to put on waders and walk across the river to get to another spot that Google reported as being very low in elevation, though admittedly it might have been slightly above 230 feet above sea level. High water made that impassible, too.

Two tries, two failures. 

As a last-ditch effort, I drove back to Missouri, walked along the highway and turned left under a bridge … but again, excess water blocked my way

I called that strike three. 

I was out. 

It’s a trick of language that both a flood and a drought serve as metaphors for the Lowest of Lows. But only one of them made it impossible for me to stand on the lowest elevation spot in Missouri. 

While crouched under the bridge, I fumed. I would have to settle for being close, even very close, even within eyesight, of the lowest point. I don’t like settling. Oh, the irony of feeling low for failing to reach the Lowest of Lows. 

But are you ready for some convoluted logic? I was happy to be disappointed because I had planned all along to visit the lowest elevation point in order to write about the struggles, hardships, and challenges of life and how to fight through them. I needed to fail so I could write about getting over it. 

So my exploration into the Lowest of Lows and the Highest of Highs was going terrible and great at the same time and for the same reason. 

I left Cardwell to drive to Johnson’s Shut-Ins, the state campground that served as the home base for my hike to the top of Taum Sauk Mountain. Doubt rode shotgun. Should I have looked harder for the Lowest of Lows? Should I have gone somewhere else on the river? 

I didn’t have good answers. I pressed on because that’s the only way to endure low points in life. Flatlands turned to hills. Hills turned to mountains. The depths of Dunklin County disappeared behind me, and my disappointment faded along a stretch of State Route 21 that cuts through tall forests on the Ozark hills.

Just as I started to think this scenic beauty redeems the Lowest of Lows, something so amazing, so beautiful, so intimate happened that I almost don’t want to tell you for fear of failing to capture it. 

But first I need to tell you about my journey to the top of Missouri.

Reaching the Top

I woke up in my tent at Johnson’s Shut-Ins baffled at the traffic noise. I was too far from any highway for it to be that loud. It took me several minutes to realize that the droning was not cars on a distant highway but cicadas in distant trees. 

My friend Micah, his 14-year old son, Shepherd, and I chose a nine-mile loop to hike to Missouri’s highest point—Taum Sauk Mountain, 1,772 feet above sea level. We could have driven there and walked to it in about five minutes. But what fun would that be? 

We called out “glade!” every time we walked through one. We carefully stepped on rocks at creek crossings. After initially walking around abundant mud, we gave up on that and just tromped through it. We paused at openings as lush green valleys unrolled in front of us. 

Finally, a sign told us to turn right to get to the high point of the mountain.

Our arrival was, admittedly, anticlimactic. The rocky and skinny trail turned into gravel and became wide, like a sidewalk. While a placard marks Missouri’s highest spot, an eye test strongly suggested the placard could have been placed anywhere in sight. 

It’s the top, yes, but not the top of a peak. 

Deep in an oak forest, we celebrated our accomplishment—peak or not, it’s not every day that you climb the tallest mountain in your state. It was a moment that demanded to be savored, so savor it we did. We sat on a bench, made coffee, divvied up sausage, and enjoyed lunch closer to the sun than anybody else in the state. 

It was fitting that we had a common lunch here because the beauty of Missouri’s highest point is also common. Missouri has thousands of acres just like this—trees as far as the eye can see. This one just happens to also be the highest point of the state.

We left the high point and hiked 1.2 miles of the 2.9-mile-long Mina Sauk Falls Trail to the Mina Sauk Falls. Signs warned of a rocky, arduous, and even dangerous trail, and our grunting and groaning proved this to be true. We arrived at Mina Sauk Falls worn out.

The tallest waterfall in the state, Mina Sauk Falls, drops 132 feet through a series of ledges. Starting high above me and ending far below me, Taum Sauk Creek flowed down, down, down, carving its way through ancient gray rocks before collecting in a pool where two hikers appeared to be filming themselves swimming.

Dry days reduce the falls to a trickle. On this day the creek gushed down. I thought again about droughts and floods, and lows and highs, and what happens in between. Heavy rain wrecked my visit to the state’s lowest point. But that same heavy rain made my visit to the state’s highest point immeasurably better. 

Entranced by the sound of rushing water, I scampered down rocks and shimmied to a pool. Covered in sweat, I dipped my hands in the churning, frothing water and dumped it over my head, down my shoulders, and onto my back. 

Instant relief flowed through me from top to bottom, a catharsis worthy of the work I had put in between the Lowest of Lows to the Highest of Highs. 

Which brings me to what happened after I left the lowest point. 

A Moment of Awe

After my failed adventure to the lowest point in Missouri and before my hike to the highest, driving north on Route 21, I saw a deer in my lane. Her posture was defiant. She appeared to be protecting something at her feet. 

From a distance, it looked like roadkill. 

Why would she protect roadkill? 

As I neared her, I realized it wasn’t roadkill. Two tiny animals struggled to stand up, their legs wobbling. For a few seconds, I had no idea what they were. They looked like long-legged Chihuahuas or cartoon animals from an imaginary planet. Only when I got close enough to see spots on them did I realize they were deer. They couldn’t have been a foot tall or weighed 10 pounds. 

I stopped next to them on the wrong side of the highway. Because of their size, the way they struggled to stand, and their uneven gait, I looked for evidence of a very recent birth—blood or an umbilical cord. I didn’t see any. 

As I watched in amazement, they stumbled behind their mother and disappeared slowly into the woods.

I took a few more moments to process this moment of ineffable wonder. I couldn’t get over how small they were—a third the size of the next smallest deer I have ever seen. Deer are typically born the last week of May through the first week of June. This was May 19—early, yes, but not unheard of. 

Three experts that I consulted guessed, based on my description, that the fawns ranged from a few hours to three days old. 

I’ve chased adventure all over Missouri—from east to west, from north to south, and now from its lowest to its highest points—and the most stunned, the most in awe, the most grateful I’ve ever been was watching those newborn deer stand uneasily on that empty highway and then walk unsteadily across it. 

And all I had to do to experience it was keep going after hitting the bottom. 

Featured photo courtesy of Matt Crossman.

Article originally published in the September 2024 issue of Missouri Life.