I first discovered the Purgatory Creek Trail system in 2015, a few years removed from seminary, where I had a healthy church-nerd crush on Dante Alighieri. I stood in utter shock and delight that warm July morning as I gazed at the trail names pulled from Dante’s classic, the Divine Comedy, which recounts his journey through the depths of the Inferno, up the mountain of Purgatory, before finally bathing in the Beatific light of Paradiso. Ever since that glorious day in 2015, I have longed to hike this trail system, following in the footsteps of Dante.
That quest necessitated a grueling consultation session at Rough House Brewing with Daniel Strandlund, former vicar of St. Elizabeth in Buda, and current Dante Scholar at Oxford University, England. We pored over numerous libations and maps to find a route that matched the Italian literature with the Texas trails. Now, ten years later, I walk in the footsteps of that Florentine genius. So come along on a literary adventure, where we’ll journey the route from hell to heaven and back again…mostly.
The Divine Comedy opens with the words, “Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost.” Our hike doesn’t begin with such melancholy confusion; simply park at the Lower Purgatory Trailhead at 2116 Hunter Road.
Our odyssey commences on the Dante Trail, named for the thirteenth-century author from Florence, Italy. Dante is not only the author, but the protagonist of the Divine Comedy, and appropriately, the Dante Trail connects all the other trails on our hike today. As we progress down the Dante Trail, the wide, crushed granite path gives way to a narrow, dirt track pulling us into a forest dark where the straightforward path is easily lost. Here we come to an intersection with the Acheron trail, and we take our first turn.
Acheron serves as the river separating this world from Hades in Greek mythology, and in the Divine Comedy, it serves a similar purpose, dividing the approach to Hell from Hell proper. In our trail system, Acheron runs along a main drainage ditch of the park, and if you happen to hike it after a good rain, it serves as an effective riparian border. This short trail swings back around to the Dante path right at a bridge ready to ferry us to the other side of the Acheron.
Strictly speaking, Charon, the ferryman of Greek mythology, carried people across the rivers of Hell, but the SMGA chose to name this particular bridge, Matilda, in honor of the woman who ferried Dante across the river Lethe, which separates Purgatory from Paradise. We’ll forgive a few little literary liberties in favor of a more optimistic hiking experience. Curiously enough, the River Lethe washed away troubling memories, and once on the other side of this bridge, I always feel a little lighter and more present with nature.
The Dante trail now winds its way up an incline (feeling very purgatory- esque), before flattening out and making its way back to Wonderworld Drive where it intersects the Virgil Trail under the thundering noise of the elevated roadway gods.
The Virgil Trail references the great Roman poet and author of the Aeneid. In the Divine Comedy, Virgil serves as Dante’s guide through the Inferno, and if there is a corollary in our day, it would be Todd Derkacz, SMGA’s lead trailblazer, and the one responsible for the Divine Comedy trail names.
When I asked our modern-day Virgil how the names came about, he said, “The creek was called Purgatory Creek. The Natural Area was given the same name. Back in the early aughts, I read the Divine Comedy and realized it was a Rolodex of names from Western history. We needed names, and I liked the idea of having a theme that challenged folks just a bit. Since no one else seemed to care or even know what we (Sheila Torres-Blank and a few others on crew) were up to, it stuck.”
Up for Todd and Sheila’s challenge, we plunge on. Next week we’ll traverse an infernal path from Limbo to the River Styx.
