The Cahuilla story behind Suicide Rock, the pale dome standing near Tahquitz Rock above Idyllwild — a mother's terrible choice, and why the two rocks stand together over the town.
Near Tahquitz Rock stands another pale granite dome above Idyllwild, and this one carries a hard and tender name — Suicide Rock — and there's an old Cahuilla story of how it came to be. Now, the old tales come down in more than one version, as the best old tales always do, but this is the shape of the one most often told up here. Let me tell it gently, because it's a sad one.
Long ago, they say, there was a young Cahuilla woman of high standing — some tell it she was a chief's daughter — and she fell deeply in love with a young man from among the common people. The two of them wanted nothing in the world but to be together. But it was forbidden. The custom of the day would not allow it; her rank and his did not match, and the marriage could not be. And the people, fearing what such a union might bring down on the whole village, decreed that the lovers must be parted forever.
And the two of them could not bear it. Rather than live their lives apart, wed to others, aching for each other across the years — they chose, together, to climb up onto that high white rock above the valley. And there, hand in hand, they gave themselves to the mountain and to the sky, and were parted from this life together rather than parted from each other in it.
And ever since, the Cahuilla have called that pale dome Suicide Rock — and there it stands, right beside Tahquitz Rock, the two of them keeping watch over Idyllwild together. One rock the prison of a fallen shaman; the other the last place of two lovers who would not be kept apart. It's a lot of old sorrow and old power for one pretty little mountain town to sit beneath, isn't it? Look up at those two rocks as you leave Idyllwild behind. The mountain remembers its stories, even when the town forgets. Roll on down the far side.
Photo: Arlyn Asch · CC BY 2.0
