Waterfalls (Part 2)

Yes, I can tell you I am continually in awe of the natural world and its beauty, both the subtle and the sublime. I sat out on the beach at Folly the other night and watched a sunset which filled cloud layers over the water with an unearthly pink glow. I then lingered there by the ocean listening to the sounds of the surf as the sky became black and the stars came out. At the ocean’s edge, you have a full 180-degree view of the heavens above, and I cranned by neck to keep my gaze fixed on those twinkling stars, those pinpoints of light, some bright and others just faintly flickering.

A couple of nights before that, I watched as the moon rose over the ocean off on the horizon, quite unexpectedly. Again, what a miraculous sight. I can look at a full moon and see it as if for the first time. It never fails. It’s like with anything familiar that you observe steadily for long moments until it seems to be a totally new object. That’s the way the moon can seem to me.

I love being in the mountains, too, with snow-capped peaks rising up on all sides as I approach a pass and then head down the road to the valley below.

Lakes, ponds and streams — I find many of them beautiful beyond compare.

But if someone was to ask me what I thought the most wondrous sight in all of Nature was, I would have to say that for me, unequivocally, it would be the sight and sounds of a waterfall, pulsing down the face of a rocky slope, shimmering, falling rhythmically and with constancy of motion toward the pool below, and then gathering itself up into the creek or stream from whence it came and meandering on about its course to a larger river nearby. I can sit and watch a waterfall — particularly the small fan-like falls that spread out over the surface of the rock — indefinitely. I never tire of the sight. And when it is first seen after walking a trail ever closer to the desired waterall, what a shock of pure pleasure to encounter something so nearly perfect and beautiful.

I have lots of guidebooks to lead me to waterfalls if I want to travel to the mountains. You’d think I would often drive the four hours to our southern Appalachians, the Blue Ridge range, and go looking for waterfalls. But I rarely get the chance, or I should say, I seldom make the effort. I don’t know why. It’s as if knowing they are there, and imagining sitting in front of one were enough. But it’s not, of course. However, I often think about them, and long to be out climbing a gravel road in my car, headed to a pullout and a trail that will lead me to these places of most sublime mystery and beauty.

The memory of past waterfall encounters makes the anticipation that much sweeter. Some of them are very difficult to reach, involving strenuous hikes. I wouldn’t want to do that by myself. But I am often tempted to do so.

One of my guidebooks has detailed maps and directions to many waterfalls in the western Carolinas, and I know that for me, the majority will be only experienced through the pages of that book and the imaginative forays that accompany my reading and thinking about those falls. that is the way it is.

In that book, one waterfall is singled as as especially worthy of a visit, and here is what the author says, “This beautiful waterfall resides in a dream-like setting and is one that I keep coming back to, time after time. There is so much beauty here that it escapes being captured on one single frame of film or on a single visit. If you miss all the rest of the waterfalls described in this book, please do see this one.” Can you guess where I am going the next time I travel to the mountains of our state?

But if I can’t go, I can in the meantime see the photographs others have taken of these and other spectacular waterfalls all over the world. And the Web site below is a portal, a window into that magical world of wateralls, a passion of so many people, myself among them.

http://www.nanana.com/waterwrldlinls.html

Be sure to visit the page of waterfalls of South Carolina. It is one of my favorites. The URL is:

http://www.people.virginia.edu/~bcb5a/waterfalls.html