Falling Water
In a deep hot canyon, on a bright summers day, I walked along a stream. The sides were very steep, and speckled with small brush. The floor of the canyon was a gravel texture, dotted with large shrubs five feet high and eight feet round. Smaller shrubs filled in the spaces between. The water of the stream was cold, running lazily down over pebbles and rocks and only about six inches deep.
I'd been walking down this particular canyon for a while now, resting every few hours to drink of the cool water and quench my parched throat. My feet ached, and my stride had lost much of its earlier grace.
Still I walked, it wasn't the sort of place I could just stop and say, 'Well, this seems good enough.' After all, there isn't much to do at the bottom of a steep walled canyon, not much to eat, and while the water was nice, especially during the hot afternoon, it was still just an empty canyon, devoid of other people.
I'd seen some lizards, one scorpion, and even a fish or two in the shallow stream. Nothing big enough to eat attracted my attention though. So I walked. I had forgotten how or why I started out down this trail, but I knew it must have seemed like the right move at the time. The hints of red in the rock of the canyon walls and floor certainly gave it a beautiful appearance.
The canyon extended an interminable distance ahead of me, and though I had no idea how far I had actually come, I was still pretty sure it was easier at this point to go forward to its end than all the way back. The walls looked as such that if I didn't mind a scuffed knee and a rather monumental effort I might crawl out, but it wasn't appealing given my state of exhaustion. So I walked.
Shorts, shirt, hiking boots, and my sunglasses had been put on in absent minded routine before this journey started. When was that? I started to think about waking up this morning, finding myself in the canyon and starting to walk again. I collected my thoughts and focused on yesterday morning. Images of a slab of rock in the middle of the stream filtered into my consciousness. With unsatisfied recollection I looked at my hiking boot, now clearly dry and functional. But yesterday morning before orienting myself I had gotten off that rock and put it right into the water. Two mornings ago, when was that? This memory seemed fuzzy and uncertain, so I decided that must have been the wake up, put on the shorts, shirt, and boots and come walking in the canyon morning.
This train of thought did not seem to reassure my stomach, which actually was not as urgent as it had been yesterday. I guess it was finally accepting fate to some degree. Since I left that morning two days ago, I had a sandwich, a lemonade, and two white chocolate chip macadamia nut cookies. Ah, now it was clear. I had stopped for lunch and brought it with me. I had gone to the park and eaten it, then come wandering back into the woods. I had found this stream and started following it into this canyon.
It had something beckoning about it. More than clear water that I could drink in and feel replenished by; it was a sense of direction. At the end of the stream I would find something worthwhile. At the end of the canyon would be a sight of true beauty, like a waterfall with butterflies, moss on wet slippery rocks, little flowers, and a misty rainbow. There was some sort of utopia crammed into the corner of a state park, undisturbed by tourists and rangers.
Bear in mind now that I wasn't actually aware where the canyon went. I didn't have a little map of the park saying 'Here lies a waterfall the likes of which ye've never seen, yar.' I didn't have a crystal gazing gypsy mystic or native shaman tell me to find my spirit guide or my power animal or my soul mate. I had one of those dumb mental pictures that seems unspecific at first, but is actually rather definite and uncompromising.
For example, when I had come across a waterfall three hours into my hike, I had for a moment thought I had arrived at my destination. But it wasn't a narrow column of water arching from a point up fifteen feet. It was a wide babbling thing, almost a rapid, with no moss and flowers and certainly no rainbow. I had climbed over the boulders that lined the stream there and seen it continue back into more canyon. Then had I declared that back there I would find something far grander than this.
Then yesterday when I came to the barbed wire fence, rusted and draping across the stream, I thought I should turn back, but I hadn't even really paused. I just stepped over it, noting that I could see evidence of it up at the top of the canyon too, running perpendicular to the stream and the canyon and my destination.
With a certain degree of alarm I now wondered for the first time where this canyon went, and for how far. Thoughts that should have dawned on me two days ago sort of worked their way into my head. Thoughts like, 'your car is in the parking lot near the picnic area of the park. Not only is that no where near where you likely are, meaning chances are not in favor of you not having to walk back all the distance you've traveled, there is no guarantee they wouldn't tow it away.'
But there was a problem with these thoughts. They had to contend with the fact that the canyon was far from perfectly straight. This meant that I couldn't see a great deal ahead of me. I couldn't see if around that next bend was my waterfall. Part of me knew it wasn't. Part of me knew that the type of rock I had seen was unchanging since I started, and showed no indication of changing soon. That meant that it would have worn over time uniformly. That meant that until the stream got so small that the canyon withered out it would look like it had looked since I started. There wasn't a little vein of rock that just wouldn't wear down all those thousands of years ago. There wasn't a spot where it decided that it would not wear evenly, leave a spectacular waterfall, and then continue to be level for miles. That happened with granite and limestone, not with sandstone.
I paused. For the first time in days I paused not because I wanted to take a break, but because reason was starting to infiltrate my brain. While I didn't turn back, I didn't go any farther. I sat down on a rock. I watched the babbling waters and the glinting stones beneath it's rippled surface. I took off my sunglasses, absently folding them and putting them on the collar of my shirt.
I pushed my closed eyes with my fingertips, struggling for a decision that would make my next move one of alacrity. I reached to the water and touched it, feeling the coldness numb my fingers and senses. What was the point in going farther, when it took me so far from what I knew? Why should I chase a dream when I don't even know I can find it? What the hell was I doing here, and what did I hope to find? Even if my wonderful waterfall existed out here in an improbable place, what would I do when I found it? I didn't even have my camera with me!
I stood up, I turned and faced back down the way I had come. With resignation I took a step, and then another. It wasn't there. I wasn't going to find it. There was no point. I hopped to the other side of the stream, as I had many times on the way here. While I can't explain it, being on the other side allowed me to hear it. It was almost imperceptible, almost absent. But it was there. I stopped again and turned. I could hear it now; it was unmistakable: the sound of falling water. With a laugh and a renewed hope, I faced the sound, faced the unknowns of the canyon ahead, and I started to walk again.