The Waterfall- A Short Story

June 1992

“Wow, dad, this is great!”

I smiled, then walked over and sat beside Joshua on the wall that kept visitors safely away from the cliff’s edge. I was a delivery driver at the time and there was a package that had to be at a hospital in the mountains, so I took that run. It was the first real excitement Josh had shown all day; the long drive to the mountains had bored him. Unchanging panoramas of tobacco and cornfields, pastures with cows, sheep, horses in the rolling red clay hills of the Piedmont … To me it was idyllic countryside, but for Josh, nothing he did not see all the time around his grandparent’s farm.

After making the delivery, we had taken whatever back roads Josh chose at random; some of the roads were dead ends where we would turn around. But generally, we climbed ever higher into the hills and onto the western slope of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Now we had stopped at an overlook where a low stone wall bordered a small, graveled lot. Josh took a cold drink from the cooler and immediately started exploring the parking area. He sat on the wall, looking at the valley below. He was right; the view was spectacular. The valley spread out below us, and a small river ran through a town in the bottomland. Around the town, a patchwork of crop fields, grape and apple orchards climbed the hillsides. There was even a little white clapboard church with a steeple: a classic calendar view.

“It is great, isn’t it? You can see for miles from up here.” I pointed at the ridge opposite us. “And look over there, across the valley. You see where that mountain ridge drops off really sharp on one side and those long slopes back up the next mountain?”

“I think so. What is it?”

“That’s a pass. It’s where the early settlers first moved west when they left this valley. On the other side is Tennessee, then, way after that is the Mississippi River.”

“Oh,” he replied. “What’s a pass?”

“A pass?” I thought for a moment. “Well, if you were in this valley and wanted to get out, what would you do?”

Josh shrugged his shoulders and replied, “I guess I’d go back the same way I came in.”

“You could do that, but what if you didn’t want to go back to where you started? Or you couldn’t go back that way? Then what would you do?”

“You’d go across those mountains,” he said and pointed at the ridge on the other side of the valley.

“You would if that’s where you wanted to go. But if you were one of the pioneers, you’d have animals and probably a wagonload of supplies to pull and you might not be able to get the wagon over those mountains. So, then what?”

He thought about it for a few moments. “You’d go between the mountains,” and he swung his hands together in a ‘V’ shape. “Right through the middle of two mountains.”

“That’s right. That’s what a “pass” is, a break in a ridge where you can go between two mountains.”

“Oh, good guess dad,” and he rolled his eyes at me. “I can read, you know. That sign,” and he pointed at a Historical Marker, “says it’s Culver’s Pass, and it was named for the man who first explored it and marked a path through. Then the trail was cut wider through the woods so settlers could make it through. I just didn’t know what ‘pass’ meant.”

I had not bothered to look at the Historic Marker; they are ubiquitous in Virginia, and I had stopped reading them years before. But not Josh; everything was still new to him. He read all that he could about pioneers and settlers, Indians, and the gold rushes. While his friends watched cartoons, Joshua read books or watched the History Channel.

“But why’s it called a pass instead of a path or a road?”

I shrugged. “Because without a pass, you couldn’t build a road through the mountains, and you’d have to go over them to leave the valley.” I thought about it for a moment, lost in memory. “I guess a pass is sort of a shortcut, a way out.”

“Oh. Okay.” He looked out over the valley below. “But why would anybody want to leave this valley? It’s nice here.”

“Oh, I don’t really know,” I said. “There’re probably a lot of reasons someone would want to leave a nice place. Maybe they couldn’t grow enough food here, or the winters were too cold. And some probably didn’t like all the towns being built in the valley, so they went deeper into the wilderness.” I looked at the white, clapboard church the town below us, then to the hills that faded blue in the distance.

“And I guess some people just didn’t have a choice.”

I stood, walked to the car, and opened the map. I located Culver’s Pass, and then the overlook where we sat. It seemed that from here the shortest way home was to follow this road another forty miles or so, to Monterey, and from there take Rt. 250 east where it snaked back through the Blue Ridge.

The only other route back was the way we came and that would add another hundred miles to the drive home. A hundred boring miles Josh had already seen. Either way, we probably would not get home before dark, so I put the map away and called Josh to the car.

“Looks like we’ll have to do those pioneers did,” I told him. “Leave this valley a different way than we came in…” I started the car and we drove on towards the town of Monterey in Highland County. At least Josh just might enjoy the trip home.

How, I wondered, had our choosing roads at random left us with no way home except through Highland County? When Josh and I left that morning, it had crossed my mind as a destination, but I had rejected it immediately. Yet every random turn we had chosen, every route we followed, had boxed us in and now the only reasonable way home would carry us through the heart of the county. I had been to Highland County once before; Matt and I had taken a camping trip there one summer, but I did not know if I was ready to go back.

June 1987

Matt had not wanted to go, but I did not want to go alone so he had agreed to make the trip with me. I had grown up with family camping trips in the mountains, but Matt had not and sleeping in a tent was not his idea of a vacation, even for just a weekend. But I could not afford the Highland Inn, so it was settled: we would camp at least one night in the New River State Park, not far from Monterey.

We had left home immediately after work that Friday and did not find the campground until well after sunset. The last turn took us through dense woods on a narrow, unpaved road. On the right was a steep drop to a river below with a mountain ridge black against the sky on the other side. To our left rose an equally steep wooded mountainside. The headlights cut a tunnel through the black and reminded me how dark it could be in narrow mountain valleys.

The campground, like the road, was not lit and it took a few minutes to find a lot not already occupied. The mountain ridges there receded on both sides and opened onto a large clearing between the river and the mountain behind us. On the other side, a steep ridge rose dark against the sky. With no moon, it was dark enough that I could point out the Milky Way to Matt. Like a drift of white smoke, it meandered through stars more numerous and brighter than ever seen near a city. It was easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer number of stars; Matt said he had never seen so many in the sky, but I had. Growing up on a farm, I would go outside on clear nights, especially in the winter, walk into the field past the sycamores that towered over the farmhouse, look up and trace the winding path of the Milky Way, pick out the constellations and spot the occasional meteor. That kind of night sky was what I missed the most when I moved to the city for work, for only in true darkness can all the stars be seen. In cities, darkness is shunned, overwhelmed by all sorts of artificial lights, pushed to the fringe. A city filled with artificial lighting is almost the antithesis of true light. Men ignore the fact that without the dark there can be no light.

By the time we found an unused lot we were exhausted, so we set up the tent by flashlight and turned in for the night. But we could not sleep; all night we heard voices outside, some whispered, others not, and people walked by, flashlights visible through the tent walls. Matt started to hum the tune from Deliverance, but I told him to be quiet; I did not think that was funny. I did not recall State Park campgrounds being so busy when I was young, but it had been years since I had been camping, and things change… I began to wonder if I had made a mistake in bringing Matt here for his first experience with camping.

We woke when the sun finally cleared the ridge behind the campground and immediately realized why there was so much activity late the night before: we had pitched our tent right next to the path to the campground’s outhouse. I decided then that I would never again set up camp in the dark.

As we followed the unpaved road out of the campground, I noticed that a lot of the small rocks had fallen from the ridge on the side of the graveled road, so I picked up a few for my son’s collection. I was surprised that many of them had fossil imprints of seashells. Exiting the campground road, we decided that rather than going back the way we had come in we would take a different direction, maybe see something new. We turned left onto the paved road and crossed an iron girder bridge that had its own Historic Marker and then followed the road as it wound along the hillsides. Below us was a valley of pastures where cattle and sheep grazed, and an ever-widening creek twisted through the bottom that the map said was the Cowpasture River. I had been told by a caving buddy that there were “wild” caves in the area that are not hard to find, and we soon saw several on the mountainsides.

From a distance, they were just dark gaps in the foliage high on the mountainsides. I wanted to see one up close but not necessarily explore it; that is better left to spelunkers. When I saw what appeared to be three possible cave entrances clustered on a mountainside, I drove towards them. At the base of the mountain where I thought I had spotted the caves, I pulled off the road, parked behind a car that was already there. Two young people emerged from the woods, climbed down the rocks at the edge of the road, and then drove away. After they were out of sight, I convinced Matt to climb the hill with me and see what might be up there.

It was not too difficult to reach the top of the boulders by the road and at the top, an unmarked path wound its way through the woods and up the mountainside. It was clear that many had traveled this path before. Most of the way was an easy climb, but near the top of the hill, it came to an abrupt stop at a granite outcropping, the cave entrance at the top tantalizingly out of reach. Matt hesitated. “Luke, we can’t climb that.”

“Sure we can,” I told him. “There’s a ledge about eight feet up. And it must be used, or the path wouldn’t end here.”

I squeezed between a dead tree and the lowest boulder and then managed to reach the rock ledge and stand up. The space was not wide and narrowed where it rounded a large boulder below the cave entrance. Moss grew in shaded areas at the base of the granite outcropping and the exposed stone was mottled with black lichens. With my back against the cliff face, I moved a few steps to the left, onto narrower footing.

“Okay Matt, just come up the same way I did; it’s not too hard.”

That was not entirely true of course, but I had not gotten that close to just turn back. Matt made it to the flat area where I had first stood, then followed slowly as I edged sideways along the ledge. It swung out where the rock jutted from the cliff face and the footing grew straight and narrow. We carefully circled the rock outcrop, and the ledge widened again, became a path between stone cliffs that framed the cave entrance. We made that last short climb, stopped at the dark opening, and then sat on a boulder shaded by a stone overhang. From that vantage point, we could see over the trees to the ridge across the valley and look back on the way we had come. A few large birds circled high above, dark against the sky. Matt thought they might be eagles, but I knew they were turkey buzzards; I had seen enough of them when I had grown up on the farm. They were magnificent, though, as they skillfully navigated the thermals, almost floating in the air between the mountain we were on and the ridge opposite.

The cave mouth was tall enough to enter upright, but, about ten feet in, we had to crouch over. The floor was littered with small broken stalactites, loose rock, dirt, and a little mud. Of course, Matt would not go any further than the reach of light that flooded the mouth of the cave, so he waited while I crouched lower to get deeper into the cave. I picked up a few of the stalactites as souvenirs.

“Is that allowed?” Matt asked.

“Well, if they’re still living, or even attached, then it’s definitely illegal. But these are just broken pieces. They’ve been on the ground a long time, so it’s more like fossil collecting… I think.”

After a few minutes, we left the cave and made our way back down the hillside to where the car was parked, then spent the afternoon exploring side roads up into the hills that surrounded the valley. Highland County, often called “Virginia’s Little Switzerland”, is a place of steep ridges and high, quiet valleys. Matt had lived in Germany for a few years and said it reminded him of the mountains where his mother had been born.

Matt refused to spend another night in the tent so, we found a little roadside motel that looked as though it had not seen a renovation since the 1950s and took a room there for the night. Sunday morning, we loaded the car and left the area, hoping to find a scenic route home. We chose a road at random, followed the Cowpasture River through another valley for several miles, then the road turned up into the hills. Matt sat in the passenger seat and directed us to scenic overlooks, marked or not. Late in the afternoon, he caught a glimpse of something through the trees and turned in his seat to look back.

“Turn around,” he said.

“Why, what is it?”

“Just turn the car around, okay?”

I found a place to safely turn back and pulled onto the dirt road Matt pointed out. He climbed from the car and walked to the edge of a cliff, then motioned for me to follow. No sign marked the short road, nor was there any sort of wall to keep people away from the edge; that place was not meant to be open to the public.

We looked out over a deep ravine, rock-strewn and brush-covered on this side, a nearly sheer cliff on the other. From that side a stream flowed from the dense shadow of forest. It cascaded a few feet at the top of the cliff, then sprang free from the earth, fractured in the sunlight, and crashed to the rocks below.

I was speechless at such a magnificent sight. I had never seen a “wild” waterfall and that one was impressive. To get closer, I worked my way down the brush-covered slope, trying to keep from slipping as small rocks slid and tumbled ahead of me. Matt hesitated a moment, then followed. The rocks and boulders at the bottom were mossy and slick, the footing dangerous. There was a shallow natural grotto behind the base of the falls, so we worked our way around to it. We went into the damp, dark area behind the falling water and stood beneath strangely amorphous rock formations created by years of water splashing and dripping over the native stone. The wind-driven spray was cool on my face, and muted sunlight filtered through the falling water. That spot was magical and made the whole trip worthwhile.

After a few minutes, we went back out into the warm sunshine and carefully worked our way downstream far enough to see the waterfall in its entirety. I looked at Matt; he stood smiling, staring up at the cascading water.

“Thanks for making me turn around.”

“Well, I just got a glimpse of it through the trees,” he said, “and I wanted to see it up close. This is great, bud! It’s really something.”

“Worth sleeping in a tent?”

“Well, I guess so,” and he laughed. “But not a second time.”

§

June 1992

The road carried Joshua and me high into the mountains, the turns becoming tighter as we climbed. Joshua found it exciting and a little frightening too, like a ride at the fair. The road swung in close to the mountainside, then out again where it swept the edge of emptiness.

Forced to concentrate on the road, I did not notice, at first, that a car had come up behind us. A small car, driven by a man who could not be past his early twenties, drove close behind, too close for my comfort. I assumed he lived in the area and knew every curve in the road, but I did not, and would not drive any faster. On a highway, I would have moved aside and let him pass, but here there was nowhere to go, not even a shoulder wide enough to pull onto.

§

October 1989

I brought two cups of vegetable soup, plus a sandwich for me, and met Matt at a park near where he worked. I thought the weather might be too cool for him, but he did not want to eat in a restaurant, so we found a picnic table and ate our lunch. The air was crisp, the sun warm, and I had to admit the weather was beautiful.

I ate slowly, so as not to get too far ahead of Matt. Even with his heavy coat on, it was clear that he had lost weight, and I felt it a small triumph when he finished his soup.

He had a little time left in his lunch-hour, so we sat in my car, where it was warmer, and looked out at the park. A group of children from a school beside the park passed by, collecting colorful autumn leaves in brown paper bags. Some of the children, especially the boys, seemed more interested in climbing in the trees than collecting leaves, and Matt smiled at that.

We watched in silence as the children and their teacher headed back toward the school, then Matt turned to me. “I gave my notice; this will be my last week at work,” he said, then turned back to face the path the children had taken.

I said nothing but followed his lead and stared out at the trees. I knew then why he had wanted to meet me for lunch. I had tried all summer to convince him to give up his job, but he had always refused. He said it would take months to get approved for disability, and he did not want to burden his family.

After a few moments, he spoke again. “Do you think I’m doing the right thing?” Even after all Matt had suffered, he still needed confirmation that it was okay to put his own needs first.

“You know how I feel about it. You need rest; you need to take care of yourself.” I paused until he turned to face me. “Your family won’t mind,” I told him. “They want to help. And your mother wants you at home, Matt. She wants to spend time with you.”

I looked away, afraid to say anything more; we both knew what was unsaid. Matt relaxed back against his seat. We sat in silence, watched dead leaves fall from the trees and drift slowly to the ground.

“I feel a little worse every day,” he said, and he glanced at me. He knew I was listening. “I can hardly eat anything now,” he went on, “and I feel sick, really sick, when I try. Sometimes, when I stand, I get so lightheaded I have to hold onto something to keep from falling. And the fevers get higher every night.”

I looked at his face, so pale, his forehead shining with moisture, and resorted to my usual response, the one that, sometimes, gave him hope. “What did the doctor say?”

Matt shrugged. “She doesn’t know, yet. She’s still running tests, but with so many things to test for, it might take a while.” He paused, wiped his forehead with a tissue. “I see her again Thursday. If she hasn’t identified the infection by then, she wants to do another spinal.” He turned to me; eyes wet with memory. “I don’t know if I can take another one.”

§

I remembered his first spinal tap, the previous winter, the night I had taken him to the emergency room. I had visited him that afternoon and he did not look well; said he had been running a fever of about 103 F. all day. I asked him if he had called his doctor or anyone at all, but he had not. So, I called the emergency room, described Matt’s symptoms to a nurse. She insisted he see a doctor immediately, that his fever could turn worse fast. Since Matt would not let an ambulance be sent, I drove him to the emergency room.

I got him registered and then held the clipboard for him to sign. They took him into triage within just a few minutes, and about ten minutes later someone came out to tell me a room was being found for Matt. Since I was not family, they could not tell me anything else but would let me see him.

The treatment area was divided into cubicles by movable curtains, a wheeled cot in each section. Many of the curtains were partway open and the patients could be seen; some slept, some quietly cried, some maintained a stoic, uncomplaining silence. There were IVs and lines and sensors everywhere. The steady sounds of the monitors helped mask some, but not all, of the moaning.

Matt lay on his side on the cot, a white sheet pulled halfway over him. He seemed even paler and shivered a little. I leaned in close, took his hand (it was so cold) and gave him a little smile.

I did not really know what to say, so I asked, “Have you seen a doctor, yet?”

“Once,” he said, “for a few minutes. He ordered some tests, then said he’d be back when he had the results.

“My temperature when you brought me in was 105.3. When it hit 105.5, they put ice on me,” he said. “But the nurse said that it’s come down some.”

“They packed you in ice?”

“Well, ice packs, actually,” and he kind of smiled and lifted the sheet to show me. They were under each arm, on each side, and between his thighs. “Like the freezer packs you use in your cooler, but bigger.

“And colder.”

He looked up and smiled weakly. “Even as hot as I am, this ice is still cold,” he said, and he gave me a sad, feeble smile. I was stunned; I could not believe his temperature had spiked so fast.

“They said I probably wouldn’t have made it through the night if I’d stayed at home.”

“I guess with a temperature like that, nobody would,” I replied.

“They put ice packs between my legs, under my arms, and one on each side.” I did not tell him that he had already shown them to me. He shivered again and I pulled the sheet up over him.

“They don’t know what to treat me for because they don’t know what the infection is,” he said. “The doctor who saw me said he might have to order a spinal in the morning.” We had both heard of a spinal tap, and about the pain.

“Well, try not to worry about it too much. Maybe he won’t have to do it.” I knew that sounded lame; after all, it was not me lying there on the cot.

A nurse came in and checked Matt’s temperature. “It’s headed up again,” she said. “We’ll have to pack on more ice; let me get some help.”

“I need to get out of the way, Matt. I’ll call your mother; let her know they’re keeping you overnight.” Matt quickly looked up at me; I knew he would not want to worry her any more than necessary. “They’re keeping you overnight for observation,” I said, “that’s all I’ll tell her." I shrugged. “I really don’t know anything else to tell her, anyway.” Satisfied, Matt relaxed.

“I’ll just make the call, then come back here and wait until you get a room. Then I can give your mother your room number. You know your brother will come as soon as he gets off work tonight.”

“That might be midnight; you should go home. You don’t have to stay here.”

“I’m not going anywhere, Matt. I’m going to make a few phone calls while the nurses are in here with you. Then I’m coming back as soon as they’re done.”

The phone in the waiting room smelled of disinfectant. When Matt’s mother answered on the first ring, I realized she had been waiting by the phone.

“Maria, it’s me,” I said. “I would’ve called sooner, but I’ve been in the back with Matt.”

“How is he?”

“He’s okay,” I said, but I think she knew I was not telling her everything. “They’re going to keep him overnight, for observation. He’s seen a doctor and they should have some test results soon. I’m going to stay with him until he gets a room, then I’ll call you with the number.

“It might be late,” I told her. “Is that okay?”

“The time doesn’t matter, just call me. Did the doctors say anything? About what’s wrong with him?”

“No,” I said. “Nothing. They might not get some of the lab work back until morning. Maybe they’ll know something then. But they won’t tell me very much, anyway. I'm not family. When Johny gets here tonight, he can find out more.

“But they’re taking good care of him. His fever is stable, and he seems to feel a little better.” Matt would not want me to tell her just how bad it had gotten. He would tell her himself if he wanted.

It was almost midnight when they wheeled him to a room to the Infectious Disease ward. On the room’s door was a “blood and body fluids hazard” sign. The door closed tightly, and a second door formed a little antechamber leading into his room. In the airlock-like space, a sign warned that a mask must be worn by anyone entering the room and there was a box of them on a small table. There was also a biohazard bin to hold the used masks. The actual room was small. I could hear the air circulation units in the walls and ceiling. Those rooms were completely sealed off from the rest of the hospital.

Matt winced in pain, even moaned a little as they moved him from the gurney to the bed. After his IV and monitor were set up, a nurse stayed and checked his temperature, then left the room. I called Matt’s mother and gave her the room number and phone number, then sat on the edge of the bed.

“How are you feeling?” I asked as I took his hand. So cold. “Or is that a really stupid question?”

Matt smiled a little. “Better than I did.” He laid his head back then, said he was going to try to sleep, or at least rest for a while. He was asleep after just a few minutes. I stayed until his brother arrived; they would let him stay if he wanted but it was time for me to leave.

When I returned the next morning, Matt’s breakfast tray had been left at his door. It was hard to believe, but some of the hospital staff refused to go into rooms marked like Matt’s. I took his breakfast tray to him, but he had gotten a spinal tap and did not feel like eating, anyway, so I put it back into the hallway. Matt lay on his side, bent a little in the middle, clearly in pain. I got him a cup of cold water, then told him I would leave so that he could rest and would come back at lunch.

Later that day, he said that the spinal really was not so bad, not as painful as everyone claimed. But a few weeks later, he told me about the almost unbearable pain, the headache that had lasted for days, the hours of crying whenever he was alone. He had simply never wanted his family, or me, to know just how hard it had been.

§

“Don’t worry,” I said. “The doctor will find out what it is and then she can treat it. She is the best in her field, you know.”

“You’re right,” he said. “I’m lucky to have her.”

He looked towards the break in the woods at the path the children had followed, and we watched the dead leaves falling. “I want to go to the waterfall,” he said.

“What?”

“The waterfall. I want to go to that waterfall we found,” he said, then turned his head toward me and smirk. “When you made me sleep in a tent!

“While there’s still time.”

“If that’s what you want, we’ll go. We can find it again,” I said, even though I doubted I really could. “And I promise I won’t ask you to sleep in a tent this time.”

He laughed “I couldn’t do that now even if I wanted to. Too many rocks.”

“We’ll pack your medicines and take the cooler for the one that has to stay cold. That’s no problem. When do you want to go? I can get off work anytime you want.”

“In the spring, when it’s warm again. Or at least by early summer. I don’t want to put it off too long.”

“Then we’ll do it.”

We never made that last trip, though. Matt was scheduled to get that second spinal tap, but by then he was too weak, and it was too late to do anything. His parents had a hospital bed and IV stand setup in the den on the first floor. His bedroom was upstairs, but he'd never go up there again. I was there every evening after work. His mother would me a cup of tea and then sit with us and watch television. She especially liked a program that I watched with Matt each Thursday, Twin Peaks. It was a strange show, set in a mountain lodge, and it had a cast of characters that included a little dancing man, visits by aliens, and, sometimes, gods. It was a story of magic, and imagination. And we needed some magic in our lives just then. But his health declined fast. He lived four months after leaving the hospital. His health declined fast. He was suffering. Eventually, even the morphine drip could not dull the pain. He was screaming near the end.

ῼ

The car was still behind us and clearly wanted to get by us. He must have had someplace he really needed to get to in a hurry. We went on that way for several minutes, the sedan sometimes just a few feet behind, flashing his headlights. Finally, I saw a parking area on the downhill side of the road and put on the turn signal. I slowed and watched the other driver to be sure he knew what I intended, then I pulled across the road into a gravel lane.

The other driver laid on his horn as he passed. As he drove by, I saw the bumper sticker pasted to the rear of his car, “Help Stop AIDS, Kill A Fag” and I was stunned. Then the anger grew within me; how could anyone be so callous as to even believe such a thing, let alone paste it to the rear of his car? I reached for the ignition and turned off the engine, then slumped back into the seat. How could people believe that? It is not that way; it just is not that way at all.

The sedan disappeared around a curve in the road, and I rested my forehead on the steering wheel. After a few minutes I realized that rather than being angry with that driver, I should feel sorry for him, for his ignorance. But, at that moment, I only felt anger.

“I saw that car, dad,” Josh said. “Don’t worry about people like that; they don’t know anything.” Only ten years old, and Joshua was wiser than me. He left the car then and followed the graveled road into the woods. Like a true pioneer, always exploring.

“Look, dad,” Josh called back, “down here! There’s an overlook.”

I got out of the car and walked down the gravel road to him. A low stone wall bordered a small, graveled lot, to keep people well back from the edge. But unlike the other overlooks we had stopped at, there was no sweeping vista of mountain and valley. Instead, it overlooked a narrow ravine with a steep, brush-covered slope to the stream at the bottom, a sheer cliff on the other side. And from the top of that cliff, out of the shadowed woods, a stream flowed, cascaded over the edge, and sprang free of the earth.

The waterfall.

The same one Matt and I had discovered by accident years before. Now Joshua and I had, somehow, found it again. By accident, it seemed. There was now an information sign: “Falling Spring”. The timber company that owned the property had opened the view to the public. Josh, of course, stood on top of the wall and stared at the water cascading from the dense forest into the late afternoon sun.

“Josh, this is the waterfall I told you about, the one Matt and I found. It’s really something, isn’t it?”

Josh just stood on the wall, looking at the water flowing from the shadowed forest on top of the cliff. “You said you climbed to the bottom. Can we do that, too?”

“I did, but I don’t think you can get to the bottom anymore,” and I pointed towards the woods, “they’ve put up a fence in the place where Matt and I went down.”

“That’s okay dad,” he said. “This is great.”

“Worth the long trip?”

He smiled. “Definitely.” Then he jumped to the ground and picked up a rock, quartz, walnut-sized and good for throwing. I thought he wanted it for his collection.

“This is for you, Matt,” he shouted, as though Matt might somehow hear him. Then he threw the quartz across the ravine; it arced high into the air, dark against the sky, fractured the sunlight, then fell like water into the falls and crashed on the rocks below.

***

This story was originally posted on Medium.

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