December 2021 - A Waterfall Hike

It's been a balmy December.  The warm, damp, mizzle-filled days have felt almost spring-like, and the scent of moss and old logs is at once new and nostalgic.  I'm wandering through the woods today with the people I love best, and finding perfect thoughtful spots around every corner of three winding miles of trails.  The green, almost rainforest atmosphere of these woods is deliciously conducive to thoughtful spots, and every other step there is a log or a stump or a lush moss carpet on a stone, just waiting to be comfortably sat upon as a vantage point from which the deep valley and the creek below us might be enjoyed.

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Along a stream that raced and ran / Through tangled trees and over stones,
That long had heard the pipes o' Pan / And shared the joys that nature owns,
I met a fellow fisherman, / Who greeted me in cheerful tones.

 - Edgar Guest, The Fisherman

We stumbled upon the foundation of an old home beside the trail.  It was settled in a perfect corner between large trees, and just a few steps down the path away from it a bridge led over a small waterfall.  What a pleasant place to live it must have been. The dried flowers of the wild hydrangeas still look as though they're blooming, and the mountain laurel is everywhere.  In the spring this path must be overwhelmed by their pink and white blooms.

An early morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.

 - Henry David Thoreau

These are also the sort of woods which provide fairy-house trees in abundance. Hollowed out trunks with tiny violets sprouting at the base, and little ribbon streams leading to puddle-sized lakes.  And, oh, the mushrooms!  Ruffled white tree ears and tiny toadstools that look as though they've been lifted straight from the illustrations of Beatrix Potter, and dainty umbrellas nestled in the soldier moss.

Fairy places, fairy things,/Fairy woods where the wild bee wings,
Tiny woods below whose boughs/Shady fairies weave a house...

 - Robert Lewis Stevenson, A Child's Garden of Verses

But then, then we clambered through a creek, rounded a corner, passed a tall ledge of sharp layers of slate and bedrock, and arrived at a waterfall of glorious proportions.  No words can do justice to this glassy torrent.  It was magnificent.