A video blog extra

Fall Run Park is not the only beneficiary of the heavy November rainfall. After two days of being holed up in my house doing classwork, I had to get out. I decided to visit Nine Mile Run as I hadn't been there since the summer.  The creek has changed considerably, making her way in a new shape. The serpentine curves wander the banks in unfamiliar configurations. Where I used to easily access the shoreline, I now stumble over uprooted trees, dead branches, and rocky terrain. There seems to be more Cascades along the run, and the creek seems full and happy.  We had a most congenial visit.

The video is a highlight reel of the photographs from todatto hike.

The Stuff of Legend

Little Pine Creek in Fall Run Park is in the most beautiful state of dress that I can recall in my 20 years of visiting with her.  This morning as I prepare for my walk, I listen to the weather report through the wall as my husband watches the news on KDKA in the next room.  November 2018 is one of the rainiest months we've had in Pittsburgh.  

Today as I looked on the main waterfall, I thought of the Greek myth of Artemis and Actaeon.  In the wilderness beneath a waterfall, Artemis was bathing naked with the Oceanids, beings who were charged by Zeus to protect Artemis, his daughter.  Nearby, the mighty hunter Actaeon sought prey with his pack of hunting dogs.  As he traversed the woods, he heard the sound of the waterfall mingling with the dulcet tones of laughter and singing from the virgin goddess and her maidens.  

Lured by the sweet music, he stepped into the creek where they frolicked.  The ripple in the water from his footprint alerted the women that they were no longer alone.  As they stepped from behind the waterfall to see who was there, Actaeon accidentally spied the virgin Artemis in her nakedness.  Enraged, she turned the hunter into a stag who was then hunted down and mauled by his own dogs.

The Big Sister embodies today the full range of her glory, bedecked in the finest of her wardrobe, and enrobed in luminescent swaths of water.  I can almost hear the voices of the Goddess Artemis and her virgin maids laughing behind the cascade's veil.  

I do not blame Actaeon for his misstep or for his accidental viewing of Artemis in her nakedness.  I cannot stay away from here for very long.  I can hardly turn my gaze from the falls nor can I turn a deaf ear to their song.  

New birth

It is mid-November.  In Fall Run Park there are dozens of miniscule waterfalls, most smaller than 2 or 3 feet tall.  In addition to the petite cascades, there are two waterfalls that are the "headliners": one that is roughly 20 feet with a gentle slope; another that dramatically drops almost 50 feet into the valley below it.

This has been a wet autumn with more rainfall than I remember for this time of year since I moved to Pittsburgh in 1998.  The 3 rivers which run through the city, the Monongahela, the Allegheny, and the Ohio, are ripe and swollen, their banks nearly overrun, fuller than I have ever known them to be.  Pine Creek, which runs through Fall Run Park, is no exception.

The path is sodden and the rich creek mud has soaked my shoes and clings to my ankles, staining my blue jeans.  I'm wishing I had stopped by my house to change into my hiking boots or at least had my poles with me.  In just one week, many of the leaves have fallen.  Mixed with the mud and the recent rain, they create a slippery and treacherous footpath.  Several times, I slide and nearly fall.  Somehow I manage to stay on my feet.  

There's been a landslide.  The first of the pedestrian bridges is missing some of its railing.  Two trees are upturned, their roots yanked from the earth.  Branches litter the ground and I step between them.  Someone has started a pile of wood in an effort to clean up.  

To my surprise and delight, the landslide has caused a third large waterfall to emerge, birthed from the heavy rains and misplaced soil and rock.  Her cascade lacks the voluptuous girth of her two older sisters, but she is nonetheless an impressive infant with the potential to be a third headliner.  She is taller than the middle sister.  The big sister is still a head and shoulders above her.

All three of them are in their best finery, bedecked in gowns of foaming white water.  For the first time in two months I have the strength to climb to the largest waterfall.  In a rush of adrenaline surging through me from the lush surroundings, I climb to the top of the waterfall, to the summit where the creek leaps into the valley.  I say out loud to her, you have a new sister.  She answers back that she already knows.

When things are different

After a serious bout with a chronic illness, it is not an easy thing to admit that I am not yet well.  Normally I like to think of my legs as powerful pistons that gobble up hillsides in strong easy strides.  The trail all Fall Run Park is just under 2 miles if you take it all the way to the end and then back again.  When I am in optimal physical condition (for myself that is, as an overweight middle-aged but otherwise fit woman) the walk takes me less than 30 minutes, save for moments of meditation or stopping to take pictures.  

It is a frigid fall day and the cold is clinging to my bones like a coat on a hanger.  Fatigue has settled into my joints and muscles and my breath heaves as I make my way to the top of the first hill.  I hear the smallest of the two larger waterfalls before I see it which brings warmth to my heart.  This particular waterfall has typically slowed to a trickle at this part of the year, if it is flowing at all.  However, it has been an unseasonably rainy autumn.  Many of the leaves are still green and growing, not yet offering a display of rusts and reds.  The water spills down the rock into the creek beneath it.

I've barely walked half a mile but my body says its time to rest.  I sit on a slick mossy boulder near the waterfall I affectionately refer to as "The Little Sister."  She is often overshadowed by the "The Big Sister", a 30 foot fall that runs throughout the year, the fall the creek never abandons even when the rains give way to snow.  

A swell of gratitude overtakes me.  It never occured to me that I would be so weak today, that the larger fall would be out of reach.  The gurgling song of the smaller fall is a gift to me today.  It's as if the creek I love so well knew that I would need her.

An expected swell of emotions overtakes me and I begin to weep in big gulping hiccups which deplete the air in my lungs. The tears chap my face in the  chilled air but I let them come.  I put my head down as my body shakes, take note of the droplets that fall from my eyes onto the muddy soil beneath me.  I'd like to think they will join with the waters of the creek, commingle with the creek water pooling beneath the cascade of Little Sister.

I hear a soft thump and look up to see a starling perched on a branch not more than 6 or 7 feet from my head.  The black bird with a few colored iridescent feathers seems to take in Little Sister alongside me in solidarity.  As I quickly grew tired in this attempt at a hike, I feared it was a mistake to come but I see now this little haven of wilderness is giving me what I need.  This short journey was not what I expected, but it was everything.