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.

Thinking of home

Early in my online Environmental Imagination course, my classmates and I had lively and fun discussions on the what and why of what we call "home".  In my response to this question, I wrote a poem on all of the "why" of home:  the smells of Little Italy, the Ducky Boat tours in the three rivers, my cat curled in my lap, the children who misbehave in my bank lobby when I am at work.  Home is a culmination of these experiences.  Any single instance would not be enough for me to clasp onto, to say, "yes, this is it, this is why this is my home, this is why I will never live anyplace else for as long as I can help it."

I took a road trip this weekend to Philadelphia to attend a symposium on The Future of the Arts.  While it seems most people I know would prefer to fly, I always prefer to drive.  Using the excuse that I don't want to pay tolls, I avoid the parkway, adding an hour and 14 miles to the trip.  I say its to save $60 and that the little extra I spend on gas money more than makes up for it.  In truth, its to embrace the paradise of the rolling Pennsylvania mountains.  My ritual on a road excursion is to make two side trips:  one that is planned, and one that is not.

My planned side trip was to Whipple Dam State Park.  I have a pervasive affinity to wetlands, waterfalls, creeks, lakes, and rivers; in short, anyplace where there's an abundance of water.  I took an hour to walk around the pond and had my camera at the ready to capture the way the sunlight looked on the water's surface, as well as a few other things that caught my eye: a pier, an overturned boat, the shoreline, and the dam. 

The unplanned side trip nearly caused me to get rear-ended by an SUV.  To my left, I noticed a waterfall and a small patch of gravel where people could park to look at it.  I slammed on my brakes to make the sharp left, which was totally worth the indignity of getting the finger and shouted at by the motorist behind me. 

I walked up to two men who were fishing so that I could find out where I was.  A bald man with a bushy brown beard and a red shirt filled with lures told me I was at Greenwood Furnace state park, and that if I followed along the footpath at the wooden fence that dotted the perimeter, I could get pretty close to the waterfall.

As I got closer, I realized it was man-made.  That did not detract from its beauty.  The sound of the water plummeting into the river below it sang to me a melody of water crashing into water which is perhaps the best music I know.  After a few photographs, I went back to my car and continued on my way.

I realized for me that home is also the standard to which you compare everything else.  This was a lovely waterfall, and the stone building across the path from me was delightfully charming.  But this wasn't my waterfall. 

Logically, there are thousands and thousands of waterfalls in the world that are more beautiful, more powerful, more impressive than the little 30 foot Fall Run.  I know that my waterfall slows to a trickle when the season is dry.  I know the path leading up to her is muddy and that outside of the spring and summer, most of the time her surroundings are just brown with yet more mottled brown.  But she is mine, and when too much time has gone without seeing her, I miss her.  I feel it in my bones.  I have to visit.

This little waterfall is family. 

This little waterfall is home.

Exploring the Urban, a photo blog "extra"

I was thinking about the online discussions as I was wandering around the city of Philadelphia this weekend. I haven't had much time to be outside as I am here for a conference but our exchanges in class really opened my mind to the beauty of the urban environment as well as finding patches of nature coexisting quite nicely within the densely populated community. The pictures were too large for Moodle but here they are for your viewing.

Into the void

This is the first time I have ever tried to write about this experience. It may even be the first time I've talked about it at all now that I think of it. I also learned today that this crazy terrifying urge has a couple different names. *The French call it L’Appel du Vide, or "call of the void".  Jennifer Hames, a clinical psychology professor at University of Notre Dame calls it the “High Place Phenomenon.” It's that sudden urge I feel when I'm standing at a great height to jump off the edge.  I'm not a suicidal person.  But suddenly it's there and I want to take flight even though I would surely plummet.

The first time I remember having this feeling was when I was 15 years old at Niagara Falls. The beauty and the power of the water and the dizzying height were overwhelming, which is an overused word to be sure, but the only one I can think of that's apt. I was on a high school trip and I didn't dare tell my teachers or the other students for fear someone would call the looney bin or worse my parents and send me home. But then a young lady I'll call "Julie" who was standing near me whispered in my ear, "doesn't it almost make you want to jump?" I felt a kind of relief. It wasn't just me. She felt it too.

The next time I recall feeling this way was in my early twenties visiting the Grand Canyon on spring break. The colors of the canyon rocks were burnt orange, red, and gold. The sun setting in the distance turned into a spectacular light show, bouncing colors of pink and purple off the canyon walls. My college boyfriend and I stood as close as we dared to the edge to see the fading sunlight splashing off the river below in waves of sparkles that were nearly blinding.  Eventually he crawled to the very edge, laid on his stomach, let his head and arms dangle off the edge so that he could fully take in this dazzling display. He looked over his shoulder at me, inviting me to do the same. I couldn't speak; I shook my head. He turned back, immersed himself in the experience. I stepped back several feet. I was terrified.  In my mind's eye I visualized over and over running into the great expanse of the canyon in a kamikaze cannonball into what would equal certain death, all the while yelling, Yahoo!

The very first time I visited Fall Run Park around 2002, I was delighted to find a 30-foot waterfall so close to downtown Pittsburgh. A series of wooden stairs allowed me to climb all the way to the top of the waterfall, to see the exact point where the water cascaded down into the small valley below.  I remember that it was springtime and the valley was all lush greenness, trees bursting with luxurious leaves.  I wanted to catapult with the stream, full of the riches of spring rain, dance with it off the edge of the rocks. Suddenly I understood what this urge was telling me to do. This wasn't about death, suicide, or sudden mania: this was about wanting to be one with the experience, joining with the Majesty of my surroundings, being a part of it in a way that I couldn't just by seeing it alone. Once I understood, I knew I could trust myself. There was no danger here. I wouldn't get carried away.  I stopped being afraid of heights.

*The information listed in the first paragraph was sourced here: http://m.nautil.us/issue/46/balance/why-you-feel-the-urge-to-jump

The Journey Back to Health

On September 22nd, 2018, I entered Shadyside Hospital knowing from the pain in my right side that something was very wrong with my body. The dull ache had given way to continuous sharp stabbing thrusts that radiated around my back, right shoulder, and up into my jaw.  I remembered times my grandmother used the phrase, "this is not my first dog and pony show." I'm diabetic and a recovered alcoholic, so I knew this was another bout with pancreatitis, but it had never felt this bad. 

My husband says I have a "tough guy complex" and I had driven myself to the emergency room, turned the keys over to the valet, and gingerly made my way to the automatic doors. A spasm erupted, and I felt like a hand grenade had ripped through my organs. Everything went white and I hit the group. The security guard ran over with a wheelchair and helped me into the lobby and the triage nurse took me from there.

The triage nurse called someone over to me.  A young man in scrubs wheeled me to the intake area and took my blood pressure: 190/120. He asked a barrage of questions to which I could not remember the answers. He finally threw out a word to which I could anchor myself: Garth.

"Yes. He's my husband. He's my emergency contact. He doesn't know where I am. Please call him."

"We'll call him. I'm taking you back to a room now. You look terrible."

You look terrible. Those words and the concerned tone in his voice still echo in my conscious mind.  I think now of how I felt in October 2015 when I went to Fall Run Park after the devastating flooding of the September rainstorms from another hurricane that had snaked up the East coast, sending thunderstorms and torrential downpours all the way to Western Pennsylvania. The entrance to the trail was blocked by orange comes. A sign said: DO NOT ENTER! FLOOD DAMAGE!

I needed a waterfall that day and there was no way I wasn't getting one. I stepped over the cones and onto the sodden trail. Mud engulfed my shoe, creating a vacuum. With considerable effort, I wrenched myself free. No matter. I needed to see what I thought of as my waterfall.

I walked along the grassy edges of the path, water filling gaping holes of blown out soil. My pace slowed as I got closer to the first, smaller waterfall, the one that sometimes faded away when there wasn't enough rain. A pedestrian bridge had been torn from its moorings and laid on its side. Two fallen trees blocked me from going further. I could hear the waterfall, but could not get close enough to see it. It was then I noticed the debris: splintered wood from the bridge; branches and scattered in amongst trash from the picnic areas; clots of mud and earth pummeled into rocks, damming the stream. You look terrible.

I'd heard the phrase "it looks like a war zone" before. That was the first moment I'd felt like the tired cliche was apropos.

My body felt like a war zone. Another battle to fight with my chronic illness. This time, I feared I would lose.