Chasing Waterfalls

We went camping last week, threw a tent and two sleeping bags into the back of the truck, and took off. We spent more time tieing the kayaks down than we did packing any personal effects (a couple of changes of clothes and a box of granola bars).

The simplicity resonated with each of us; carried us.

Henry David Thoreau observed in On Walden Pond: "Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand.” Paolo Coehlo, in The Alchemist, noted: “It’s the simple things in life that are the most extraordinary.”

Dani and I went to the woods because we wanted to press pause on everyday life, on the course of our actions and reactions. We wanted to sit with the moment we were in, feel the emotional weight of it like a rock in our hand, and then we wanted to move forward.

When we dropped Joe off at the airport hotel that Sunday night two weeks ago (written about HERE), the three of us collectively decided that we wouldn’t try to go to the airport the next day. It would, we all felt, be impractical because he didn’t know when he would be flying.

We had dinner and went for a walk as a family. We took a family picture. We hugged goodbye. Then Grace got in her car and drove off for Columbus, Frankie crossed the street to her apartment, and Dani and I drove Joe to his hotel.

In the parking lot of a Residence Inn, on a sidestreet brimming with motels catering to the itinerant, with the engulfing roar of flight traffic cascading overhead like waves on a beach - we hugged and held him tight.

Dani and I watched him walk into the hotel lobby towards his briefing, towards his new life. We sat in the parking lot, and then, after an indeterminate amount of time, we drove home in silence.

The next day, we took off for the woods.

Thoreau continued in On Walden Pond: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation.”

To live deliberately. To front only the essential facts of life. To not practice resignation.

We headed for the Finger Lakes, Taughannock Falls (near Ithaca) to be precise. In a divine and ironic wink of cosmic fate, this was almost exactly where we traveled to the summer before we married twenty-two years ago. In that particular escapade, two months before our wedding, two weeks before the start of my new job at a new school and with Dani having just begun a new position a month prior, and as we were in the midst of closing on what would be our first house, we took off to camp and hike on the shores of Cayuga and Seneca Lakes. (We also were nearly murdered on the property of a famous artist. But that’s a different story for another time.)

Perhaps we have an issue with escaping to nature when the “normal” course of life throws a series of fastballs.

But we’re not seeking to permanently escape. We’re not seeking to numb the pain, to diminish or cover over the suffering that is a normal part of all human existence. We go to the woods to press pause, to be present, and then, to focus on the future. We retreat to move forward.

Human history is rich with examples of taking a retreat, the spiritual significance of taking a retreat transcending each of the five major world religions. Jesus went into the desert for forty days. Coaches often retire, and then come back years later, sometimes even with the same team (HERE). Business leaders facilitate corporate retreats to focus organizational efforts on strategic plans (reflected in The Office HERE).

We went to the woods to provide a temporary retreat for ourselves and for each other, away from the world, away from the course of normality, away from the day-to-day trivialities which creep in and overtake and can - if left unchecked - smother our sense of true meaning in life.

On our first day out, we each sat with our individual grief - sadness for the passing of what had been, sadness for not being in control of what was happening, and sadness for not knowing what was happening.

The night before (actually it was at 0435 in the morning), we received the scripted call from Joe (now Recruit Klein) letting us know that he had arrived safely at Parris Island. That particular phone call is truly unique to the experience of sending a child off to boot camp (an example can be heard HERE). We were tired - both from fitfully sleeping and from the emotions of the last few months, weeks, days, and now hours.

Sitting with sadness is only good so long as we stay present, rather than straying toward the past. Ram Dass wrote: “we get so busy mourning what died that we ignore what didn’t.” Seneca wrote: “It’s better to conquer grief than to deceive it.”

Going to the woods afforded us the focused opportunity to sit with our feelings, and then to get up and move on. On that first day, we sat with the pain of the present. We both took stock of it. We felt it, weighed it, and allowed it to sit with us.

And on the second day in the woods, something happened as we awoke. There was no chorus of trumpeting angels, no striking of the clouds as the sun broke radiantly through. There was nothing momentous. Rather, we both simply felt: okay, good, and ready.

Having given ourselves the space, the place, and the grace to feel our pain, we were re-energized to live with intention and purpose.

Viktor Frankl noted in Man’s Search for Meaning - that it was those in the concentration camp who lost sight of the future, of their individual meaning for life, who lost hope. His observations were echoed years later by Admiral James Stockdale in his recollection of his time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Psychologists refer to this balancing between being rationally aware of the present situation while maintaining, even cultivating, hope as the Stockdale Paradox.

Our situation was nothing in comparison to that endured by either Frankl or Stockdale, yet the lessons from their experiences resonate: be present, take stock of where you are, and cultivate meaning for the future.

We hiked on the shore of the lake, watching ducks hurriedly paddle past, fish swim by, and a few power boats and jet skis bounce on the surface. We stared out at the opposite shoreline. We hiked to the base of a waterfall and then watched as millions of gallons of water poured over the wall of sandstone and shale straight down 215 feet to trickle towards the lake (for reference: that’s taller than Niagra Falls).

We each let our thoughts go, to race, to meander, to just simply be.

The next day we went hiking again, up one side of gorges and waterfalls for two to three miles each, and then back on the other rim. We walked on the side of natural pools, listening to the constant pouring of water over the rock. We crossed footbridges and climbed stairs carved into the rock. We listened to the constant drip of water off the face and eaves of the hillside, and felt the breeze in the air.

There was the beauty. There was the constancy of life. There was the meaning.

Hiking beside those waterfalls, through those gorges, we witnessed rock - eons old - worn gently away by the slow, constant, pressure of water and wind. In some odd places were almost perfectly circular holes in the rock of the waterway - formed, assumedly, by where a waterfall previously stood. Over the course of miles, the water moved, at various speeds and volumes and widths and depths, from the apex of mountains and hills to the valley below.

Our meaning is to keep moving forward. Our meaning is to keep bringing water to the basin. Our meaning is to keep the flow of life going.

Marcus Aurelius wrote that we “should fear never beginning to live.” We went to the woods to live.

Our meaning is not found in one particular time, or in one particular place. Our meaning is found in the course of our actions, the course of our being.

In a previous blog post (HERE), I cited lyrics from John Prine’s song Hello in There, about growing lonesome. But Prine first sings in his refrain that: “Old trees just grow stronger, and old rivers grow wilder every day.”

Old rivers do grow wilder every day. We saw that as we hiked along their edge, tracing their descent from the mountains and hilltops to the glacial lakes below. The rivers and streams carved through sandstone, shale, and limestone for over two million years. Their water flows through gorges, over waterfalls, and into the Finger Lakes, eventually flowing either southward toward the Chesepeake Bay or northward to the St. Lawrence Waterway (for more information on the geology HERE).

We will continue to grow wilder with our experiences. Like those rivers and streams we hiked beside, we have intention and purpose. We have hopes and dreams and goals.

Our moments of presence were found in the waterfalls, as the water cascades off the rock ledges. Our practice of virtue was sensed in both the chaos of water plummeting and in the gentle pools. Our desire to serve was felt in the constant movement of the water.

TLC, on their hit album CrazySexyCool (1994), warned: “Don’t go chasing waterfalls, please stick to the rivers and lakes that [we’re] used to.” But that advice is short-sighted, narrow-minded, and overly cautious.

If we don’t go chasing waterfalls, we risk not growing, not developing, not living. If we stick only to the rivers and lakes that we’re used to we become stagnant. We don’t live deliberately.

It’s important to get out from the normal and go to the woods and chase the waterfalls. If only to see what might be. But also to continue the flow of life.

After four days of camping, hiking, kayaking, and just being in nature, we came home. Dani had an art show that weekend. I had work to return to. The grass needed cut. The dogs needed to be walked. Who was running to the grocery store? Don’t forget about the bills.

We went to the woods, not to escape from the normal course of life and its suffering. We went to the woods to connect with life, to experience it, to sit with it, to be. Then - like the water flowing down the streams, over the various rocks and tree limbs - to move forward.

We went to the woods to live deliberately.