Wonder and Waterfalls

~Ned Allyn Parker is a guest blogger for Wilderness Journeys

“I can’t tell what you’re thinking right now.” This is a comment I have received time and again from friends and colleagues.

“I can’t tell what you’re thinking right now.”

I have been described as “stoic,” “stony-faced,” and “hard to read.” Once, one of my office mates introduced me as: “Ned, my poker-faced friend.”

I score well into the “Introverted” side of  Myers-Briggs personality typing. I think this, combined with personal trauma, means that I process a lot on the inside. I don’t wear my heart on my sleeve. In fact, in years past, I didn’t tend to cry when I was sad. Instead, I cried when I was happy because the feeling of happiness seemed so strange to me that I didn’t know how to process it. Tears formed as my body tried to figure out how to emote joy.

What does any of this have to do with wilderness journeys?

At a particularly difficult time of transition in my life, I was finishing a year living in Eugene, OR. I moved to Eugene immediately after graduating from college to spend time outdoors “finding myself” and, perhaps, finding God. Eugene was a short drive from exceptional areas to kayak, rock climb, mountain bike, and hike. I learned a lot in that year, spending every free moment in the wilderness.

A few weeks before leaving Eugene to return to New England, I packed my truck and drove to Silver Falls State Park, which boasts a “Trail of Ten Falls” – a 7.2-mile loop that weaves around, in front of, and even behind pristine cascades of water.

I arrived at the park late in the evening and set up camp, mapping out the hike for the following day with the help of my headlamp and a broken #2 pencil I found among the char of the fire pit on my site.

The following morning, I was awakened by warbling birds – like a chitter-chatter of gossip learned from the night before.

I boiled water for coffee, filled my thermos, donned my Camel Back, and set off to see the ten waterfalls with the birds still gossiping behind and above me.

The first waterfall was fine. The second was also fine – slightly more impressive but rated a “mediocre” in my filed-away subconscious expectations.

At some point I heard the third before I saw it. Then I felt the cool mist on my face blasting up from it, like dew-dipped angel wings, but it was still hidden by thick vegetation.

Finally, I rounded a bend, where fiddlehead ferns acted as green guides pointing me forward.

And then?

Then I began to laugh. It was a laugh of elation and wonder. It wasn’t just the waterfall; it was the hundreds – hundreds – of rainbow halos dancing in the forested depression.

All alone, standing on a well-packed trail, where thousands of feet had trod before, I laughed with a joy I had never experienced – I laughed with the sheer joy of being alive and seeing, hearing, touching, and tasting the natural force of this magnificent place.

It was holy ground – a moment set apart, when I realized that life could and, indeed, should be good.

Alone in the wilderness, I remembered what it was like to wonder, my heart cracked open, and I allowed myself to laugh with abandon. That laughter was the purest hymn I have ever sung. A hymn to God of wonder and waterfalls.