My husband was raised in the desert. This is brought home to me when he tells me that he has never seen a waterfall. From nearly-falling-into-Niagara-Falls at 4 or 5 to trickling-streams-making-their-way-down-the-hillside in the Olympics, I am accustomed to seeing them. When he shared this little revelation a few weeks ago, I thought “I will have to take him to Snoqualmie Falls. I have never been there myself, so it’s probably time to visit….
I woke up this morning thinking about all the things I needed to do today. I do that a lot… This time, though, I looked out the window, and realized it was going to be a beautiful sunny day in Western Washington – the sort we ought to take advantage of, really. And no matter how much I get done today, there will be more on my list tomorrow – so opted instead to spend the time with m’love.
We had a beautiful, uneventful trip – no surprises or emergencies A calm, sunny ride on the Sealth from Bremerton to Seattle, a short drive up to the park – and a lovely walk along the trails from the top of the falls to the bottom. I didn’t realize that PSE owns that land – it isn’t a public park but a corporate-owned one. They have done a lovely job with it, and many people had the same idea – it was crowded.
From above, the falls are… pretty. They don’t look that tall, or impressive, really. From the bottom – I am always more impressed by falls from the bottom. You can hear the rush of water, feel the vibration of the water’s force as it lands, see the ripples and deep currents where the water meets the river, and feel the spray from far enough away to make you realize just how forceful the falls are.
We had hoped to walk down to the riverbank and see it from closer up – but the area was blocked off, with lots of warning signs about how the water level can change quickly and such. People were climbing around and through the locked gate to walk down there (everyone you see in our video was on the wrong side of the gate).
Yeah, apparently, in my age, I have become Lawful. I seemed Lawful when I was growing up – but I wasn’t really. I was sort of Neutral-Good with Lawful leanings. I wasn’t all that concerned with ‘the rules’ or ‘social norms’ so much as what I considered good/bad – and ‘good’ often weighed in on the side of ‘not breaking the accepted rules without a really good reason.’ As life has gone on, I have skewed a little around the center arc to “Lawful Neutral with good tendencies” – I have come to value order over chaos, but I think it is mostly a matter of my opinion of humans – I know we need rules to live together, and I am not convinced there is a whole lot of ‘good’ in most of the people I meet. But I digress…
What brought that to mind was the people in the video – because I remember thinking they were a bunch of idiots. All those warning signs were up there for a reason – and while it might or might not be a good one, if you don’t know it – perhaps you should consider that the people who *do* know it were concerned enough to pay a lot of $ for a lot of signage and security. Maybe they had a reason (now maybe that reason was a litigious society and a state with miserable tort laws – but maybe not…). So, we walked to the riverside at a different, not-blocked-off location instead…. We finished up with lunch at the Raging River, a place my dad would probably like – looks like you could get breakfast on one side of the house, and hang in the pub at the other – even a few people in leathers stopped for lunch (a great day for a run, and one guy’s bike had some beautiful custom art work on the fairing.
Things have been going so fast lately, with so little down time – I had (literally!) blocked out 6 a.m. today through 6 a.m. tomorrow on the calendar with the word “Nothing!” just to be sure we got a little rest. What a great day trip with my best guy, and a terrific way to spend a rare sunny day in Washington!
