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An audio version of this essay is available here.
I have witnessed the beauty of waterfalls, from dead-ended mountain streams to thunderous Niagara. The moving picture of water cascading over a rocky ledge and descending in free flight to a pool below invites both awe and appreciation for the wonder of nature. When we think of a river, we imagine it as an entity unto itself – the majestic Hudson, the mighty Mississippi – embodied in a flowing mass of green liquid. Its surface ripples and divides at certain points, its edges dampen the landline and sometimes impose deeply into the plains, but we understand it as one whole thing until the riverbed suddenly drops away and gravity demands its fee.
From the river emerges an impression of continuity, accompanied by shadowy disaffection: eddying turbulence, floating refuse, disturbed silt. The volume of water in motion in a large waterway carries the energy potential to electrify major cities and bore grand canyons, and the water courses onward in response to one primary force – gravitation. All elements search out their relative level and gravity, so well designed to the purpose, is a fair culprit to blame. The river suggests involuntary migration to the sea, in accordance with the physical truths and poetic implications of the circulatory system of a water planet.
A river can no better anticipate a waterfall than Lewis and Clark could anticipate the Continental Divide. There are vague hints – a weakening pressure load to the front allowing an increase in velocity … a widening of the sides and rising of the floor. These portents seem obvious when viewed from some point in the aftermath, but can only whisper back in a riddle from the future regarding moments yet to exist. There is no consciousness aware of the worst that can happen until it does.
Arriving at the gateway to descent, the contents of a river are compelled to fly out of a comfortable bed by the mass charging from behind, powered by the weight of Earth’s gravity. The sudden change in direction and speed tears away at surface bonds and momentarily releases the components from the whole. A downward phase commences, with both cause and effect paying tribute to the same natural force, as gravity first pushes, and then pulls.
After eternities of close order drill, the water molecules experience the joy and fear of emancipation during this short period of shear decline; the water divides into opaque strips and elongated globules or smaller, weightless dots that rise as a mist, scenting the air with the idea of an aqueous presence. It is an illusion of freedom, this death leap, as returns to the extended family and previous state are inevitable for most of those molecules. For the present, the concept of forever and ever sings in a distant, lulling voice until its sound is overwhelmed by the crescendo of what comes next.
The point of collision takes on multiple shapes and dimensions, as bottom is found and forced lower by the pounding impact. Bits of air riding by on a breeze are trapped and submerged with the streaking fall, and then bubble to an escape, gravity be damned. Waves radiate continuously outward from the target area, some visible on the surface and others disguised as sonic folds within the curtain of white noise. The water begins to move laterally once more, the collected molecules compressing against each other and coming to rest, as if nothing had happened.
The river will shift or die someday and the water will cease to fall after gravity has drawn the final droplet. The collecting pool, evaporated over time in quiet agony, will sprout a layer of green and the breeze shall pass over its remains, dry and unmolested. When persons happen by, they may notice the subtle indicators scarred into the rock wall and its landing of something grand that once existed. Falling stones may provide a further clue of a thing of beauty now lost. When the worst that could happen does happen and then bleaches itself from view, the memory of it seeks its own level and gravity holds the grief in place.
