I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
~ Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
There’s something about waterfalls at the end of a long hike through the woods.
Here near Asheville, in the mountains of western North Carolina, we have a lot of waterfalls. And just a few weeks ago, with the advent of spring, I commenced my expeditions again.
But it’s a funny thing you start to notice when you visit even relatively popular waterfalls. The people who come to them. They hike all that way, they stand and a look at the waterfall a bit, maybe shoot a couple photos with their iPhones, and then turn around a few times as if to confirm “Yep, that’s it, I guess,” and back they go.
Kids are even worse. You’d think they’d be excited, want to explore and play. But not the kids nowadays. Anymore, it seems most kids have a hard time processing the real world, much less enduring it in anything longer than a 6-second blip.
They’re along for the hike because their parents dragged them here, and in six seconds or less they’re already bored and ready to leave.
It’s mind-boggling.
I hardly need say, this is NOT how I pay a visit to a waterfall.
Just recently I hiked Pearson Falls (and in the fine weather of an early spring morning, with the sun streaking through the trees, a lovelier place you would be hard pressed to find), and after a deliciously lazy stroll through the woods accompanied by the rush of the white-rapid plunging creek alongside the trail I reached the falls and stood transfixed, just taking it all in.
I found a place to sit and just breathed it all in for half an hour or more before remembering I had brought along my camera.
So I set up my tripod, screwed an ND filter on the lens, checked my settings, and in a few minutes I had already captured several images I felt would turn out quite well. I re-positioned the camera and tripod and got a few more, experimenting a little and just enjoying myself.
While doing this, I noted at least three other groups of two or three arriving. And they behaved the same way as the others I’ve grown accustomed to. They came up to see the falls, they stood looking about half a minute, shot a few iPhone pics and a couple selfies to post to Instagram, and then turned around and headed back the way they had come.
To them, perhaps, a waterfall is a waterfall is a waterfall. They came to say they had come (and I suppose to get a photo to prove it). But you can’t change the channel on a waterfall. You can’t click play on the next video. There’s no “Like” button to click or anywhere to leave a “Comment.” And mostly, it just sits there doing its thing. And well, the day is a-wasting, got things to do, all done here.
So I watched them come and go in my peripheral vision and I finished up with more photos than I probably needed.
Then, having packed up my gear, I found a new place to sit and watch the waterfall a while longer.
I lingered.
(Remember when we used to linger? Back before we were all so busy? Back before we were all so endlessly distracted?)
I just sat there enjoying the sound and the rush and tumble of the waterfall, taking in all the details I could, admiring the way the light played off the water and the rocks, breathing it all in, and enjoying the light breeze and the sunlight filtering in through the trees.
At one point I brought out a small paperback to read a few lines of Seneca, then closed the book again, put it away, and sat thinking about those lines — leisurely, lingeringly — for a long time.
As the water fell and fell and fell.
Through all this, more groups of people came, stood half a minute, snapped a photo, and left. I scarcely noticed them. They were not seeing what I was seeing.
They had no time to linger.
They had no patience for what sitting before a waterfall might show them.
They had lost the ability to sit quietly, alone in nature.
Don’t let that be you.
Make time to get out into nature (take a stroll through a flower garden or encamp upon a blanket alongside a pond or beneath a tree if nothing else). And go alone if possible.
And by all means take your camera . . .
But after you finish capturing a few photos, try just sitting awhile. Shut off your phone and put aside your worries and concerns, all your chattering thoughts, all your appointments and your to-do lists.
Just sit. Just enjoy being there.
Linger awhile.
You might find that you come to like it.
And if upon returning home you look through the photos you captured and decide to create something artistic with them, I suspect that the work you create will prove all the deeper, all the more meaningful for the life you breathed in and savored of that day.
– Sebastian