rapalm

Fallen

Shawnee Falls, Ricketts Glen, PA.
It is late afternoon, partway down the loop of Kitchen Creek. The trail is muddy, the rock treacherous underfoot, beca...
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Shawnee Falls, Ricketts Glen, PA.
It is late afternoon, partway down the loop of Kitchen Creek. The trail is muddy, the rock treacherous underfoot, because it has been raining on and off all day. The autumn air is cool and damp, making for stiff fingers and aching bones. A great mane of water pours over shoulders of stone, in a little ampitheater of shale and limestone, layered like pieces of Jenga in precarious stages of collapse. The world is more vertical here, and falling is just a matter of time. We think we are on solid ground, only to find ourselves undermined and toppled, carried downstream like the remnants of this tree, caught under the spill. I, too, have been fighting against this gravity for some time. Sometimes I feel like I have fallen so very many times, and each time it’s a little harder to get back up. My journey has been downstream, where I will come to another branch of the drainage, and climb back up. I don’t give much thought about what I am climbing up to anymore, only that I have to move against the flow. I look around my little scene searching for perspective, and the footing to embrace it. And try not to be discouraged by how far I’ve fallen.

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