Why Waterfalls Matter
I mentioned last week that I would be in the North Carolina mountains a few days, and I'm wrapping that up now. It's been an interesting trip
Humanity knows next to nothing about reality. This is an assumption that is true in almost any scientific endeavor. Much of what we think is scientific progress is a rearranging of mental furniture.
Geography is no different. Even as populous a country as America is filled with mysteries waiting for us to find out. North Carolina has only 209 people per square mile, and most of that population is packed into the state's Charlotte, Raleigh, and Greensboro urban areas. Both the mountains and the coastal areas have wide swaths of wilderness. The area where we've been, in the far southwest, about 10 miles from the South Carolina border, is almost pristine in areas.
We focused this short trip on waterfalls, which abound in these mountains. The first - which involved a fairly strenuous 4 mile round trip to reach - is Rainbow falls, known as that because of the nearly constant rainbows visible during daylight because of the huge volume of water here. The falls themselves are 125 feet high. To put that in perspective, Niagara is 150 feet high. Rainbow is a serious, and a seriously beautiful water, and worth the hike, which begins in North Carolina's Gorges State Park.
(On all three falls we visited, we were lucky to have visited after a week that gave the area 14 inches of rain, so the falls were in high volume. Much of the NC mountains get so much precipitation that they are technically rainforest climates).
The other two were beautiful, even when less spectacular. The first was Bridal Veil, a small water cascade directly on NC highway 64, near Cashiers. The next was the misnamed Dry falls, likewise off of highway 64. The "dry" appellation comes from one normally being able to walk behind the falls and not get wet. We did indeed walk behind the falls, but not without getting seriously wet, again due to the high water volume.
There is almost no research done on waterfalls. Rivers and lakes are studied and explored, but these spectacular mysteries are a place for budding students to learn.
I'm a huge fan of cities. Cities are where the fun and excitement of humanity displays best, and a few days in the wilderness is all I need. What Samuel Johnson said about London can be said about many cities: "If you are bored with London, you are bored with life." So we visited one small city, and found a notable exception to Johnson's dictum.
Highlands, NC, is a small city at 4,000 feet above sea level. Technically, it is just over 95% white, and walking up and down the city's main drag only made me wonder where that small number of black and brown people might be. The best that could be said about this tedious little dump is that it was an adventure in time travel. The city has their very own mask mandate, and the streets are festooned with cranky signs nagging people to muzzle their faces.
Normally, I love places that I visit, and expect to return one day. Highlands is obviously different.
Sometimes I take long vacations but I don't have to have them. A few days in a different climate and land makes me see the world differently. That's why I travel.