Triple Falls

I am wired strangely. Whenever I most need to sleep, I don't. It is only when the stress level is low and my body could probably do fine on 5 hours that I manage to snooze for the suggested 9.2. So I lay awake a good  portion of the night last night, reconfiguring in my mind the luggage I hoped to carry on the plane to Amy's house today.

It would have been better to have filled my head with images of the Triple Falls hike we had done that afternoon, en route home from the Beatles Tribute show. It was a perfect day for hiking, and Asherel's friend Emma was such an easy going companion as the three of us headed up the steep mountain.
"How about if I just find a picture on my iPod of a waterfall and we can just rest here?" suggested Asherel.
"Please tell me you don't mean that," I said.

Emma is a rock climber and there were rocks galore to climb, as long as one didn't mind 3 million gallons of water per second splashing against you. I dipped my feet in the frigid mountain water and watched the girls, each second weighing the potential for death or dismemberment in their chosen activity. I try not to let my own fears translate to too much restriction on those in my charge, but sometimes it is hard. Especially given the slippery rocks and the copperhead snake Emma had recoiled from as we reached this little paradise.

So I laid down some rules that I hoped would keep instant death at bay, and then held my breath as they scampered.  Then they looked back and Asherel beckoned to me to follow. They were going up...high...atop a boulder.
I shook my head. Other people were silhouetted against the sky, a couple of cliffs above them, standing by a third cascading deluge of water. They were tiny against the blue.

"Don't go any higher!" I called.
A lady with a Dalmatian passed me.
"It is really not as bad as it looks," she urged me, "I climb this all the time."
"Does your dalmatian smile?" I asked. As a breed, most dalmatians smile and it is why I love the breed. We owned one that smiled and one that didn't.
"Yes," she answered.
How could I not trust a lady with a smiling dalmatian?

So I groaned to my feet and climbed cautiously up after the girls. Emma led the way, knowing better than we which path would lead most likely to our chances of returning for our shoes in one piece. We reached the top of the first flat expanse where the second water fall took its plunge.
"No higher," I said, glancing at the view below with only a slight lurch of my stomach.
"It is fine, really,"  said the smiling Dalmation lady, who had left the happy dog with her husband below.
The girls looked beseechingly at me.
"Fine," I said, "But don't go anywhere near the edge when we get up there or I will die."
So the three of us, and the smiling Dalmation Lady all climbed the boulder to the next large flat table of rock. This time as I looked down, my stomach did more than a slight lurch, but the view was spectacular.
The smiling Dalmation lady took our picture so we could prove we had been there. And then the girls started to place their hands on a fourth upward soaring cliff.
"No," I said, "Not that I don't want to, of course, but we are out of time."

We climbed carefully back down, and when we reached the bottom, I cried out, "I did it!!!"
Emma pumped her fists in the air, and Asherel looked less embarrassed than  usual from my outbursts.

As we headed back to the car,  I told the girls about the story the dalmation lady told me. Two men with a canoe had done the climb we had just done and then gone down the waterfall in the canoe.
"They did it several times, til they flipped over."
"Don't worry," said Emma, "I promise I would never go down a waterfall in a canoe. I wonder why anyone would do that? It's so dangerous!"
"Well rock climbing is dangerous too," I pointed out, "But each time you do something and get good at it, you want to do something a little harder. I never thought I would dare go past the bunny slope skiing....but soon the bunny slope was boring."

And maybe that is why God sends us so many challenges in life. If we just hang out at those first baby steps of faith, we never know what mountains we might be able to conquer. We might never see the magnificent views that He has created for only those who don't lose heart. Life is filled with frights, and dangers, and it was never meant to be viewed from an iPod.

Isaiah 7: 3-4
³ Then the LORD said to Isaiah, “Go out, you and your son Shear-Jashub, to meet Ahaz at the end of the aqueduct of the Upper Pool, on the road to the Launderer’s Field. ⁴ Say to him, ‘Be careful, keep calm and don’t be afraid. Do not lose heart..."