Witness

We had heard rumors of a waterfall to the east of Rolley Lake, but my son Shawn and I had never searched for it on our regular rambles in the area. The day we set out to find it, neither of us expected very much. The stream that ran out of the Lake was shallow and flowed slowly. No waterfall was marked on our map.

Following the stream, we noticed faint signs of others who had also taken up the quest. But there was no real path to follow. As we went, the land began to slope downward. The water running beside us picked up its tempo.

Then suddenly it was there. The whole earth fell away in front of us, and a wild torrent of water (where had all the water come from?) plunged a hundred or more feet down into nowhere. It roared and twisted, foam-white, cutting deeply through rock and over the cliff. This was not nature in its bountiful/delightful mode. This was gut-wrenching nature that turned my son and I instantly into minuscule specks on an infinite landscape. This was nature that made you shudder with its power. You wanted to cut yourself off from it for fear of being dragged down into its roaring energy. Beautiful, yes. But the beauty of awe and terror that puts you in your place.

Going down the slope beside it, we found that darkness was coming faster than we'd anticipated. We had only a few more moments to stare at the deep pool at the bottom, which seemed capable of absorbing any amount of cascading water. Then we went home.

Were we different for our discovery? I think so, just as each of us is shaped by similar rare encounters with creation unchained. It may be difficult to explain the experience, but it has something to do with a recognition that we are not masters of all we survey, that we are not the captains of our fate.

In essence, it's an encounter with God. No, nature isn't divine. We know that. But nature serves as a witness to God, to make him apparent to the world through its testimony to his glory and his supreme desire to nurture his creation. That's a reality worth pursuing.