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Chapter VII
When Is A Waterfall?
By T. Morris Longstreth |
Not when it is turned off, surely. Yet what is one to term the
location of the fall all that is off falling? Not a waterfall still;
that is misleading. Not the where-it-ought-to-be-running-overplace-if-it-were-running;
that is a little inconvenient for a signboard. And yet, just see the
predicament into which the paucity of our vocabulary may throw a man
who adheres to the truth. For instance, a summer visitor at the
Laurel House -- the hotel that is perched alongside the great
Kaaterskill Falls -- may very easily plunge a truthful attendant into
a dilemma of this sort, simply because there is no word at hand to
describe an abrogated cataract. She may request to be shown the
falls. What is he to do?
If he replies that there aren't any, he is exposed to the indignation
of a woman who considers that she is being trifled with. If, on the
other hand, he leads her to the vacancy where the water should be
falling but isn't, he is again exposed to her indignation, this time
because she considers that she has been trifled with. And yet, if, on
the third hand (and this shows how preposterous the situation is), he
should tell her the truth-that it isn't time for the waterfall yet
she would complain to the management of his impertinence. |
Kaaterskill Falls |
To avert injustice being done either the waterfalls or the
management, one has only to regard the Catskill peculiarities of
supply and command. The heavens supply, the proprietors command, and
between the two the visitors are not deprived of their spectacle as
they otherwise would be. For the Catskills receive a great deal of
water, but let it all run off. There are only a few ponds, only small
areas left of deep pine soil. From November until March a cover of
snow hoards up almost all the precipitation. In midspring this is
released with a gush. The country becomes one vast waterworks. Every
inequality in the land is a gulley running with snow-drip. The brooks
are noisy, the large streams leave their banks and wander about the
lowlands. The highlands pour huge streams from every projection.
Whatever isn't a cataract is a cascade in April; but by May the pace
has become normal, by June the smaller rills are dry, by July the
larger brooks are shrunk, and if August be dry one would have to
carry water to the chief waterfalls to make them go.
Now, carrying water to waterfalls may be a shade less absurd than
carting coals to Newcastle, but it is an expensive mode of
entertaining summer guests. Yet many of these guests have come to the
hotels in response to the lavish advertisement of the beauty of the
waterfalls. Hence the hotel proprietors are face to face with a
trying situation: How to live without waterfalls but not without
guests. They meet the situation triumphantly by turning off the one
and keeping the other. They save up the waterfalls by doing without
them at night and at other times when they are not of much use, and
are thus able to provide a life-size cataract at certain hours when
somebody happens along who can afford one. |
Consequently, everybody who can't visit the Catskills when Nature is
running naturally can get almost the same effect when she is run by
hand. Even in an average summer there is a surprising amount of water
still foot-free in the wooded valleys, and every few years one of
those wet seasons arrives when Neptune himself would be quite proud
of the results. |
Crest Of The Kaaterskill |
On that day when Brute and I turned by luck to come back by the brink
of the Kaaterskill Clove, the only flood in our thoughts was the
flood of sunshine, and the only fall was the one we were trying not
to take down to the bottom of the ravine. We went in a southeasterly
direction, at first, from the hotel to a bare place called the
Palenville Overlook, which showed the ravine to splendid advantage.
Then, picking our way along the slipperinesses, we reached Sunset
Rock, a magnificent sort of promontory-place to which we shifted our
allegiance from all previous outlooks. Opposite, the great side of
the Clove rose in our faces. Shadows fell in heavy blocks along the
ravine, and white cascades fell with inverted spires in three places
down the confronting wall.
Here the spell of winter was laid upon us. A chickadee in some
distant dell reminded us of life; everything else was radiant marble
or dreaming wood. Afternoon in the shadow of Round Top was well
advanced, and the air had begun to drift down the Clove with its
weight. But there was no wind. The stillness of the whole day and the
radiance of it will always be in my memory, an actual presence. Only
a few times in a life would there likely be anything so stable, so
impressive, as that day-span of shining quiet; and it was just my
luck that I had been able to spend it in such a memorable place with
a genuine, fine spirit to enjoy it with. |
At last the cold began to search us, and, trying to fix the crystal
panorama in our memories, we moved on. Bright finger-tips of cloud
rising in the west were beginning to foretell the morrow. The witch
that weaves the storm-cloud for the Catskills had been all that day
preparing, and these were the first shadows of the veiled spirits who
were to do her bidding.
The swiftly changing skies of mountain-lands and their effects upon
the distances are the most beautiful of all the highland scenes. In
the Catskills particularly is this so. The Kaaterskill Clove is the
largest causeway out of the great citadel. Its sides are flung wide
enough to stage the parade of storms, and in many seasons it is more
impressive than far deeper gorges, simply because of the exceeding
richness of the Catskill skies. The Rockies swim at the bottom of a
sea of incredible clearness; the Cuban Mountains wrap themselves in
sultry vapors of rare tints; but the Catskills, the Adirondacks, and
the White Mountains are situated in a current of the atmosphere,
continental in its sweep, hastening as it nears them, which provides
an ever-changing pageant of light and shadow, storm and shine. One
day will fairly pierce all distance with its brightness, and the next
soften the ranges into an intimate neighborliness. The empty blue of
a summer 's morning will tower with thunder-castles by noon, and by
evening all will be fair once more, the farther valleys rich with a
thousand shades worn by the humidity. In midwinter., in early spring,
in noonlight, in moonlight, and at dawn, there is always some
combination of light and shade and forest beauty to make one pause.
From the Sunset Rock it is not far to the Falls of the Kaaterskill.
Stealing to the edge, which was an extremely unobstructed slide of
ice, we looked down. Despite the continued cold, there was a fair
volume of water falling into its vase of ice. This vase was over a
hundred feet high, irregular at the top, and shaded from clear white
into yellows and deep blues. And always the water poured into the
vase as into a drinking-horn that would never be filled. |
A stairway climbs down into the wide bowl that the fall has carved in
the reluctant rock, and down it we slid at our peril. Snow-dust, ice,
frost blown from the cup's white rim, whole palisades of ice, were
only too eager to abet our descent. The going down to Avernus was as
nothing for or ease. And the temptation was to take one's eye from
the footing, to gaze into that fascinating twilight vision of
descending white. At the bottom we safely looked and looked until the
amphitheater of giant icicles had faded from blue to gray-green and
into the colorless filmy gray of night. Then we felt at liberty to
go, frozen, hungry.
The head of the Kaaterskill Clove is crowned with falls. There are
half a dozen major ones and a score of minor. The Haines' Falls
achieves a descent of 240 feet in two leaps, and as much more in a
few succeeding. They are beautiful from the foot of the gorge, and
impressive in spring or after a heavy rain in summer. Like the
Kaaterskill, they are carried on in summer on the installment plan,
being dammed until a spectacle has accumulated, the theory being that
half a fall is no better than none. Brute and I were very lucky. We
saw them after a winter of continued cold, when tile accumulation of
ice was exceptional. Again we saw them after a heavy snow had
softened the portcullis of icicles and draped the sharp edges of the
rock with curving lines of bewildering beauty. And once more I saw
them in a season of much rain, when the roar and spray at the bottom
grew into a contending melee of naked forces. The heavy foot of the
descending torrent thrust on one the horror of mere brutal insistence.
In the vicinity of Haines' Falls there, is a waterfall for every
person, one for every mood. The Bastion, the Buttermilk, the LaBelle,
are some for those who like their waterfalls to begin with B. You can
follow up any brook only a little way, and you are certain to come
upon mossy grottos, cool, damp, and very lonely, where you can have a
waterfall to yourself. Or you can linger around the more famous
sights and collect the exclamations of the tourist arrivals. If you
wish for loveliness, visit these places in early May. The bushes will
be in their new greens, the trees beginning to bud, the first flowers
whitening the woods that are themselves so delicately dappled with
the fresh foliage. And as you come upon one exuberant cascade after
another you will wonder how old Earth, replete with merriment, could
affect you drearily again. It is worth while going long distances to
fill one's memory with scenes to aid one in harsh seasons.
The reverse of the spring gladness has its charm, as well. It comes
at that pause of the season after the summer heat and before the
autumn rains. Then steal up to the Kaaterskill and sit at the foot of
the thread of water that falls into the quiet bowl. The shrunken
stream only whispers now, but in the stillness you can think back to
the time when you heard it roaring. It seems now more likable, if
less splendid. And the woods are thinking it all over. Leaves fall
one by one, and here and there shafts of light shine down where the
woods were lately dark. A maple gleams among the beeches, which are
growing yellow, and the hemlocks are full of the sense of coming
winter. If you sit quite still you may see a thrush drink from the
pool or hear the chirp of some passing bird. But never a song now.
Winter is on the way. A red squirrel is busy on the upper bank, and
the bell of the distant train tells you that there were once people
here. Otherwise you have only the Falls and the weight of endless time. |
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