North Falls

Look up, and there it is, filling the back wall of the amphitheater. North Falls, one hundred and thirty-six feet of North Fork water hurling itself off the rim into the bowl in front of you. And the path carries you in under it — right beneath that enormous overhang, the whole falls thundering down off your left shoulder as you go. This is the fourth and last of the walk-throughs, and it's the grandest of them. The alcove here is wide and high and deep, the most cavernous on the trail, so the water leaves the lip well out past the rock and you've got space enough to stand in the dry dark behind it. Feel how the air changes the moment you step under the stone. Colder. Loud in a way you feel in your chest, the roar bouncing off curved rock and wrapping clean around you. The spray finds the back of your neck. Take it slow under here — the rock stays wet and dark, slick where ten thousand winters of mist have polished it. Watch the sheet of water as it falls, how it holds together near the top and then frays into ribbon and lace and drifting fog before it ever reaches the pool. Stop somewhere in the middle, where the creek's roaring down on one side and solid basalt arches over your head, and just stand a second. Then, when you're steady, tip your head all the way back and look at what's bored into the ceiling.