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An oxbow is a bend in a river. This I found out when I planned my journey to Oxbow Falls, located in Madison County, New York. Little did I know that there would be many bends in the river that marked my journey to the place, wending and winding in circles that stretched out on a long trail. In the end, they would bring me back to a place not far from when I started. Trying to arrive at Oxbow Falls was a journey in itself. As I drove, I confronted asphalt being gouged out of a small town's main street. It was like off-roading while going to church or the grocery store. In addition, the directions didn't match the map, which didn't match what I saw in the road. For one thing, we wound up on these other roads that we never were supposed to see, at least according to our itinerary. The GPS was baffled by all the contortions we were going though and couldn't keep up with us, losing our destination as it jumped past the forsaken wilderness we were in. In the end, the old fashioned map worked better than the GPS. Its steady graphics led us to the enigmatic road of Oxbow Road, a.k.a County Road 25, as though it had been there all along, playing a practical joke of hide and seek with us. The road was a long highway that took us past vast tracts of trees, like there was nothing in the world but us and the forestry. We passed a park sign in a small hamlet that led us to a county park. It teased us into thinking we had arrived, finally, at our destination. Instead, with the laugh of an imp, it announced that we had the wrong park: Nichols Park. It made the subsequent wilderness seem suspect, as though the park had taken a different road and we were stuck here in the middle of nowhere. But then, like an oasis, we saw another county park sign with a turnoff announcing the arrival of Oxbow Falls. Relieved, we pulled into the small parking area where the sign directed us.  This park had been difficult to pin down, even before we got on the road. It had been hard to find any information about this park on the Internet. The waterfall page I look at mentioned that it existed in Madison County, but not how big it was or where exactly it was. For all I knew, it was on someone's private property. Finally, I got a hit on my search engine when it brought up the official website for Madison County, which listed the waterfall as part of a county park. Although it informed me that there was a 100-foot waterfall (in the midst of a vague description of "waterfalls"), with as an additional bonus, a golf course, I still couldn't figure out where the park was based on the directions they gave. At least, based on the site that I had been looking at. It was as though I was looking for a phantom waterfall. After all of this, we had no idea what to expect. Maybe I was looking for a mirage. Or, based on the website, I guess I could look for a putting green. But, despite all the conspiracies against us leading us away from the likes of the waterfall, we were here. The park was marked by a small turnoff that had a parking area big enough for perhaps ten cars. And even this small a parking lot was nearly empty, the exception being two vehicles besides ours. Like the area we had driven though, the area was wooded, littered with deciduous and coniferous trees alike. As we walked on the trail past the sign that informed us of the park's layout. According to the aforementioned sign, there were hiking trails and three waterfalls (meaning more than the one waterfall featured on the website), and the park was 125 acres big. Big enough for a nice day's hike, small enough to get back before dinner. We walked over a footbridge that jumped over a roaring creek below us. It felt like the travel gods were playing a prank, leading us to this "oxbow" creek, and after all of the nonsense getting here, it being the waterfall. After all, in the middle of the woods there was some golf course too, supposedly. So why not? Once we got over the footbridge, there was a picnic area with a strange building that I suppose was the facilities during the summer, or whatever the in-season was here. At this point in April, it was closed. At the entrance of the trail, there had been the sign which described the layout of the park. The hiking was mentioned, but nothing about any golf course. Between that seeming oversight and the additional waterfalls, I felt like I had been imagining things when I saw the website, like I had the wrong IP address. If the entrance sign was right about the two additional waterfalls, it would be a bit of a happy surprise. But after the crazy directions getting here and hearing about a nonexistent golf course, I was beginning to think that all of these signs were a bunch of shenanigans. At this point, I'd rather suspend my expectations and just see what happened, rather than assume that the park knew what it was talking about.  The trail seemed easy enough, with orange blazes glowing brightly leading us on the designated path. We approached a fence, hearing a rush of sound that was quiet now but sounded like it wanted to belt out and be heard. The closer we got to the fence, the sound escalated from a rumble to a song, probably indicating we were near to one of the waterfalls. A couple comprising of a man and a woman approached us on the trail heading back to the parking lot, followed by a solo female hiker about fifty feet behind them. These two groups accounted for the two other cars we saw in the lot, which presumably meant that soon we'd have the park to ourselves. It was a great thought as we got closer to the falls which we could temporarily call our own: a circle of solitude. On the trail by the falls, there were flat rocks on the ground that seemed like slate. It was as though a long time ago in Neverland there had been a path to Grandma's house in the woods, but now it was covered with the stuff of legends with only this faded path as any indication of life before. This path led to an opening in the woods, which directly to a waterfall. If the map in the beginning was true at all, this was only the first of three of them. I presumed from the gates and paths surrounding it, creating a central prominence to make it stand out, that this fall was the main feature with the 100 feet drop. Leaning over the rudimentary fence, we watched the waterfall. At this point, it ran full because of the recent snowmelt, creating white noise that obliterated all other chatter.  Even though this was yet another waterfall that I had encountered, I could never get enough of them. Every time I came upon one of these phenomena, it had a primeval feeling, as though I had walked into a time that was before any history had been invented as a device of civilization. For waterfalls were their own almanac of time, a manifesto of how powerful a drop of water could be magnified with volume in numbers. Something so vital to our existence, water, acted as a corrosive on what appeared to us the most stable of creation, the rock. But geological formations were no match in the long run to these determined cataracts. Eventually the rock yielded to water, to create an entity that provided backdrops in oil paintings, Sunday picnics, afternoon walks, weddings and honeymoons. They were the perfect cocoon for being lulled into the bucolic nature of nature. And yet, their very existence was testament to the fact that nature was anything but serene, whatever our mental construct wanted to fantasize. Nature blazed its own trail through life, and a waterfall was proof positive of that reality. The view wasn't such a bad thing, either, although it was kind of hard to see the view of Lake Ontario that I had been promised on the website, another seeming fabrication. The obstruction wasn't because of overcast skies, though: the sun slithered through the clouds in a manner that would have been called "partly sunny". But the skies were hazy, and what sun we did see only helped to blind our view past our visual range. Despite the obfuscation to the distant view, it was easy to see the close-up escarpment that was created from this waterfall. I could see the chasm that it created between me and the next rock formation in the near distance. It was as though the ensuing gap had been chiseled over time by a fine artist and we were walking all over his or her sculpture.  Getting back on the main trail, we weren't even out of earshot from the first waterfall before we heard the second one, a rush of sound that sandwiched us in a sea of oblivion that was muted only by our own consciousness. The sun was playing with its light switch like a toddler with a new discovery. The varying light put the new waterfall in a hue of mystery, as though it didn't want us to know who it was for sure as it waxed and waned between its veil of shadows. Unlike the main waterfall, this one wasn't gated up, as though people would only challenge ones advertised and none that were kept more hidden. The waterfall was of the tiered type, tapering off every so often to break into another drop. I couldn't tell how many drops there were because I couldn't see the bottom. Maybe because of that, or maybe because of the tiered drop itself, it seemed bigger than the first one. I wondered how this particular waterfall got under the radar. After all, even though the website said "waterfalls" were in this park, this one seemed to be shadowed by its fraternal twin down the road. From the website, I only expected one big waterfall and maybe little tiny drops here and there, not the giant staircase that was in front of me. It was like we stumbled upon some accidental jewel on a random drive rather than going out of our way to find it, which was a surprise, because this trip had been a planned one with no expectation of surprise. Perhaps that is what made the surprise even more of an exclamation. Traveling is supposed to be about surprises anyway, but concrete plans have a way of lulling one to think everything is on an itinerary. This waterfall was proof that this was not always so. The trail took us away from the waterfalls and the escarpment deeper into the woods, so on all angles trees surrounded us. It was as though I was immersing myself in life not of my making and not withing my control, and of that I was glad. I always found it great to be able to be in a place where it didn't require my effort to create, as though I were some kind of demigod that was vital to my entire mini ecosystem, as though it would collapse without my illusion of micromanagement. Civilization was great, in that it allowed me to visit a place like this without much effort. But the down side was the illusion of control that it brought, that without singular effort everything would collapse.  Here, things operated without my interference, and I was a guest. Things here were not of my control and making, and at this early stage away from plans and plans within plans, it was a relief. Sky, leaves, trees, water: I put one foot in front of the other as I climbed up and down hills that took me further from what I knew, engaging me in a circular path that I didn't plan for. That in itself was a relief to me. It was an experience that I needed to keep myself in balance, to retain perspective of how much of life was really mine. Although, to walk in the paths that I did, the management of man was needed, a paradox that was faint but resting in the background like the trees watching me. Much later on, or maybe five minutes later, it was hard to tell in a timeless world, we came the third waterfall like stumbling on an oasis. It was perfectly tiered, as though it measured itself to perfection for dressing for the wedding it pictured. It sloped through the woods, and at any point, you could walk up to it and meet it at different location, watching how the water evolved from one high point on the falls I to its descent into the depths of the canyons it was beginning to etch. We crossed a wood-fenced bridge, designed like one would cross over a creek on farmland rather than one crossing a ravine. It was an illusion that seemed to have its home here in these depths, like it could change identities to suit whatever stranger came through to greet it. Wasn't travel always like that, more or less? Despite the bridge's flimsy appearance, it was strong and steady like the waterfall that flowed beneath it. On the bridge, someone had quoted a poem from the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke: "I live my life in growing orbits, which move out over this wondrous world. I am circling around God, around the ancient towers. I have been circling for a thousand years. And I still don't know if I am an eagle or a storm or a great song." Perhaps that was a mantra that could best describe the mood that settled upon the place, as I sat watching on logs and trees, walking up on the gravel paths, and forging the river sit on a marshy island that rested in the middle of the creek, surrounded by the sounds that only water could make when it was in its full element.  Sometime towards the end of our journey on the hills meandering up and down, I forget whether it was before or after the mystical Rilke experience, we came upon a strange metal contraption that appeared to be some kind of basket. It was stationary, and had the number 12 imprinted in orange on it. There was a small hole in the middle of it, and a strange metal perimeter on the bottom, resembling a rejected sketch of a water tower. Not many hills later, we came up on another identical metal contraption, except this one featured the number 11. It dawned upon us, based on the numeric scheme, that maybe right here in the middle of the trail, we were walking on "golf greens", and these baskets were the "holes". If this were true, it had to be about the weirdest golf course I had ever come upon in my life, miniature golf included. I don't think someone yelling "Fore!" fifty feet away from me in the woods would have done me much good, and they probably wouldn't see me anyway. The idea of a golf course in the middle of a hiking trail was about the goofiest concept I had ever heard of for a park layout. Then again, this was coming from a park that forgot to tell me about two of its waterfalls on its website.  Wending through trails and past trees and presumably more baskets hidden somewhere, we arrived at the nineteenth hole of our vehicle at the park entrance. There was a van unloading a whole bunch of people in the lot. After having the whole place to ourselves for a couple of hours, it was a small jolt of culture shock. Some of the people screamed and others laughed very loud at some private joke, and someone else tried to get attention of the crowd in a voice that blended beloved schoolteacher with a let's get in gear coach. Though none of the people lowered their volume, they surrounded her like a flock to a shepherd dog and followed her. They passed by us and all of them stared except for the schoolmarm and two other women in the front with her. But once they got to the picnic tables, they stopped their journey right there, a hive surrounding the tables that had previously been empty. Seeing them at the picnic tables remided us we were hungry. We left there to go stuff our faces, cause we earned our appetite! |
