Article 4 - "PIXLEY FALLS STATE PARK" May 2007 edition of First Church of The Streets

Spring is a good time to enjoy upstate New York's waterfalls, particularly the early half. There is a lot of snowmelt to feed the attractions, for one, allowing for a rush of whitewater to surge past your ears in its own natural symphony. In general, at least in the central region, there is not much greenery around until the tenth of May or thereabouts. Which makes for two reasons to enjoy the waterfalls. Even in forested areas, there isn't much to obstruct your view of the waterfalls. And because there isn't much greenery around until the month of May or thereabouts, all the visits to May flowers will have to wait awhile. At least until the tenth of May or thereabouts. Hence, waterfalls make a superb attraction with these factors.

In the first half of springtime, my photographer husband and I liked to go to as many waterfalls as possible. One of those on the list was the waterfall park of Pixley Falls State Park, or as my atlas liked to call it, Boonville Gorge State Park. The idea of visiting a waterfall with an identity crisis was intriguing in this relatively barren half of the spring. My one guide said that the waterfall had easy access to it, the other said it required a walk. Not only did the waterfall seem to have an identity crisis, it had a split personality as well. It's one of those things that I've found as a traveler that sometimes one has to go out and see for herself what everyone is talking about to come her own conclusion, because it seems like no one knows what the hell they're talking about.

copyright 2007 John B.

So that is when the two of us headed to the waterfall and explore its personal reality ourselves. To get to the waterfall, we had to pass through a couple of the towns which make up central New York's 1-90 corridor, which runs pretty much parallel to the Erie Canal. The biggest of these was Rome, which I presumed was like many other many other American towns, an imitation of its namesake in name only. I certainly wasn't expecting any basilicas or coliseums or any other classical architecture. In fact, I was leery it was like its ratty sister to the east, Utica. Every time I passed through Utica, I always felt like I was driving through a garbage dump that someone forgot to cart away. And seeing a lot of local media tied the two cities together, I wasn't so sure what Rome had in store for me either.

Well, it wasn't the Vatican, but it wasn't a garbage barge either. Standard fast food restaurants and strip malls along with lower-middle to middle class homes dotted the NY46 corridor as we headed north to the park. A balloon of Ronald McDonald waved a greeting to me on top of his namesake, fat and high with fast-food helium. I never thought I would be so relieved to see vestiges of mass consumerism shining brightly through the spring sky. At least it made it feel like the waterfall wasn't necessarily going to be the sewage dumping site puking over a cliff.

Along NY 46, there were a lot of pull-offs leading to parking areas, for hanging out on NY 46. We passed by Delta Lake Park, another state park, as well as woods that seemed to stretch for miles and miles like an endless forest, something that seemed to happen a lot when I traveled on these remote stretches of state highways. Eventually, we got to Boonville, the town where the park was. The atlas said travel a mile from Boonville to get to Pixley Falls Park, but atlases seem to have a way of distorting the cartography around them, and it turned out to be around twelve. All along the way, a creek roared alongside us, forecasting the future that we might be watching soon enough. Miles later, we reached the park sign that told us to wait for a non-existent attendant, which was irrelevant in this off-season. We proceeded to drive on a potholed narrow driveway, teetering over the creek that we had followed all along the way. The parking lot led to an upper view of the falls, the one vantage point that allowed the sedentary to enjoy a day with the waterfall while having a picnic and not having to go very far to enjoy it.

From the pictures I'd seen of the park, this upper view was basically what I expected, with the small picnic area and not much else. But as we hung around by the fence preventing people from falling down the rabbit hole trying to get a better view, we saw a trail that could take you down through a wooded area to get to the foot of the falls A short walk through the woods later, and there we were, the falls not far from us. There was no fence or directional preventing us from approaching the falls more directly. The only thing between us and the falls were slippery rocks and a muddy shoreline. But that didn't stop us, and soon we were there, right at the end, watching it crash in front of us, arcing with a harmonious grace that made the flow feel timeless and belied the changes the water wrought over time. The mist surrounded us, and feeling enclosed from civilization, with the mist around us as though we were in an English myth and we had been removed from 21st century America. It was as though the frantic pace that seemed to permeate the outside world was an illusion that we came up with in order to tell a story, and this waterfall running next to us was the real story that we lived.

Watching the falls dance in front of us, just inches from us beckoning us to bask ourselves underneath, we decided one day that we had to come back in the summer time, like early September when the water was still warm but the park was free, and accept the invitation to be showered upon. The thought reminded me of this Australian tourism commercial with a woman standing by a waterfall informing the audience that they've got the shower working. Except in this case, I didn't even have to leave my own country in order to get a good soaking. On the shoreline, there were beautiful rocks of many colors, smoothed away by time, so placid and sheer that it held the harsh erosion that created it as a secret that it would not tell in such bucolic settings.

And hidden in the background, as though it was too modest to take the spotlight from its more famous sister, we saw another waterfall cascading down the gorge. Narrower than Pixley, it was nonetheless just as tall a waterfall and no less beautiful. As we walked the length of the trail in the leafless forest, we saw several falls such as these, what seemed to be at least half a dozen or so. Each one we came upon was a surprise, as though we had only expected one present for Christmas and instead got seven or eight, so many that we lost count. It was a reminder to keep my eyes open at all times and not get attached to any one thing, because I could miss out on so much more.

In a strange way, it was as though by encountering all these waterfalls, I had made new friends. Not in the sense, obviously, of a couple of people hanging out at the diner, but something that was more transcendent. More in the sense of I had expanded my world, and it now included what I knew about these waterfalls. In the world that had bills and the Internet and war in Iraq, it also had this place. A sense of balance and of wholeness had been shaped, much as the water shaped the landscape and the gorge that surrounded me. Like them, I was shaped and changed, as much a part of nature as they were.