Sarah was still with me at Crabtree, though it would be our last time sharing a campsite. She looked at me like I was making a mistake when I pushed off into the trees. I didn't let her dampen my enthusiasm.
I passed two hikers coming back up, but I didn't say a word. I crossed two wet parts of the path where a tiny trickle had served to make mud of the walkway. I strode across a well-made bridge with no handrails and one, much higher and stronger-looking with handrails. I practically fell downhill until the path split from the water and started going back uphill again.
Agitated, I walked a thousand feet down the trail and saw switchbacks going up. I wandered back to the path and saw what I came for: four feet of vertical waterfall.
And they named the campground for this? I had walked through the muggy summer night for this? I had risked myself to bears for this? I was thoroughly disappointed, but I didn't let it shake me. I sat down and listened to the hiss and crash of the water for a bit.
When I walked back up the hill, my fingers got numb from the weight of the binoculars and water bottle. My shirt stuck to my back. My shoes felt too tight. And the waterfall wasn't even worth seeing.
I settled back down at the picnic table in the thick, soupy last light that made the edges of things hard to see.
"Well?" Sarah said.
"Not worth it, really." I said. "It was a lot shorter than I thought it should be? But the path started back up again on the other side, so I can't figure anything else but that I found it."
"Really? The Ranger said it was beautiful." Sarah pulled out a map of the trail. "Did you cross a bridge?"
"Two."
"Hmm. Well, where did you get to?"
I looked at the map. There's a bridge, and afterward the path leads away from the stream, through some switchbacks, and back to the stream. That's where the waterfall is. It's a sixty foot fall. I was just on the uphill side of the falls themselves and I sat down to look at the disappointing tumble over some rocks that just happened to be on my way.
I missed the waterfall.
This story doesn't paint me as a hero or a villain, but as a fool. Sometimes, I come within spitting distance of having the experience I want, only to have it snatched away from me. I've had two relationships now in which my partner confidentially admitted that I was too clingy, too oppressive. No one has ever phrased it that way. They were both too kind for that: "I feel trapped." "I have to get out." But my obsessive drive to have the full experience has bitten me more than once.
When I fell in love for the first time, it was a non-reciprocating relationship with someone I still respect. I don't know how much she knew at the time, but she did what was right.
She told me she had something important to say--always a sign of the end--and we walked together past a few of our old haunts. Finding a picnic table littered with the first leaves of fall, she sat down and sighed, deeply.
" --- "
I wish. I want to remember what she said in that moment. She was convicted, I remember that. She didn't throw me off. I could tell this was real, and I'm not the sort of person who chases the impossible. But I do remember saying "This is hard for me, and I'm only just now realizing how hard it is." I remember her leaning in, trying to let me speak for one last time and to let it count. She didn't want to make a mockery of what had come before; it meant something to her, too. But she didn't want to hear that I had realized that day my love for her. She didn't need to know that I was willing to let her go regardless. At that point, I wasn't able to withhold that information though. "I realize that I fell in love with you." I choked up. I cried in front of her as she left me. "And I get that you have to leave, and I want to thank you for explaining why as much as you can . . ."
Honestly, I don't know how much of that I said. And I don't remember what she did. Maybe she hugged me, maybe she sat there as I left, and maybe she left me. I remember crushing and tearing apart the leaves on the table. I do remember that. I remember also walking back to the house on Eastview Terrace, crying. Someone I knew stopped to see if I was alright, because nobody walks down Apison Pike without a reason. I remember feeling dead for a long time after that.
She was important and lovely and she left me as well as she could. But the simple fact is that she couldn't be with me and all I wanted was to be with her. I got so close to seeing the waterfall, but frailty or stupidity or impatience kept me from it.
I hope she never reads this blog. She knows how I feel, I think, but I still hope she never reads it. She doesn't need to feel anything for me anymore, and that's okay. There are other things to see in life, even if Crabtree Falls and my relationships are always just beyond sight.
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