Behind-the-7-11-caution-my-life-might-be-in-danger

I went for a suburban hike last week. A mid morning weekday--everyone else at their jobs. I just walked and walked, finally able to break away from school and people and just day dream. I decided to go somewhere where I have never walked before. Explore. After three and a half years in this small city I have been most everywhere. I picked out a forested hill on the horizon and walked straight for it. I got to the edge of the wood, found a stylized walking (wizard's) staff and climbed into the forest. The Cotton Woods were shedding. Dry, fertile, fluffy, flakes, and me, a silent samurai, choosing the quite path, tip-toeing over twigs, the balls of my feet aiming at moist ground, the birds, chirping, unaware or unthreatened by my mossy presence. I continued that way, in awe of the way the light sneaked through the canopy: red light, green light; Half pretending that I had traveled back in time to when everything was forest, when the hum of I-5 wasn't unnoticed background music in people's minds--before there were minds; half pretending to be an avatar in a game of staggering video graphics.

I continued this way for a while, ignoring the track houses bumping right up against the woods--convincing myself that my foot prints were special, that I was going where no man had gone before--the moon--the forest moon of Endour. And that my boot prints were the first bipedal, hand crafted, boot marks the moon had ever seen--that I wasn't walking on a gravel path with barbeque pits to my right and park signs saying keep out on my left. Keep out of the park. The park. Then I found it. A quite lagoon nestled in a valley in the woods. The creek falling over the high rocks above, feeding a pool below. Rocks the size of twin sized beds surrounded the water, theater seating for lazy animals to lay and listen to the sound of the falls. I laid down. The hum of I-5 was gone, replaced by the fizzly sound of the falls vibrating at the same frequency as the background radiation. Water: the mother energy. I don't know if it was as good as all that but hey, I had an afternoon off and I was laying out in the woods. The water could have been singing me songs if I wanted it to. I fell asleep. I may have shut my eyes for seconds or forever. It was a wonderful nap. My new favorite place, I thought, I will come here often.

This weekend I told Andy, "lets go for a hike, I found this wonderful place." We got to the woods, two guys chatting. We were talking about work or such, chewing the fat. I wasn't feeling the samurai, snow falling, meditation stuff this time around. Track housing yeah, yeah, Saturday afternoon joggers, yeah yeah. People all over the place. "This place is different on the weekend. “I tell him. "Yeah," he says I've been out here with Nicole.

We got to the lagoon. An empty cardboard case of beer and empty beer cans are littered around the little beach. I wasn't picking up a sense of the mother energy, more like a vibe of: behind-the-7-11-caution-my-life-might-be-in-danger. "Yep, I've been here... this is Whatcom falls," he says.

Whatcom Falls? The Whatcom falls, where teenagers get drunk and dive off the falls? Oh God.

We sat there a while. I ate an apple. People started showing up. Striping down. Jumping in the water. High school kids. Long hairs. The place is crawling with long hairs. Noise. The guys are taking the thirty foot dive from the top of the falls as their girlfriends look on excitedly. Any illusions I had about exploration in suburbia are gone by that point. No Endour moon. No samurai honor codes. No bird songs. My entire vision of the place had changed. It wasn't bad. It was fun watching the divers, hell, maybe I'll dive in one day. Just different that’s all.