what a difference a second makes?

Dear Blog Reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. I hope that if you are a Kentucky Wildcats fan that you are proud of the best team that money can buy. You should be proud. Second place is nothing to be ashamed of. Shoot, you are proud with your painted blue and white faces. Way to go.

My mind has recently been drawn to the state, or rather the Commonwealth to our south. The lovely Miss Beverly and I spent a couple of days last weekend in Madison, Indiana. We were guests in the nicely appointed Clifty Falls State Park and Inn. Any time that I am expatriated from Sharritt land, I am profoundly affected by the geography of the place of relocation. I suppose that I lacked the imagination to be a good geography student in school. Reading about the Great Lakes never made an impact but seeing them, I got it. You could travel from New York to Minnesota and never have to take a step. In fact if you were in the rear seat of the canoe and the chap up front was pretty burly, you might not have to paddle either. You didn’t have to find a way around a swamp, or get lost in the forest with all of the trees blocking your view; easy peasy.

As I was standing in picturesque downtown Madison, I got it. Looking across the Ohio River, that small beach head where millions of years of erosion had left a two mile wide valley bracketed by 400 ft cliffs, the only thought wandering through my mind was no wonder we don’t feel very close to our Kentucky cousins. Sure our friends in Illinois are an hour behind us. And who hasn’t felt a little envious that Ohio has Cedar Point and Kings Island, and two major league baseball teams and two NFL teams; of course that fact that one of them is the Cleveland Browns evens things out quite a bit. I have wondered why Michigan was blessed with the royalties of a namesake lake when it started out as part of the Indiana Territory.

Even though there is sibling rivalry with our three neighbors, there is no enmity. We sense that there is only an imaginary line dividing us. Whether I’m a buckeye or Michigander is a matter of inches. But standing there in that valley, looking up at that plateau, I got the sense that that was the terrain that marauding hoards would gather upon while planning to plunder and pillage my Hoosier home. I got the sense that those are my enemies; no need to rebuild that bridge across SR 423, just leave it down.

I also thought to myself, “man Abraham Lincoln must have really wanted to get out of there to cross that river.” The Ohio River is a boarder to be reckoned with. You don’t just wait until the middle of summer for the river to dry up and walk across the creek. No you are going to get your back wet when you cross it. We spent a wonderful hour sitting on a bench overlooking the river pondering the golden orb in the sky the brought warmth to a winter weary bones. The lovely Miss Beverly stretched out like a cat sleeping. Me, brooding looking out over the river to the other side, thinking about what a difference ¾ of a mile of water makes.

Later in the day, room was made in the Inn. Bev and I went up and checked in. Then it was time to hike, or as I like to say, time for topography to kick my butt. Clifty Falls has some of the most intense hiking that I remember enjoying in the Hoosier state park system. All of that run off from the glaciers down the limestone bedrock makes for some steep ravines. They also do a pretty remarkable job of hiding the falls. You have to work at it to see what all of the hype is about. After checking in, the lovely Miss Beverly and I set out on our quest. I do like hiking in the early spring when the sun has warmed things but not enough to bring out all of the foliage. You can see a long way through the trees which is important when you are that close to Kentucky. In the middle of summer, the marauders could sneak up on you and do you harm with all of that foliage for cover.

As we were walking down trail 4, it struck me how different the lovely Miss Beverly and I are in our physicality, the lovely Miss Beverly a gazelle and me an ox. She was lithely picking her way down the ravine; never a misplaced step. I was plodding down, trying to keep my center low, sure that my feet would slide out from underneath me as gravity pulled me to the valley floor. She, able to stop and look at the jack in the pulpit, left me 60 yards behind as I hunted for every inch of ground that was a little less steep.

Deep in the floor of the ravine, we were faced with a convergence of decisions. We could hear the falls up the stream bed. Mapless, we could go off to who knows where on trail 2. Or we could head back in the general direction of the Inn on trail 3. We chose the path less traveled and headed for the falls. In a foreshadowing of the next day’s excursion the gazelle like Miss Beverly leapt from stone to stone seemingly above the babbling of the brook. I was slowly picking my way through a mine field of shifting stones, unsure of my balance. Fifteen minutes later, our efforts were rewarded with a streambed view of Hoffman falls. Hiking back out, we were left with one less choice. After being stopped on trail 2 by a sign that said “No Hiking Beyond This Point; No Swimming.” We headed up trail 3 where my ox like skills paid dividends.

An ox can plod up a hill just fine. Thank you very much. I have never fallen up a hill. Even Jack fell down with Jill tumbling in the same direction. Back bent, legs churning like pistons I could hear the Clifty Falls restaurant buffet calling me. A tractor beam of swiss steak and fried chicken had firmly attached itself to my belly button and there was no stopping me. The gazelle like Miss Beverly was having a more difficult time. Gravity was holding her back. Her pace had slowed. If we have been chased by coonskined topped, long rifle toting, tree splitting pioneers, she would have been overtaken and taken to the land of blue grass, where smitten by her ravishing beauty Davie Crocket would have stayed home never knowing that he was supposed to remember the Alamo, thereby altering the course of one of our earliest jingoistic wars. With so much at stake I slowed my pace and allowed the lovely Miss Beverly the opportunity to catch up.

Early the next morning, we were up in time to watch a glorious sunrise as the sun slowly spilled into to river valley as it crested the horizon. The sun above the valley mist was a sight to behold as we were 400 feet above the valley floor. It was one of the most perfect sunrises I have had the chance to witness. As I fueled up with a tall stack of buttermilk pancakes and the gazelle like Miss Beverly nibbled on eggs, bacon and toast, we plotted our strategy for the day’s hike. According to our map, the sign prohibiting hiking and swimming was in the way of our goal to walk to the Clifty Falls and get a close up look at God’s beautiful creation. We decided to check it out.

Back down trail 3, the lovely Miss Beverly glided down. I plodded along carefully picking my path; noticing once that we now needed to be on the look out for Assassin deer. We were being stalked by deer that had no regard for nature’s beauty. Rather than limit the damage to the ecosystem caused by their sharp cloven feet by staying on the trail, they repeatedly ran pell mell down the hill, disturbing the erosion protecting layer of leaves; leaving precious top soil susceptible to the eroding rains and run off. I would not be surprised in these 400 foot ravines were started by the ancestors of these careless ruffians on four feet.

Getting to the bottom of the hill we walked over to the sign that had stopped our progress the night before. Looking around and consulting our map we decided that we had been the victims of a cruel hoax. The sign had obviously be hauled to this spot and propped up against a tree. Upon closer examination, the posts had rotted off at ground level. It was obvious that assassin deer had come across the broken down sign elsewhere in the park. Working together, the herd had gotten the sign up on the back of a confederate, and they had dropped it off here, hoping to detour us into a deadly trap.

We were having none of it. Stepping around the wobbly ruse, the gazelle like lovely Miss Beverly headed out on our quest for beautiful scenery. Rounding the bend we readily found the creek bed that we were to follow. Unfortunately, Mother Nature had become incontinent and was wetting the bed. The creek bed was pretty full. Fortunately, plenty of rocks were sticking up making for an interesting walk up stream. The lovely Miss Beverly with her gazelle like tendencies was making good progress. I was doing okay until I reached a place where the rocks were too small for my big feet and placed too far apart for easy leaping for an ox of my size.

Once you decide that you don’t care if your feet get wet, it is pretty easy to pick your way upstream in a creek that is a little fuller than it should be. As always, ease should not be confused with comfort. That water was cold, and my heavy, squishy shoes soon had me wishing that I was more gazelle like in my physical abilities. For an hour, I sloshed along and the lovely Miss Beverly was prancing from rock to rock with perfectly dry feet. Finally, up around a bend, we met our Waterloo. The lovely Miss Beverly would have to join me in the water if our journey was end in idyllic scenery. There was a trail leading out of the woods. Idyllic scenery had pretty much lost its shine.

We decided to abandon our quest. The point of our extraction meant that the lovely Miss Beverly would have to use all of her gazelle skills to get out with dry feet. The rock that she was to jump to was protected by 5 ft of water. It presented a small landing pad and would require an immediate 3 ft jump to rocks with greater surface area and a place to stop forward momentum; even a gazelle needs a landing pad. Bev was pretty sure that she could make it but the degree of difficulty left her uneasy about carrying her iphone across in her pocket. One false step and the iphone would be headed of a rice bath to dry out.

She took off her fleece jacket, zipped the phone up in a pocket, and told me to get ready to catch it.

Until that moment, we had been chatting about how well she had done leaping here and there. She had kept her feet completely dry. It was like she was a gazelle. She wadded her coat into a ball. I positioned myself 8 feet away on the landing pad, arms outstretched read to make an ox like catch. At that moment, as she was getting ready to launch coat and phone, Bev asked if I were going to write about her gazelle like abilities in the blog. Which was unfortunate, because as she launched the coat the light fabric was more strongly affected by the slip stream than the heavier iphone. Physics being physics, the jacket slowed faster than the phone. This put the phone ahead in the race towards my face. Distracted by the slower jacket parts, I closed my arms a millisecond too late. The pocketed phone smashed into my lip with surprising effect.

Rather than responding with a chuckle and “your gazellian physicality would be the perfect blog topic”, I let out a string of expletives that hardly seemed an appropriate response to blog topic brainstorming. “There are no bad ideas.” Thankfully, the phone left its mark. That made it much easier to explain my strong response to possible blog topics.

As we hiked out of the streambed, the sting was starting to wear off. The humor was starting to assert itself. Time was letting us see the humor of the situation. I told her that every time that I referred to her as a gazelle in this blog, my mind’s eye would see two cloven little forefeet pushing a phone laden jacket towards a date with destiny with my swollen lip. What a difference a second makes.

Take care,

Roger.