Th
ree full days of rainy gloom: clouds blanketing the sky and not budging. Drizzle and downpour. One day of snow that disappeared almost immediately. One child came down with a cold severe enough we had to change our Christmas travel plans. Hectic prep for a trip stopped. Maybe just because we hadn’t expected to be home for the holidays, we felt cooped up. High fever on Christmas Eve, more fever on Christmas Day. We made tea with lemon and played Spot It. Made more tea with lemon. Played more Spot It. Ran out as soon as stores opened for more tea and lemons.
Day after Christm
as, we broke free and loaded up in the car. Destination was a hike we’d heard about but had never done. An unmarked trail dense with rhododendron along Wolf Creek in the New River Gorge. We’d heard there was a waterfall somewhere down there. Just twenty minutes along, the trail started to slope downward. A few more minutes and we could see the cascade on our right. Wolf Creek was pumping. Spray flew. It was the kind of waterfall that has many levels, each one eliciting ooohh and aaahh. We looked from up above and then scrambled to the bottom and looked some more. Threw sticks in the lower current, and watched them get swallowed by another maelstrom below us. Snapped photos and breathed deeply.
On the way out, it started to drizzle again. The trees were bare and quiet. The rhodos, misty and content. And so were we.
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