I love waterfalls.
They are beautiful, shiny, wet, and wild, and wonderful.
I've seen mostly smaller ones.
I've seen bright waters arcing out from a narrow opening in rock, and I've seen the water dripping, seeping, and pouring and running down hillsides of rock.
I've seen from one extreme to the other, but I've not seen it all.
More than the visual appeal, there is power in these falls. The falling water somehow scrubs the air. You can feel the friction in the air. You can feel it bristle and rub against your skin. You can smell and taste the freshness. Something to do with ions and an exchange thereof.
It is electric.
Water, falling, with power, speed, and mass practically begs us to -- do something with it.
Make electricity.
Grind wheat or corn, or boulders into pea gravel. (That's how nature often does it, after all.)
Operate machinery.
Cleanse ourselves, our souls, and our environs.
There is nothing that compares to the free-falling of free-flowing water.
But, for all the magic and thrill, and ionic-exchanging fresh electricity, we must remember that power misused or misdirected has the ability to destroy. That same roaring rush of 'might' that lights your home can also send it spinning like a rubber raft on the ocean in a hurricane.
I love waterfalls, but I have a dread of floods, but in a way, a flood is a horizontal, not vertical, waterfall. The beginning of most floods, as they breach a dam or slam into a bridge uses that same power harnessed and misdirected as a vertical fall down a hillside.
Of course, flooding can also be sneaky. That compares to the waters that drip, ooze, and fall over rock walls and fallen trees. The water level can rise, and spill over in increments, and before you know it, you are knee deep, hip. deep, waist deep in sapping, sucking insidiously flowing waters.
I suppose, in conclusion, that the leaping, roaring waterfalls are inherently more honest than flooding. They excite and refresh me, mentally, spiritually. and physically. They thrill me, in so many positive ways.
I seek them out, in my own small way.
I avoid, or try to, the floods, and I fear them.
Power is power, and it is a personal choice how we see it.
How we use it.
But we should always be aware of it.
We should remain in awe of it, not differentiating between horizontal and vertical. As power is power, so water is water. It is for each of us to decide how we see it.
