Falling waters, uplifted spirits

There are places each of us hold sacred, and I’ve come to realize The Cascades in Giles County, Va., is one such haven of the heart for me. I’ve made the two-mile, slightly rigorous climb to the falls more times than I can count over the last two-plus decades, and always with people dear to me. Last Sunday’s hike was no exception.

My sister Colleen suggested we visit the natural treasure tucked inside the tiny town of Pembroke, and her husband and three children agreed. The oldest, Austin, wasn’t feeling well and ended up staying back with his dad. That left Colleen to carry the youngest, 3-year-old Skyler, for a considerable amount of the climb. To my niece’s credit, she managed to make it on her own farther than we expected. Bailey, her 5-year-old brother, was a real trail blazer -- provided we stopped frequently for snacks. He was a little disappointed with the offerings -- water, Gummy bears, cheese, Pringles and apples. “That it?” he asked sourly during the rundown of rations.


The place had changed little since I first visited in 1981, then tagging along with college friends that included Gilbert. Two others in that party ended up being my future daughters’ godfathers. On this trip, I especially relished the coolness under the canopy, given how hot it had been earlier. As always, there was much to hold our attention, from babbling brooks and boulders to ancient-looking stone stairways and mini mud bogs. Best of all: it wasn’t crowded despite the full car lot.

We eventually made it to the Promised Land: a clearing showcased by a beautiful waterfall and basin, our sensory reward for a hard climb with Pringles-preoccupied preschoolers. I took pictures while the others waded in cool waters that are amazingly calm after such a violent descent.
I could have sat there for hours, but we had a timeline. Plus, someone managed to spill most of the gummy bears and we were low on potato chips -- two potentially devastating developments for my snack-happy party.

We opted for the less obstacle-laden fire road on the descent and played word games to help pass the time. In between thickets of oaks and elms and hemlocks, we’d get smacked with a water drop or two, not realizing until then it was lightly raining. Eventually we saw the first bridge and reunited with Phil and Austin. A stop at a nearby Dairy Queen is a Prosser tradition, and I must mention the “Napoleon Dynamite moment” when we ordered two small ice cream cones in the near-empty restaurant. We were given a seemingly random order number the teenaged clerk jotted down on a piece of paper -- despite being the only ones in line by a long shot. He weighed each soft ice cream cone, inexplicably went extra light on the 25-cent sprinkles, and then turned and called out our number. You had to laugh at the lunacy.

I could tell, as I cataloged the brick homes and elementary school along the hilly highway back to Blacksburg, that there was much here to remember. There was the service station called Tickle’s and another shop with a maroon-and-orange Hokie-punch-buggy-no-punch-back VW bug in the lot. The Kidz Bop CD, I kid you not, played better tunes than the radio stations we could pick up. And then there was my sister, excitedly prepping me for the following morning’s Body Pump class; my brother-in-law, patiently parenting from the rear of the Durango; my nephews, getting along for most of the ride; and my niece, dutifully licking her ice cream cone in her car seat. She still hadn’t finished when we pulled into the driveway 40 minutes later. In a much busier place, these kind of details would be drowned out by the other “noise” of daily life. I’m grateful to my sister and her family for providing me so much to savor.