The Art of Chasing Waterfalls

I’ve went without internet for eight days and I survived. I know, many of you are thinking you couldn’t do it, but trust me you can and the break is totally worthwhile. My parents, Ryan and I traveled to the Pacific North West and road tripped around Oregon and the very northern portion of California; it was on this trip that I made a philosophical discovery about humanity. Perhaps an obvious one at that, but nothing that I had ever thought about that intently before.

From my analysis it seems that people framed by nature are more tuned into to their sensibility, spirituality and overall sympathy. When to the west is an endless sea with depth and discoveries yet to be made and to the east are massive momentous mountains that take miles and muscle to climb it’s hard to forget the value of life and the place humans stand in the world.

In cities almost everything is human-made which causes people to forget about all the wonder and mysticism that exists; people forget about the magic and beauty that has been created not by us but before us and forever after us. Perhaps it is why people around mountains and great sources of water are often times more conscious of their environment why they are healthier, veganier, greener than others—why the smile more and say good morning to strangers. In cities if you smile and say good morning the stranger will probably ask you for your change— we shouldn’t have to give away money just for being friendly, so people shrink away from each other in fear of connections or lack of connections.

The mountains and oceans and waterfalls help us to embrace the gentleness, the fierceness, the wildness of life. There is strength in the calm unmoving mass of the mountains. There is wonder and intrigue in the crashing waves against the jagged rocks of the sea. And there is humbleness standing underneath the great redwoods, knowing we can never get that tall, but we can forever embrace their tenacity, stubbornness and awesomeness and know that a part of nature will forever be in us.