There's a Wilderness Area I've been visiting for over a decade, a beautiful place, with cliffs overlooking a steep forested valley. Sometimes I camp on the cliffs, walk out to watch the sunset, the sunrise, the night's stars spinning slowly. Or I hike down an old road to the river, and spend the day playing in the rocks and pools and waterfalls. The water's clear and cold all year round, and there are few things more satisfying than jumping into a cold deep pool, and then splashing out to dry in the sun on warm rocks.
What I love about this place is that there's nothing but nature upstream - the whole watershed is protected. I've built up an intimate map of this place over the years, still remember my first visits, remember getting lost and finding trails, remember the unknowns and discoveries, remember floods and storms and mist and mornings and seasons, remember cold nights and campfires, hunger and feasts, climbing cliffs and waterfalls, padding barefoot panther-happy over boulders, crow-calling echoes across the valley, remember fields of wildflowers in bloom, lightning and shooting stars across the sky. It's one of the few places i feel perfectly comfortable.
continued at Daily Kos...
