the path to a high waterall

reaching toward the first people

every year I like to hike up the old trail

that Native Americans must have used 

since the ice went home to the north,

I love the way it partners with the swiftly falling stream,

making a path that feet can follow

near the bedrock drops that cascade steep and white,

I like to feel for the making of the path,

and for the sureness of the relationship 

of the makers with the way of the land

and the grace and beauty possible in the passage,

we hike to a special waterfall

whose high beauty draws us,

just as it must have drawn the first people. 

by Henry H. Walker
June 27, ’14