The world is home to some magnificent waterfalls. There isn’t one continent in the world that doesn’t have some sort of waterfall, from small streams that meander their way gently down a series of slippery stones to magnificent falls that plunge from dizzying heights, as water makes it way down from the highest elevations to end up eventually in the sea.
One of the most spectacular is Victoria Falls in Africa with its breathtaking vista. You can also find waterfalls in the great redwood forests of Big Sur on the West Coast. One writer reminded me of another impressive sight: “Skye, dark, mountainous, majestic, with its waterfalls turning to white spray as they tumble from cliff to cliff into the sound, from out the clouds that hide their mountain-summit sources.” An excerpt from Section 1 of The Living Fairy Faith Chapter 1 Environment of The Fairy Faith of Celtic Countries by W. Y. Evans-Wentz, a Citadel Press Book, published in 2003 by Kensington Publishing Corp., New York. Its ISBN is 0-8065-2579-7.
There is another one that we’re lucky to have almost in our backyard…
For decades it was the honeymoon destination for both Americans and Canadians. It still is, but not to the degree that it once was. Movies were made at the Falls, mostly love stories. If you’ve ever been to Niagara Falls then you know the sound made by the torrent of water that plunges to the rocks far below. I’ve been in the tunnels that come out beneath the falls. The sound in there is incredible, especially as you get closer and closer to the pounding, pouring waters. It’s hard to imagine a deep-forest quiet in a place like this. But late in the night of March 30th, 1848, that’s exactly the sound residents woke to. When you’re so used to the noise of the city around you, it’s difficult to sleep when that noise is no longer there. Such was the case on the night in question in the mid-1800s. Something was terribly wrong. It was too quiet…
Niagara Falls had dried up. You can imagine the fear in these people as they tried to discover what had happened. The silence lasted until April 1st, when the sound of a train rushing at full throttle broke the silence. The water had returned and was plunging again into the chasm below. What had happened was very simple.
The answer was explained in “Niagara Falls Has Stopped! by Rudolph Balauff in The Original Country Accents’ Magazine 1990 Farmer’s Almanac. He writes: “With the crisis over it was now possible to look for a rational explanation of the phenomenon. The answer was finally found. That the year the spring storms were especially violent. As was frequently the case the waters of Lake Erie, which feed into the Niagara River, were covered over that winter by a heavy layer of ice. The repeated gales that spring managed to break up the ice flows and they headed for the river exiting the lake.” There was literally a traffic jam of ice at the narrow entrance to the river. “It took dozens of hours for the action of the blocked waters to finally force up a passage through the ice and return the normal flow to the Niagara River and the Falls.”
I just can’t imagine what the silence must have been like when the water stopped flowing over onto the huge rocks below. When my waterfall is shut down, you really don’t wonder at the silence. But when it’s up and running again throughout the warm months, you do wonder how you ever got along without its soothing lullaby.
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Don Jackson
