Growing
up in a canyon on a river always makes a fascination with water, how it works,
how it gives and takes life, how it flows. That is my fascination. I think
water is beautiful in all of its forms and I’m quite thankful for it.
Waterfalls are definitely a part of that fascination and I’ve been going on
about them for a while.
Another
waterfall, or set of them really, that I like in Idaho is Upper and Lower Mesa
Falls on the Henry’s Fork of the Snake River in that eastern part of the state
right up against Montana and Wyoming. It’s in the Island Park Caldera—or coming
out of that caldera—in the Yellowstone ecosystem. You would think everyone
would know about these falls, but really, they haven’t gained a lot of fame. To
be honest, I think most people are surprised Yellowstone is even in Idaho, or
people who have driven into Yellowstone somehow think that they have therefore
been to Idaho. It doesn’t matter, the falls are not in Yellowstone Park at all
and because Yellowstone access in Idaho is by foot only, Island Park doesn’t
really get a lot of tourists except from the local area of southwest Montana
and eastern Idaho and a few from Wyoming. And if you look at it that way, those
people aren’t really tourists but residents enjoying the beauty of their own
back yard. And the area is beautiful. It isn’t the desert of the high plains of
eastern Idaho and Wyoming, but the forested beauty of the northern Rockies. It’s
a fly fisherman’s paradise. This area is where the head waters of the Henry’s
Fork begin and flow down out of this beautiful caldera into the main Snake
River that flows out of the snowy peaks of Yellowstone and Teton National Parks
joining together to make its way through southern Idaho.
Mesa
Falls, both upper and lower, is a beautiful waterfall from a fairly large river
that crashes over the typical volcanic basalt of the volcanic Pacific
Northwest, but it is surrounded by a verdant splendor of forest. I’ve only been
in the summer so I think of it as a cool oasis from the heat that even at that
high elevation seems to accompany Idaho summers. It’s beautiful. The calming
rush of waters drowns out the cacophony of normal life and transports you to
another world where you feel no need to do anything but exist and admire the
beauty of that existence. For me, what made it even better was that no one else
was there. I had the entire place to myself. It’s quite a distance from where I
now live, so I haven’t been back in nearly thirty years, so I probably wouldn’t
find it to be so isolated now, though I still doubt that it is ever teeming
with tourists. I would like to get back there a time or two just to enjoy the
slight mist, the green calm, and the crashing sounds that, in spite of their
seeming violence, bring calm.
As
Norman Mclean said, and I concur, “I am haunted by waters.” Mesa Falls in
eastern Idaho is one of those haunting places. And even though I haven’t been
there in years, it’s continued existence gives me pause in such a crazy time of
disease to be thankful that such beauty exists. That thought eclipses all the
confusion of quarantines and crowded hospitals and terrifying stories of lonely
deaths. So, while I may not be able to just hop in the car and take a ten hour
drive southeast of here, I can still know such beauty exists and be satisfied
that I have experienced it and maybe I will get to again someday.
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