A Cascade of Nostalgia
ForestFalls, named in part for a very tall, very beautiful cascading waterfall (called "Big Falls") at the eastend of town, is a small village in the foothills below Mt. San Gorgonio inSouthern California. I made my first sojourn there when I was in high schoolwhen a group of “Jesus freak” young people like myself car caravanned therefrom Riverside. I still have photos and many fond memories from that day.
Ahalf dozen years after that first trip, I returned to Forest Falls to attend myvery first writers conference at Forest Home, the beautiful conference centerthere. At the age of 21, I had entered a national writing contest, won thirdplace, and the person who called to make that announcement told me, “I see thatyou live in Southern California. In addition to everything else you’ve won[publication in a national magazine with a readership of six million, plusbooks on writing AND the entire Chronicles of Narnia series, just forfun], we’d like to send you to a writers conference.”
Didthose lovely folks have any idea how attending that conference would catapultme into my dream of writing and publishing? I don’t know, but it sure did.
Whenmy children were old enough, we returned for a day of hiking, picnicking,blackberry picking—and, at the end of it, a trip to the ER for stitches aftermy eldest son stepped on a piece of broken glass while wading barefoot in thestream.
Ican assure you, when I returned many years later with three young grandkids intow, I made sure all of us kept our shoes on.
Atsome point in my adult life, I picked up a friend who was trying to decidewhether or not to leave her abusive husband. I took her up to Forest Falls inmy beloved VW bug. While we rock-hopped over rough terrain to get to the falls,we also attempted to navigate the equally challenging topics of “commitment”and “self-esteem.” Good talk. Good walk. But when we returned to the car—the onlyone at the trailhead on a weekday—we discovered it had a flat tire. In thehours previous, I had been trying to convince my friend that she was strongerthan she realized. When she saw the flat, she began to wring her hands and cry.(Mind you, this was decades before the convenience of cell phones.) She was notreassured when I told her not to worry, we would, together, fix the flat ourselves.But we did, handily. At some point, a young man with a six-pack of beer pulledinto the parking area on a motorcycle. He took a seat under a tree and watchedus do the work—and I was grateful that he never offered to help, just sat anddowned his beer, one after another. Because when we triumphantly finished andclimbed into the car to leave, my friend told me how empowered she felt.Booyah.
Inthe past, the trip to Forest Falls required some planning, as it was somedistance from where I lived. Moving to Calimesa, however, put me much closer,so that now I can get up there in just over half an hour, traffic permitting.
Soof course, I had to take Maya. Here’s what happened when I did:
Assoon as we left the car and hit the trail, we saw the giant sign erected by theForest Service: The area around the waterfall was “closed,” for all intents andpurposes. Why? Because in order to get to the falls, you have to cross MillCreek, and (as mentioned in my previous post), the water in the creek isrunning so high and so fast, it’s treacherous. Plus someone dies every year bytrying to climb the falls, and I think USFS is simply tired of calling Searchand Rescue to pack out another dead body. Seriously.
However—wecould still walk along the creek, which we did. (Click here to see a bit of that.) Until she saw people. Too manypeople. There may have been a total of five or six at various points along thestream. But for her, one human (besides me) is too many. So she panicked. Whereto escape?? Into the water. She headed straight into the stream and would havepaddled to the far side had I not reeled her back in. (When we hike, she’s on afifteen-foot lead, so she really did get pretty far before I wrangled hercloser to shore.)
WhenI wouldn’t let her retreat, she did what I have taught her to do when she’s fearful,which is to sit down and take a breath. (Okay, I know you can’t really teach adog to take a nice deep breath, but she sits, and I do the deep breathing.)Yep, she sat her little bottom right down in that ice-cold water. Silly dog.
Wedidn’t stay much longer; I had things to do at home. But I did stop to takepictures, and realized (shout out to all my Baldy friends!) from a certainpoint, you can see all the way from Forest Falls to Mt. Baldy. And yes, of courseI waved when I realized that. You never know who might be waving back.
