The Trees in Front of the View

Today Tom, M-M, and I drove an hour north of Atlanta to Amicalola Falls in order to hike up one of the trails to the head of the falls. It was a beautiful day, sunny but cool in the morning when we left. We reached Amicalola State Park a little before 10 a.m. and began our hike on the hour, heading up the Creekside Trail to the trail to the top of the falls. The hike was easy walking to begin with, the path following the creek through a green understory of mountain laurel and rhododendron and an overstory of mixed hardwoods: oaks, yellow poplar, red maple, and sourwood. Mary-Margaret stopped several times to take close-up photographs of some of the fall flowers blooming even in this drought.

At the base of the falls, however, the trail becomes a mite more strenuous where Georgia state inmates, working with the GA Department of Natural Resources, have built some mighty fine, steep stairs to the top of the falls: 604 steps in all, according to park records. Now I've been hauling around heavy boxes lately in this move, but I haven't done a lot of walking--at least not like I should--and I had to stop for breath a few times up those stairs. In addition, I have a bad knee that I suspect is going to require surgery here soon. I took another dose of ibuprofen before taking the first step up. But the hike was a good climb, where one can enjoy the beauty of the falls from different vantage points along the way and then be rewarded with a lovely view of the surrounding mountains from the top of the falls.

However, I was a little disappointed to see the large parking lot and the well-maintained road that allow tourists to forgo the climb for an easy reward of the view. "Okay," I thought, "the view might be better appreciated by those of us who sweated a little to get here, but the view is also available to folks who would love to walk the path but who can't, such as the elderly and the disabled."

Then Tom overheard one of those people complaining about the view. "They need to clear this stuff out so you can see the view," a woman in her sixties whined, waving her hands at the trees. Yet there from the vantage of a well-crafted wooden pathway with safety rails was the view. Sure, the space didn't accommodate a large group of people, but with patience, one could wait one's turn to have the view to one's self. And just a few hundred feet down a much less strenuous trail than the 604 steps we climbed up were several yards of path where anyone could have plenty of space to view the receding blue of the mountains against the washed-out blue of the early afternoon sky.

Later I thought about how too many times most of us are like that woman, wanting immediate access to something we desire and blaming other people or circumstances that seem to block our way. And yet with just a little patience or a few steps out of our well-worn paths, we could have what we desire--or even something better.