I was fishing along a mountain stream and working my way up into a canyon of Northern California. The stream was running pretty good, and the plant life was starting to grow over the water in some places. Forming a natural bridge of life from one side to the other. Ahead of me was a log that had rolled down the steep side and rested across the stream so that I could cross. I stepped onto the log and looked up ahead to see what was coming, my friend who was with me was down below using a fly in a area of water that looked pretty good. As I looked ahead it seemed like their was a glimpse of something in the trees ahead. There seemed to be some extra mist and even a occasional rainbow forming in the air above. I figured it must be a waterfall that we would be coming up to soon.
My friend caught up to me and we moved along the creek bed further, trying are best not to get our feet wet. Which normally involved jumping from one rock to the next, and then waiting a second to see if the leap took away our balance. We had done pretty good so far, but because of the fact that the creek sometimes hides it's slippery rocks. We both were walking with one wet foot, and one dry one.
As we approached the area I was seeing the mist. The bushes had gotten so thick, and the trees that had fallen had blocked the way pretty good. We could hear the water fall now, even though it was still muffled a bit through the extreme amount of plants and debris that separated us. Call it, "no wanting to give up" or "just plain stubbornness", but we wanted to see this waterfall we kept hearing just above.
We broke down are fishing rods into smaller pieces, made sure are back packs were all zipped up with nothing hanging out, and started bush whacking our way thought this thick green barrier that separated us from our goal. As we did, I hit a stick that dug into my leg and ripped open the skin with a lot of pain. Ouch! I knew I was going to feel that in the morning. My friend was behind me cussing at a branch I snapped back on him and hit his face. We continued on though, knowing that there was something we wanted to see just up ahead. Finally we hit a clearing and ahead were two boulders we needed to climb and then we would be there. With all of this work, we were thinking this better we worth it or at least be a source for some big fish.
I climbed onto the rock and looked over the crest, and in front of my eyes was something I never expected. It seemed that this creek was not just coming down the canyon. It was also flowing off of the canyon walls from two sides. Two smaller creeks were meeting the one we were fishing and making two twin water falls. It was amazing watching these waterfalls cascading into a pool down below, breaking into a mist of two rainbows that were alive with color and beauty. We felt like two explorers to a new world, knowing that this was sitting here without our knowledge all along. We were at least 15 miles from the nearest home and on a creek few people knew of, yet here was this site that the world would have loved to know about. Yet it was ours, and ours alone to see and enjoy for all that it offered.
We walked up to the base pool and in the water were huge trout swimming around, yet for some reason we were just happy to leave them alone in their little secluded home. Besides we had blood flowing down our legs and needed to tend to the wounds we had to get, to get to this place. It seemed like only a few minutes of sitting at this location. We ate lunch, swam in the pool and even skipped a few rocks. Yet those few minutes were actually hours and soon we had to make our way back home. Yet, the waterfall would always run in our memories. A place we had to work hard to find, but knew the value in our efforts once we got there.
To me that moment, many years ago taught a great lesson to me about life. In my exit from the Witnesses, and I am sure others will relate too. There was often the site of others living a nice life of freedom. Yet for us to reach that point, we had to take ourselves through moments of difficulty and even receive some personal damage along the way. We pushed and we pushed, and only we could understand the reason for our efforts.
In the end though, we reached the beautiful waterfalls of our life. Of course, we might have had a few scars from the journey to this point. Yet no one could take away the fact that we were now where we wanted to be. In moment of beauty that is ours and ours alone. Not something we needed a photo of, for our minds knew the value of this moment enough to see the need to record every detail.
So as you make your journeys in this life and look up ahead to the things that you want to achieve. Remember always, that the destination might be wonderful and yet the journey might be more difficult then we imagined. In the end though, the beauty of the end result will be even more then you expected and the journey will just make the final moment all the more worth it. For you will reach your goals and personal beauty in life, through your own effort and your own desires and often what you expected, will pale in comparison to what you really get. For you might have expected to see a small ripple of water, and end up with a site you remember your whole life.
My thought
Dragon