National Travel

Meditations from Swallow Falls State Park, Garrett County, Maryland

Meditations from Swallow Falls State Park, Garrett County, MD

Sharing Falls

Swallow Falls State Park is a quiet forest in Western Maryland nestled away from the hustle and bustle of urban life. It is also home to three waterfalls, including the largest falls in the state. However, the park is not named for the 63 foot raging falls that are its centerpiece. Ironically, this snow white giant is known as Muddy Creek Falls while the park garners its namesake from a wide, stocky waterfall, perhaps a quarter of Muddy Creek’s stature.

The park is heavily forested with hemlock, pine, birch, and maple. In its midst, are dark green canopies, soft brown paths, and lime colored moss. Large boulders and slabs of siltstone intermingle with lush rhododendron and thick exposed tree roots cover the forest floor. Cutting through this dense vegetation is a powerful river that fills the surrounding forest with an ancient, cool air courtesy of the nearby falls.

The whole park is alive with energy: the energy of the river, the energy of the falls. There are days when human energy is there as well.

On these days voices can be heard giggling, laughing, and whispering. In the spring, fearless kayakers ride the river’s rapids. In the summer, near-naked bodies splash and play at the base of the frothy waterfalls. In the fall, washed reds, yellows, and browns accompany the green hemlocks and pines in a colorful farewell to another tourist season; camera clicks and flashes mark humanity’s grateful acknowledgement. And in the dead of snowy winter, when there is no other human energy around, a man proposes to the woman he loves on a thin, secluded bridge that spans the river just above Muddy Creek Falls. The falls were silent and frozen as my memory of that time.

The park is a haven to relatively few, however. Those that are familiar with it, though, know it is a very special place. It holds something mainstream society in the new millennia has forgotten about. It holds perspective. For me, it is the spiritual center of my universe.

Through all my travels, studies, professions, and relationships, Swallow Falls has acted as both my Mont Blanc and my Tintern Abbey. It is what I think of when I think of Nature’s power and energy. It is what I think of when I think of life’s meaning. However, unlike Shelley and Wordsworth, since finding my muse and my refuge, I am constantly drawn back for clean air, reflection, inspiration, and thanksgiving. With it, I have a place of peace, a place of imagination, a spring of wonderment.

Everyone needs a place like this. I know this because there was a time when I knew nothing of a Swallow Falls, and harbored a restless and anxious spirit. Growing up in a small college town, I felt trapped, if not constrained, as though I was missing something important. So after 18 years, I left my hometown in the Midwest looking for a place that was more practical and that had more opportunity – somewhere just right. Subconsciously, I think I still believed that man could achieve perfection and I was determined to find it.

I ended up in Tucson, Arizona, surrounded by jagged mountains, where land is flat and straight on the basin floor and the city, itself, is mapped out on a grid to make getting around a thing of ease. Studying archaeology, specifically that of the Southwest, at the University of Arizona, I saw firsthand how ancient cultures lived and thought about life. While tribes of the Southwest differ greatly from each other, they share a notion that life on earth is but one stroke of a larger mural that splashes across space and time, an ongoing narrative not bound by a corporeal death.

The Anasazi, in fact, built great kivas to always have a place to find spiritual refuge. These circular structures, dug down into the earth, acted as a place where the past meets the future, where memories meet dreams, and the rhythm of life is to be realized. They were places of reflection. They were centers of the community and for the community. They offered sanctuary from confusion and busy work. This idea had a profound effect on me.

I realized that while I found my studies highly stimulating, for all its beauty, opportunity, and practicality, Tucson had its problems as well. Both the university and the city prescribed to the notions of ‘bigger’, ‘better’, ‘faster’. Its pursuit of perfection frightened me. I missed the seasons, the friends, and the deep lush colors of my youth.

I missed simple things and, in some ways, I missed my ignorance. I realized, then, that the ideal society did not exist.

Everywhere I looked in Tucson, in Phoenix, in America, billboards were lording over me. Radios and Televisions blared loudly for my attention, telling me what I needed, what I should do. Nike said ‘Just Do It’ and millions of people adopted this as their life philosophy, as their identity, because it was easier than thinking, easier than caring, easier than reflecting on what life is about and the responsibility we bare to one another and our environment.

The seed of excessive economic growth had bloomed in the Southwest, just like the non-native plants that had been introduced by Easterners years earlier. It had changed and redefined priorities and boggled the mind, with its complex, intricate branches and its striking flowers. There was but one problem. These new foreign plants, with all their beauty, lacked healthy root systems. For all of their above ground wonders, they were not made to survive lifetimes upon lifetimes in the desert. It was simply unnatural. But urban officials and businessmen refused to see. These non-indigenous plants were fed constantly by water Tucson and Phoenix did not have to spare. Ultimately the depletion of Arizona’s water supply was so severe that they began bringing in water from Colorado to meet their needs. The Central Arizona Project (or CAP) was established to keep the roses, palm trees, and green lawns on an artificial life support system for years to come…that is until Colorado, itself, ran out of water. But that shouldn’t be thought about. It’s too far in the future. Just do it. Think later…if at all. There can be no relinquishing of what we have achieved. There can only be more to achieve, more wealth, more power, and more amenities.

This destructive mind-set afflicted Tucson and it afflicted me. It afflicted the country and it afflicted the world. In some way or another, we were all plagued by the greed and propaganda of old rich white men. We’re steeped in hundreds of years of it… Manifest Destiny was indeed alive and well in the new millennia.

However, in a world driven by fast-paced, savage competition, and very deliberate reification, there must run an alternative paradigm: one that speaks to collaboration, acceptance, patience, and spiritual exploration. No one has all the answers. Nothing is perfect. Nothing is only good or evil. There are always consequences. Unfortunately, many people believe accepting these assertions means accepting that we are living in a world of chaos and so they cloak themselves in a closed, controlled, material world, oblivious to children in sweatshops and the sludge of human pollution on shorelines.

This is where a special place comes in. It provides sanctuary from busy work and manipulative paradigms. Swallow Falls allows me to accept the fact that there is more to life than you or I and our arbitrary wants and needs. It forces me to realize that we are not the only ones with power and we are certainly not always in control. At the same time, it gives me an opportunity to be part of something meaningful by focusing on simple things. Whether it be a sense of community with family or friends, or communing with nature, or stretching the imagination, the secret to a rewarding life is all around us. Nature is both humbling and inspiring. A special place helps us see these secrets. In many ways, it acts as a gateway to contentment.

Like kivas were to the Anasazi, I seek the shade and energy of Swallow Falls State Park to both reaffirm and explore my place, humanity’s place, the Earth’s place, in a seemingly infinite and chaotic universe. The term ‘kiva’ literally means ‘world below’. In other terms, it is a root system that can nourish and sustain us. It is the grounding, saving grace of humanity, a hint at where we should be looking. Disengaging from the material world, a monster we have created, can yield something much more important, something much more meaningful. It can give us lasting purpose and direction.

Smelling the old, refreshing air of the falls, I realized I have not been the same since I found this place and am never the same when I leave it. That is the essence of a special place. That is why I write – to share my kiva. Find and share one. Cherish and protect nature’s goodness so that future generations may find strength and alternatives to combat destructive ideologies of the day.

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Meditations from Swallow Falls State Park, Garrett County, MD