niagara

After three days and 200 miles without a shower, I raced thunderstorms and a caffeine crash to Niagara Falls and won. The night before, I was a homeless vagrant facing off against a wild animal at 2 a.m. Today, I was just another tourist.

I almost didn’t make it. The bike path was a race outta hell, and I followed blind instinct along the surface streets of Niagara Falls. No time to dawdle and check the map — the hostel check-in closed at 7, and at the rate I was going, I was going to make it there at 6:58.

I careened around a corner and down a quiet, shady side street, and there it was. I leaned my bike against the railing and dashed up the steps and knocked on the door. 6:58 on the dot. The hostel owner greeted me with crossed arms and a scowl. He was one of those guys who would NOT have let me check in at 7:01. The type who looks at the world as if it were trying to impress him, and failing.

But it didn’t matter, because here I was at Niagara Falls. A place I had wanted to visit for… well, all of five hours. Just a funny way to motivate myself to do some miles. Even though I grew up in the Northeast, this was a tourist attraction that had managed to escape me. Turns out to see it, I had to bike all the way from south of the Mason-Dixon line.  

I navigated the circus of tacky attractions and followed a path that deposited me upriver of the falls. The water rushed excitedly like a crowd flowing into a concert venue, pulled by the insistence of gravity, tumbling and crashing into rocks. The air vibrated with the sound of rushing water. The sheer kinetic energy was infectious; I walked fast like I was trying to catch a plane.

Oh, and the sky! One half was covered in a thick, dark cloudbank that ended in a smooth line, and the other half glowed incandescent orange. I walked amidst tourists speaking Hindi, Mandarin, English, Spanish, French, German, beneath this surrealist’s sky. In my excitement, I loved each and every one of them. We were all sharing this enchanted moment, creating it in our overlapping consciousness.

And then I saw it—

the precipitous drop.

Precipitous is really the only word to describe it. 635,000 gallons per second spilling down a chasm the height of the Arc de Triomphe. Did people really go over this in barrels? I loved them too. There in the air suffused with saffron, I loved the falls and everyone around me and the power and majesty of this moment. The flashing neon lights, the tacky tourist traps — they were endearing in their insignificance compared to this, the very presence of god.

Like a mosquito biting the Buddha.

How very human, I thought. How charmingly, quixotically human. Making money on the banks of creation. Imagine how this place must have looked before. “WE WERE HERE TOO!” those neon lights screamed. I pitied them, for missing the point, but I forgave them too.

 My ego consumed in the crashing power of water.