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    Tag: She-Qua-Ga Falls

    • Encountering Darshan

      “‘There’s a Sanskrit word, darshan,’ Jon said as we gazed up at Konka. ‘It suggests a face-to-face encounter with the sacred on earth; with a physical manifestation of the holy.’ I hadn’t known the word, but I was glad to have learnt it. Darshan seemed a good alternative to the wow! that I usually emitted on seeing a striking mountain.” – Robert Macfarlane, The Old Ways

      Waterfalls and sunrises and mountains and ancient trees are a physical manifestation of the holy. And so is the ripple across a calmly rolling ocean betraying a puff of wind. And the Milky Way on an especially dark and clear night. The catch in my throat when I see these things is spiritual, more than any church I’ve ever walked into, and I go out of my way to seek them out. Admittedly, I haven’t been to the Sistine Chapel yet, but I’m not convinced you can’t find the same thing walking deep into the woods.

      I stumbled on the quote above from Macfarlane and immediately identified with darshan in this context. I read this book almost eight years ago and keep returning, skimming over magical phrases and bucket list places. But in the end the book is about standing up and walking out to find yourself in the world. To come face-to-face with the divine requires inspired effort. Sweat equity in your spiritual education. Getting out there and in it.

      And yet… One of the most beautiful waterfalls I’ve ever seen is She-Qua-Ga Falls in Montour Falls, NY. It felt like cheating when I arrived, because you essentially drive right up to them. The falls are framed by houses and a concrete lined basin below and an arched bridge above. Like Niagara Falls humanity encroaches on the beautiful, threatening to edge it out in the process. But truthfully I don’t see those things at all; I look at the timeless waterfall captured there, like a rose under glass. And I see darshan.

      There’s a tendency for people to see something beautiful and immediately try to put a stake in the ground there. The Eagles wrote about this in The Last Resort. Houses lined up on the edge of the beach grabbing a share of sunset and water views. Homes mounted atop mountains to maximize the view while killing it for those looking up at the mountain they’ve scarred with a box. I visit a house with a great sunset view as often as I can, and would be a hypocrite if I were to condemn those who build for the view. For all the beauty we see from that house by the bay, I know that the view from the water or from the other side of the street is a row of houses. So I take no issue with the people who built Montour Falls for edging up to the falls and wanting to linger there, but wish the land around the falls had been preserved in its original state. Then again, the falls are beautifully accessible for those who can’t hike deep into the woods. Darshan on display for everyone. And maybe that’s enough.

      The network of trails and rhumb lines that weave across the Earth like a tartan reveal the whispers of those who came before us. There’s very little that hasn’t been seen by someone before us except in the most remote corners of the planet. But who said encounters with darshan must be exclusive anyway? Each human making their way in this world looks for something greater than themselves. Encounters with darshan are uniquely ours alone, even when shared with others we internalize it differently. But what is darshan if not seen through the lens of our mortal human perspective? We seek it out, discover something in ourselves, and try to capture the divine with a few inadequate words and pictures. And honor it as best we can before leaving it for others to discover in their own time.

    • She-Qua-Ga Falls

      In the town of Montour Falls, New York there is a stunning waterfall that looks like it’s flowing right into the homes that sit at the base.  When you drive down West Main Street, as I did, its a shock to look up and see this magnificent waterfall cascading down onto the town.  It was a wow moment on par with coming through the Webster Tunnel on I-376 in Pittsburgh to have the entire city open up in front of you.

      Seeing the falls with high water in the creek is a must.  I saw it on a warm February day with rain and melt-off fueling the tumbling waters.  Apparently that’s what She-Qua-Ga means; tumbling waters.  It’s not the only waterfall in Montour Falls – I’d also visited Eagles Nest Falls a couple of minutes away from She-Qua-Ga Falls, but it’s the most accessible.  You don’t have to get out of your car to be blown away by it, but of course you must.  Seeing a waterfall from afar is not the same as feeling the mist dance on your face and hearing the roar of the cascading water.  You should have a relationship with a waterfall, otherwise what’s the point?

      Anyone who knows me knows I like to dance with ghosts, and there’s a real tango with history at the base of She-Qua-Ga Falls.  This was the place where Queen of the Seneca/Iroquois Catherine Montour lived.  Several of the place names nearby honor her, including Catherine, Montour and Montour Falls.  It was the place where Red Jacket, who signed the Treaty of Canandaigua after the Revolutionary War, practiced his speeches.  If Fort Stanwix tore lands away from the Iroquois, Canandaigua promised to give some of this land back.  For the once mighty Iroquois to cede these lands to the new United States must have been a devastating and bitter pill to swallow.

      Around 1820 Louis Philippe, later the “Citizen King” of France from 1830 to 1848, sketched the falls from roughly the spot where I was standing taking them in when he was in exile.  At some point I’ll try to take a picture of that sketch and update this post with it.  For now, I’ve had the opportunity to see the real thing.