Discovery

Day 288: Now you realize that this place wouldn't be secret if I told you where it was, so you're out of luck there. Suffice to say that a few days ago, I discovered an abandoned road...more like a disused trail, really...and only had time to explore part of its length. I had a pretty good guess what might lie at its end, but without checking a map, I had no idea how far I might need to travel to reach my imagined destination. With a little free time today, I decided to see how far I could get before a borrowed watch told me I had to turn around.

I was almost at the halfway point on the clock when I heard the sound of rushing water in the distance. Damn! Should I risk being late and go on, or do the responsible thing and turn around? I knew I'd make better time on the downhill run, so I decided to go up a switchback, at that point heading away from the water. I came to the second corner in fairly short order, but of course couldn't guess how many times the trail would turn back on itself before it delivered me to the creek. Fortunately, the next bend took me straight there, to this lovely and isolated weir. With the clock ticking, I snapped a few photos and then raced back down, reaching the bottom only two minutes past the time when I was expected to return. My slight tardiness was deemed justifiable by the like-minded soul who had loaned me the watch, a person who could not have resisted the siren call of that rush of water any more than I could.

It's not every day you get to name a geographic feature. Knowing what we know, the two of us were in complete accord on the designation of "Calypso Creek," and I'm sure he'll get up there to see it soon!