I just got back from a mountain where I did a bush walk. The aim of the walk is to end up at a waterfall, but when you finally arrive, there is a huge wooden barrier. We climbed the barrier and stumbled over the rocks looking for perfect sitting spots to admire the falls. I found a spot right on the edge of the drop and wrote this.
We live atop a waterfall. No one knows what’s at the bottom. Folk have got lost down there and never come back. We’re told not to venture down.
But I’ve always wondered. So I send notes down there. Scratched in bark, I watch them teeter on the edge before plunging into froth. After a few years I stopped sending them. I had to assume it was just as people said. I vowed never to venture.
Until I looked up one morning and saw a note just like mine, dangling from a pulley system made of vines. It was the folk who ventured. They were not lost or dead. They’d found friends, caves and new animals.
I couldn’t convince the others. I am lost to my people now, but I have a new family and I can wonder as far as I like.