(written on December 28th and 29th from notes taken previously)
I woke up this morning having been undisturbed through the night. 🙏
Whether that means my understanding of the laws is accurate, or it’s just that no one came by to check, I don’t know, but I’m grateful either way. 🙏
I planned to do a little hike up the trail, but I didn’t want to head into the hills until after I had used the bathroom. Soooo… I had to wait to have to go to the bathroom first. 🙃
I ate and chatted a bit with a nice local man who had dropped off a young lady who was going to do some hiking. I also chatted with a woman who had just come back from feral-hog hunting with her dog.
It’s fun talking to locals. One of the best parts of traveling. 😊
I also killed time keeping tabs on the college football scores until, finally, the awaited track up the hill to the bathroom was necessary. 🙃
The trail up the little canyon was beautiful, nearly all of it in the shade of the forest canopy. Eventually, the path crosses the river and takes you to a little swimming hole spot where you can jump off a rock that’s maybe 3 meters above of the water into a deep swimming hole.
I really love how deep swimming holes in rivers and at the base of waterfalls can get. 😊
It boggles my mind to some degree, because in all of my dam building efforts over the years, one of the most common issues that I have had to deal with is the build up of sediment.
Back when I lived in my car for the first time in 2010 and built a bath up Provo Canyon in the large drain tunnel that drains the creek coming down Slide Canyon into the Provo River, my bathtub filled with sediment very quickly. If I remember correctly, it was such a problem that I ended up rebuilding the entire dam and installing three drain pipes to be able to wash the silt down.
It seems like there shouldn’t be any swimming holes, because they should all get filled up by sediment that washes down river and settles to the lower spots, but I guess there are enough larger flood events to continually wash out the bottoms of those swimming holes, and I think those larger flood events also scour the bottom of the holes making them deeper and deeper over time.
Something like that?
Anyway, from that spot, I climbed up the falls to see what it was like upstream, quickly found a lovely spot to just sit and enjoy the scenery, and sat down to spend some more time working on journal catch up.
Eventually, the adventure bug bit me a little bit, I guess, and I started river walking, as there was no more trail that I could see.
I love river walking. It’s my favorite. 😊
So I walked up the river, deeper and deeper into the hills, following the river for… maybe two or three kilometers?
I honestly have no idea. Creek walking is a lot slower than trail walking, but up, up, and away I went. 😊
The whole hike was beautiful. There was a fun little spot where a tree had fallen across a deep swimming hole area, and I toyed with the idea of jumping in but didn’t–just kept heading upstream.
Eventually, I came to a place where the river forked, and I followed the left fork a good little ways longer until it forked again, at which point, funny enough, I ran into more trails. 🙃
I ended up turning back about that point, following one of the trails that looked like maybe it would follow the river I just walked up, but it eventually went off a different direction, so I cut through the bush back toward the river again.
On the way, I ran into one of the spring kill traps for possums. I think it’s the first time that I had seen that particular type of trap before, and lying on the ground below the trap was a dead possum that had clearly been crushed by the trap.
If I had to guess, I would say that that the kill was only a handful of days old, as the carcass was pretty much completely intact other than some maggots in the eyes, I think.
Does anybody else out there sometimes have those weird little micro compulsions to do stupid things like… stick your hand into a trap? 😆
😅
Sometimes I get some of the weirdest thoughts popping in. 🙃
After I made my way back down the river to the little swimming hole/mini cliff jumping spots, I did indeed go for a little jump and swim in the water.
A group of teenage-looking girls, and I think their transgender friend came up, and a couple of the girls jumped in as well.
There was a spot on the other side of the little swimming hole where you could jump from maybe 20 or 25 feet up? I think there were a couple of boys who told me about it when I first got there?
I don’t remember now, but I climbed back up above the waterfall area, crossed the river, scrambled up the other side, and made the leap.
Yes, as embarrassing as it is, because I wanted to look… cool. 😅
I wish I could say that such motivation is a rarity, but it happened the other day when cliff jumping as well. “Hey, look at me. I’m cool, because I’m jumping from the high place.”
That kind of show-off garbage.
Yes, jumping from high places is much more fun for me than jumping from lower places, but also, if there are people jumping from a lower place, and no one is jumping from the higher place, if it’s not dangerous, I get those twinges of pride–the desire for the praise of men, so to speak.
😕
On the hike back down, I was saddened to see that someone had decided it would be their version of cool to be destructive, putting their whole weight into young palm trees and other young trees and then leaning over to snap them in two.
😕
I’ve thoughtlessly done destructive things before when I was a youth and young adult, and I just finished, as a 43-year-old man, doing something to look cool, so I can understand the behaviors, but still, I wish people wouldn’t thoughtlessly destroy things.
Once back to the van, I dropped my stuff off, checked football scores (no reception up the canyon), used the bathroom, and then offered a ride to a 20-something -looking woman who’d been sitting waiting for a good while for someone to pick her up. She declined, and that’s probably for the best, as I’ve already been falsely accused at least once in my life and had that accusation change the entire course of my life.
After leaving Aongatete, I headed toward Tauranga and then Kaiate Falls, one of my highlight places from three years ago.
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 