Waterfalls

Who are you?  Who is the person reading this right now?  I could guess that you might be a fellow blogger in the personal finance and early, or not so early, retirement space.  Or maybe you enjoy reading blogs for entertainment and information?  Either way that makes you and me not so different at all.  So, let me take you back in time ten years ago to when I posed a question to my wife .  “It is your birthday tomorrow, Honey, what do you want to do?”  I asked that question ten years ago and her answer changed our lives.  “I want to go see some waterfalls!”, she said.

I broke out into a Cheshire Cat smile because again I knew I had won the relationship lottery when she agreed to be my life partner!  That might seem over the top? But there was more to this waterfall hunt than you know, so let me explain.  First, the weather report for the next day was 32 degrees F and rain, all day.  Added to that, Arkansas waterfalls are in remote areas of our state, several hours drive away and involve much strenuous hiking to find.  So, my wife was suggesting that middle aged her and middle aged me hike hard all day in the freezing rain.  I don’t know what your idea of fun is but most people do not suggest driving hours to take a walk in the woods while getting pelted with freezing drizzle as the perfect birthday date. But who wants to be most people anyway?

And that is exactly what we did and it was one of the best days of our married lives!  Because of the rain the falls were swollen with cascading water and because we are outdoorsy people we had sufficient cold weather rain gear to stay moderately comfortable in spite of the inhospitable conditions.  It was fun because it was our idea, it was fun because nobody sane would have done it and it was fun because each of us was with our best friend, our best crazy friend!

We knew where to find the falls because of a book on Arkansas waterfalls by Tim Ernst, a noted Arkansas outdoor writer and photographer.  This book, titled simply Arkansas Waterfalls,   detailed 120 Arkansas Waterfalls including photographs, rough maps, historical information and GPS coordinates for each of them.  After this first waterfall adventure we decided it was so much fun that we would embark on a quest to visit every one of the 120 Arkansas waterfalls in the book. 

A word of caution if you happen to be an Arkansas resident or someone who travels here for recreation.  Getting to all of these falls is not easy and getting to some of them is quite dangerous.  Some of them are simple where you can literally drive up and see them without getting out of your car.  Many of them are on well marked and well travelled trails.  But some of them are dangerous bushwhacks across extreme terrain with only your gps to guide you, in areas where there is no cell phone coverage and very little chance of anyone finding you if you are injured. Some of these are very long treks of up to ten miles on terrain that easily limits your pace to one or two miles per hour with a lot of climbing and scrambling on your hands and knees.

On these bushwhacks you will encounter cliffs, boulder fields, difficult water crossings and horrendous saw briar thickets. There are bears, cotton mouth snakes, copper heads and rattle snakes to add to the adventure.   We carried an emergency transponder beacon like the ones used to locate crashed airplanes by satellite because there was no way either of us could have gotten the other out if we had broken a leg or ankle or worse.  Bushwhacking is inherently dangerous and extremely demanding physically so I would not recommend it unless you are in very good physical condition.  All of that caution aside we never suffered anything more than scratches and bruises though we fell dozens of times on our bushwhacking hikes and we never had to trigger the transponder to call in a helicopter.  Fortunately the book describes the difficulty level of each of the falls treks and is pretty accurate about which ones are inherently hazardous.  Take note that when the author says the hike is dangerous or life threatening, he is not kidding!

That first cold and rainy waterfall adventure was ten years ago on my wife’s birthday and we hiked to the 120^th and final waterfall ten years later, again on my wife’s birthday, earlier this month.   So much of our lives have been lived over those ten years bracketed by our waterfall quest.  Our kids went from from, well, kids, to young adults with six university degrees between the three of them, and the seventh in progress.  We have had a few medical scares that haven’t impacted either of us permanently but have reminded us of the frailty of life.  My wife came within three minutes of qualifying for the Boston Marathon and would have if her inept coach (me) had realized it during the race.  My career went from lobbyist, to corporate executive of a Fortune 500 company, to slightly early retired and very part time consultant.  My wife’s parents and mine passed away. One constant that held us closely together during that decade was the shared dream of completing the journeys to all of the falls. 

 For fun my wife listed how many waterfalls we reached each year of the ten-year period.  And there, plain to see, were the patterns of our lives played out in waterfalls.  The only year we did not hike to a single falls was 2011, the year my employer sold the company and the year my new overlords elevated me from government affairs to running the company.  That was a whirlwind year when I did not  know if I’d keep my old job or be terminated, much less be promoted.  I was not ready to retire and with all the work turmoil there was precious little time for recreation.  Two years later I was very sick, and also had knee surgery, and wasn’t fit for hard hiking.  We only made it to three falls that year, 2013.  In 2015 and 2016, when I realized I was done with work and made my exit  we saw 39 waterfalls.  My focus on my career was over and we were focusing on life! And in this very new year of 2019, which is only a month old, we have already crossed off the last six falls in a furious onslaught, much like the last two hundred yard sprint in each of the marathons we ran together. A last little push when there isn’t any reason to save any of your reserves because the finish line is…right…there in front of you. 

It is bittersweet in a way, like any life accomplishment that matters, it has a bit of an anticlimactic feel to it. You’ve been there too, it could be your child getting married, landing that big promotion, going on that bucket list dream vacation or hitting your financial independence number.  You realize soon after the fact that it was the journey that mattered, much more than the prize.  The trip to the goal was everything, and now that you are there, what next?  Well, of course the answer for us is another quest, another goal, another journey to begin together.

We have been married 40 years and counting and sometimes people remark that it is quite a feat to stay together and to stay friends that long.  Not really, you just have to do things together you enjoy.  In our case they are active sports, hiking, distance running, skiing, fishing, tennis, pickle ball and off roading in our ATV.  But we also cook together, watch movies, go to church together and travel.  We do as much with others and separately as we do together, but we put a premium on the activities we share. 

The waterfalls quest spanned the transition in our lives of going from a high stress corporate executive who was always on call and a stay at home wife to a retired couple with some side gigs and volunteer work.  I think that was the perfect time in our lives to pursue it because it gave us a constant shared vision in the midst of great personal change.  In fact I will go so far as to encourage any of you who are within a few years of retiring or switching from a 9 to 5 to a entrepreneurial lifestyle to start a quest now with your partner.  And one that will take years to complete, hopefully long enough to bridge the transition to your next life.  I cannot explain the magic it brought into our lives, and the peace and the joy of stumbling out of the woods, exhausted, in the late afternoon having visited a breathtaking waterfall few people have ever seen.  Being able to share that with your partner and no one else, all the emotions of having been crazy tired, totally lost, and then delighted with the visual treasure of falling water cascading down to an emerald pool.  How do you stay together for 40 years?  You have to add magic.

What quests have you taken on or considered?

What do my wife and I need to do next, we need another quest!

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