He smiled. “Big Fiery Gizzard Creek.”
“Do I hear a waterfall?”
“Black Canyon Cascades. Not far.”
The cascades were almost violent, the water narrowing in a rock canyon and roaring through it. The walls were stained dark, and the air was ten degrees colder from the wind and mist. The power of nature.
She looked up at the sliver of sky above them. “I feel like the earth is keeping a secret down here.”
He looked up too. “Mother Nature more than earth, but whatever we call it, she’s keeping all kinds of secrets.”
Not much farther, they came to several tall rock features, and at first, she thought they were chimneys from an old house, the wooden structure gone, but she quickly realized they weren’t manmade — they were much too wide, too tall, and not at all uniform.
“What on earth?” she asked.
“The chimneys,” he told her. “Rock that didn’t erode, but all the soil around them did. The geology here traces back to the Pennsylvanian age. Three hundred million years, give or take. Everything you're standing on was once a river delta.”
She frowned. “But we’re on a damned tall mountain.”
“Oh, before it was a river delta, it was an ocean floor. After, it was buried under sediment, then uplifted. Tectonic stuff.”
The biggest rose sixty feet out of the earth and looked deliberate.Architectural. Tuesday left the trail to walk around the base of the largest one and pressed her palm flat against the rock, feeling the cold of it, the texture. Was she imagining the deep,deeproots?
“Have you ever climbed them?” she asked.
He grinned. “No, but I’ve considered it.”
She was tempted to give it a try, but something told her he had a lot of trail still to show her, so she didn’t.
Not quite a mile later, he left the main trail, and she followed without questioning him since he clearly knew the way. Plus, she was pretty sure she could hear another waterfall off in that direction.
And sure enough, the sounds grew louder until they stood looking down at a beautiful waterfall.
“Sycamore Falls,” he said. “Always seems worth the side trip.”
“Absolutely. If this is a side trip, I can’t wait to see the destination.” She grinned at him. “But I’m enjoying the journey. I can see why this is your favorite trail.”
She breathed in and parsed the scents. Moss and minerals, crayfish, a myriad of tree species and other plants. A raptor of some kind. Some squirrels. Maybe an otter, though she didn’t see one. Also, a large buck had recently peed nearby.
He waited patiently while she took it all in, and she appreciated that.
They descended the rough path back to the main trail, sinking into the gorge as they trekked past white blazes on trees, the sounds of the creek soothing beside them.
Until it wasn’t there anymore.
She stopped walking, and Knife stopped behind her.
“It’s gone,” she said.
“Yeah.”
She turned to look at him. “The creek isgone. It didn’t branch off somewhere. It just… disappeared!”
He smiled. “Karst. There’s a cave system under it, and the water drops into it and runs underground for about a quarter mile before it surfaces again. Depending on the water table, sometimes it disappears and reappears in different places.”
She stood still and listened to the silence where the water had been, and her wolf was as flabbergasted as the human. Water didn’t justvanish. And yet.
“That’s mind-boggling,” she said. “Something I’ve never encountered before.”
