Water, water everywhere

Check that. It’s not often that anybody is around to hear it.

Last Wednesday was one of those quasi-divine afternoons at Pyramid Lake, when the sun was all fired up and showing off, the air was locked into a very solid azure-cerulean scene, the clouds were completely clichéd with that cotton ball look, and the wind had just washed down a couple of Valiums with a quart of beer. The surface of the lake was begging for someone to put on a wetsuit and ski. There were no takers.

I trudged down the sandy, sloping path, reached the beach between the lake and the lagoon and spread out the comforter. The plan was simple: indulge in some earnest dozing and shift into a lazy, good-for-nothing, no ‘count dream state.

My horizontal position turned out to be aurally entertaining. As I lied down and shut my eyes, I noticed that my right ear was picking up the gentle slishing sounds of the tiny waves that were lapping on the shoreline. Slish, slish, slish, lap, lap, lap.

Simultaneously, my left ear was receiving the spattering sound of the small waterfall up the gulch made by the trickling creek that is the creator of the small lagoon. Splat, splat, splat, trickle, trickle, trickle. So what I had goin’ on was the stereoscopic aquatic lullaby of the lake, played at perfect volume under a perfect sun on a perfect March afternoon. ‘Scuse me while I kiss the sky. And then zonk out for a while.

Later, I wandered up the gulch toward the fall. I took a seat on a ledge and watched two avian bug scarfers—a pine siskin and a Say’s phoebe—stuff themselves. Behind the trees and to my left was the waterfall, a skinny stream of creek that was dropping about 12 feet. The birds didn’t mind me watching them, and I didn’t mind watching them. It was all very serene, as long as you weren’t a flying bug.

Suddenly, there was a fairly loud spattering sound coming from the right. It was definitely not the first fall. There were now two distinct spatters, one to the left and one to the right. A frightening thought invaded my mind, and I scanned the surrounding ledge fully expecting to see the proverbial cow proverbially pissing real hard on a real flat rock. But … nothing.

Then I saw it. A new, second fall was tumbling over the ledge in a thin, solitary stream, falling about 15 feet onto the rocks. By chance, I had just happened to be in the gulch at the precise moment on this 68-degree day when the runoff in the creek had increased to the point where it could finally jump its main channel and slip away to create fall No. 2. How very cool. How totally spring-like.

It’s obviously not really difficult to amuse me these days.