The better-half and I have just returned from a much needed, if brief, vacation to Ohio and upstate New York. I don’t really have anything book-related to share—I did some scouting, but came up empty-handed—I’m just looking for an excuse to share the photo above. This picture was taken from the hotel room we stayed in one night in Niagara Falls. Our toes can be seen on the foot-stool in front of the enormous picture window that virtually filled one wall of the room.
I had been to Niagara Falls many times before but had never seen them like this. From above, it’s a little easier to picture what the falls might have been like before the barnacle-like encrustations of the tourist trade.
The first Europeans to see the falls might have been Samuel de Champlain’s party as early as 1604. They were welcomed by a neutral Iroquoian nation known as the Attawandaron (a Huron name) who are virtually lost to history now. Their name for themselves is as lost as ownership of the Niagara region. You can’t look too critically at anything to do with Niagara Falls without some sense of loss.
But imagine what those early, urban-raised Europeans would have experienced: hearing the roar miles ahead and then feeling the spray as you get closer, coming through the bush to see the great walls of water dropping away beneath their feet or looming-up above their heads. Awe inspiring.
Ohio was very pretty too.
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