What's a Flume?

I breathed in my nose and blew out the damp Hawaiian sea air as I surveyed the rugged cliffs of the windward side of Oahu. My heart pounded from the exertion of climbing the last challenging stages of the peak of Shark’s Tooth.

I’d been careful throughout the entire climb.  

The sights around me triggered thoughts hidden deep in the recesses of my long term memory. The thoughts, memories really, floated back as I sucked down some water and surveyed the blue-green waters below. 40+ years before, a car ride out of Massachusetts had been long and tedious. We bounced along in the back of an old Chevy for several hours.  When my brother and sister paid any attention to me, it was to bug me, poke me, or scowl at me. I’m sure that I was an easy mark for them. Angry, I sat in the back seat watching the rolling hills of southern New Hampshire pass by. I’m sure my lower lip extruded from my face like the bumper of the old Chevy extended from the grill.

As we moved north into the wilds of New Hampshire, the rolling hills became pine covered topped with granite-gray peaks and they caught my attention. I stared up, mouth open. I’d never seen anything like them as they struck daggers into the blue sky. I wanted to go up there. I wanted to be up on the top and see what it looked like up there.

“Can we go up there??” I asked.

The query resulted in chuckles and laughter all around the car. My lip protruded further.

Finally, the car stopped and we piled out. Having been cooped up for multiple hours, I was out the door and my 6 year old legs were ready to go but there was so much new all around me! Everything was brown. The guard rails, the signs, the bark on the trees; all were brown. A picture of Smokey the Bear greeted us into the White Mountains National Forest and we faced a sign that read “The Flume.”

I had no idea what a flume was. Was it a flame? Was it a tomb? What was a flume? Jeanne answered from a brown sign with moss covered edges, “A flume is a natural gorge cut into the rocks.”

What’s a gorge? Is that like George, the kid across the street? Was it named after George Washington? Did he sleep here, too?

Soon it didn’t matter as what-ever-it-was had rocks to climb and water rushing by. Maybe there was treasure up there in the midst of the rocks and trees. Let’s go, already!

We walked to another sign and Jeanne read this one too. It was something about granite and water. Let’s get to the gorge, the flume or whatever it was, already. Why do we have to read these signs?

We moved on to the start where there were wooden bridges whose sides were covered in soft green moss. The bridges were attached to steep walls of smooth gray rock. Walking in, we were hit with heavy, moist air that enveloped you and sucked the breath from you. The sky darkened as the walls climbed. Mist and moisture clung to the walkway, the railings, and the scared granite.

I ran forward to the next sign. It had words I didn’t know. As Mom, Dad, Kenny and Jeanne approached, I was already moving to the next sign. They were reading and discussing; I climbed the stairs to a waterfall. Wow, I was looking at a waterfall that wasn’t the result of a drainage ditch! It roared as it descended and crashed to the rocky pool below. The water flowed out from the top of a huge rock above me … and someone built stairs to get up to the top!

I climbed halfway up the stairs and looked back at my family still two signs away from me. They were engrossed in some discussion. WHAT could they be talking about? There was so much to see!

I started my ascent and realized that the stairs were wet from the mist. I slipped but caught myself. “Hey!” I called out. “Hey, the steps are wet, be careful!”

The roar was too loud. Hard to believe that anything could be louder than me, I tried calling out again. They just kept on talking to each other. They couldn’t hear me at all. Kenny looked up. Mom and Dad looked up. I waved. They shouted. I couldn’t hear them but got the vivid impression that I should wait for them.

So, I waited at the top of the stairs. And I waited some more. I twiddled my fingers. I scraped some moss off the underside of the step and played with it. It seemed like a few years had passed when I looked down at them again and they hadn’t moved past the next sign. Other visitors passed them and I kept waiting. The other visitors approached me. Then I got tired of waiting and went to the next sign. The other visitors were a family of 4 and their grandmother. They smiled as they passed me. I followed them through three more signs and still my family hadn’t come up the stairs.

Guilt took a turn in my conscious. I remembered the slippery steps and wondered if someone had fallen and delayed their arrival. Maybe they slipped into the river and the police had been called. I walked back and they were still reading the signs. The roar of the water filled my ears again and I headed back along the wooden walkway.

Then I saw a bigger waterfall and ran to it passing the family of 4 plus grandma. Up some more steps to an overlook and more educational signs. I was so sick of these signs. Some showed old pictures of massive amounts of water pouring through the gorge/flume and other pictures where it was dry as a sun-drenched bone in the Sahara desert (I’d seen National Geographic). I looked down and saw Kenny run up the stairs where I had been waiting so long ago. It was about time!

I moved on up and came upon Grandma. Her face stern and angry.

“Don’t you know your mother is probably worried sick?”

“Where are your parents?”

“Why aren’t you with them?”

“Did you know you could slip and fall and hurt yourself?

“Did you know that you could fall into this river and die?”

“Do you know how cold that water is?”

Was I supposed to answer these questions? If so, when was I going to get a chance?

It became obvious that I was not supposed to answer the questions. I was supposed to shut up and get back to my family. I felt terrible and worried that my mother would be afraid for me.

I made my way down the steps to another landing but they weren’t there, yet. I made sure that I was careful as the grandmother was probably correct, I could slip and fall into the water. Another landing and they still weren’t there.

Turning a corner, they were there … reading a sign.

When she saw me, Mom rushed to me, “There you are! We’ve calling and calling for you! Where have you been? Why did you rush off like that?”

I didn’t get a chance to answer these questions either.

“Do you know you scared me to death? I thought you could have slipped and fallen; maybe slid into the river and drowned!”

I’d been careful but it didn’t matter. I’d waited patiently but it didn’t matter.

I know that I said something thoughtless back to her. I know that she was mad at me and spoke sternly to me for many more long and painful minutes. If I thought waiting for them at the top of the steps was a long time, waiting for mom to explain the errors of my ways on that day was infinitely longer; and I knew that she was right.  

I deserved all of it and I deserved more of it, too.

One thing about my mother is that she gets her anger out and then it is thankfully over with. I’m sure that sometime later in the day, she knew that I had learned a valuable lesson and convinced Dad to buy us all ice cream.

Each time I climb a mountain and each mountain I look at I thank my mother for giving me the temperance to climb them carefully.

Happy Mother’s Day