I looked up at him and it took me a moment to register him. I was having a snack and taking in all of the power of the place and a large older man walked out on the deck and looked down at me. I was sitting on the vacant observation deck above the falls while Sam took pictures. The first time I sat next to this waterfall, I had hiked over a mountain to be here. The wind is warm for March and pushes itself across the rocky beach just below the falls.
It spans the whole river, the curtains falling from a big shelf 18 feet high and 150 feet wide. We walk the small trail to the water and take in the bigness. We come around the bend and see the train stop that signals the waterfall. They are waiting now, in the dirt and gravel, for the heat of summer so that they can push up again. In the fall the tracks were lined with yellow evening primrose. I can smell the ancient tar warming up in the railroad ties. We turn right on the tracks and walk towards High Falls. The river below assumes a pretty, earthy green color. We stumble and trip and nearly plunge down the mountain. The leaves from last fall hide the details of the trail.
We wrap around the top of the mountain and begin our decent into the Shavers Fork drainage. The smell of the rich, damp dirt is exactly how a forest should smell. The dirt we have been trampling gives way to rocks covered in green sponge and hemlocks that seem ancient. As we climb, the floor of the forest becomes mossy. Tiny spring beauties pop up through the disintegrating leaves. The trail turns into steep, slippery miniature mudslides in spots. The woods smell good, the ground is damp and muddy in spots. The clearing ends and we start the uphill push over the mountain.
#HIGH FALLS OF THE CHEAT FULL#
The field is full of briars that were not there in the fall. The hardwood trees show scars of lightning and fire. We cross the West Fork Trail and continue through the clearing. They cover the field like some kind of twisted orchard. We walk past the gate and out of the woods into a huge clearing. A gate from an old homestead lies just on the other side of the bridge a remnant of another time. We hear water trickling through the small muddy cracks. The sticks are stacked and crammed into a heap. The trail greets us with a squishy, marshy bottom and leads us over a small foot bridge that crosses a stream just below a beaver dam. We slug on our backpacks and descend into the forest. It starts on a back road of a back road outside of Glady, WV outside Elkins, WV and is marked only by a small sign that says “High Falls.” We creep by a pull-off and then the trail appears, although we had to turn around and come back to park. The trail head and wide spot had to be close. Sam & I both have our eyes fixed on the right side of the road. The snow has gone but the rich West Virginia green hasn’t filled in the trees and undergrowth. It is that time of year when things aren’t quite pretty yet. Now, driving out the dirt road on this warm spring day, I don’t know what to expect. It held that first crisp hint of colder weather. The fields were golden and swaying in the cool autumn breeze. The first time I did the hike to High Falls of the Cheat, it was fall and the cinnamon ferns were exploding with color reaching up towards the sky before splashing into a mass as tall as my shoulders.
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