Boone. Small enough to create a sense of strong community but just big enough to not be anything like Pilot Mountain. Last weekend I went up to visit some friends and we went to a place known as Twisted Falls to the locals. It was insane. The trail down was almost vertical and covered in rocks, the size that are too big to remain still but too small to balance on, so that alone was an adventure. Totally worth it.
Sitting on the rocks in front of the waterfall made me feel like I was in another country entirely. Nothing had touched the area we were in and it felt old and new in the same moment.
Then I decided I wanted to jump off the waterfall.
I followed my friends up into the woods on a path that would have made Vin Diesel cringe. One misstep and we would all be rolling down the side of a mountain into rocks. No big deal. I tried not to think about that and just held onto the roots as tightly as I could. The path was really narrow, a one foot in the other kind of deal from what I remember.
About ten minutes later we had reached the top. As if I wasn't already feeling scared to death, I watched my friend slip and fall, barely catching herself before standing back up and jumping off with hardly any hesitation at all. It was insane. When it was my turn it was all I could do to look down at the water below and hope the jump wouldn't kill me. And then I did it, throwing myself out over the water as far as I could to keep from hitting the rock that had been jutting out from below me.
It felt like I was falling forever and right as I wondered when it would end I met the surface of the water, crashing through it in whatever mangled form I'd managed to gather myself into.
It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life, a combination of fear and adrenaline rolled into this one bomb that exploded right when I leapt off the rock, because in the air I had nothing but myself and my God.
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