Bushkill Falls

Bushkill Falls postcard showing catwalks

Bushkill Falls (the Niagara of Pennsylvania) (not to be confused with the Niagara of New Jersey)was crawling with people on an August Sunday. Crowded like no roadside attraction has a right to be.

The eight waterfalls of that make up the Bushkill Falls attraction are scaffolded with catwalks. Encased in trails. Stairs disappear into impossible gorges. Streams are spanned by bridges that dead end into walls of rock. No vantage point or vista is unreachable from this elaborate set of rustic, log hewn walkways. A family, lost on the labyrinthine trails for "over an hour" asks me for directions but I can see in their eyes that they have lost all hope of finding the exit ramp.

Contained, edited, sublime. This is nature perfected by man.

Olaf Eliasson Waterfalls of NYC Tour

Olaf Eliasson's Waterfalls on the East river of New York is most similar to an industrial waterfall. Like the one in Paterson, New Jersey. Not overwhelming, in the way a natural waterfall can be. Not really overwhelming the way an art installation can be, either.

Best seen from a tour boat. Proximity, a key to waterfall viewing, is not allowed. They were no Gullfoss. You can't get your feet wet.

Ginger Strand's Inventing Niagara covers all the major components of waterfall management: building tourist traps, altering the landscape to accommodate throngs of people, sending weird things over the falls, and polluting.

Great Falls Paterson NJ

Have now visited a couple waterfalls around New Jersey. In Michigan, we didn't have waterfalls. Just "rapids." Nothing you couldn't guide a canoe through. Which reminds me that on my many visits to "Grand Rapids" Michigan, I never saw any such thing. Just saw a lot of disaffected white kids hanging around some crappy hotdog stand. In Philadelphia, I lived in "East Falls." No falls. Snuffed out long ago.

So, behold! The power of nature! Man's insignificance! The ever changing world! All that! Paterson uses abandoned industry as a place setting for its Falls. The American side of Niagara Falls without the Canadian side. A number of people sleeping, mid weekday, by the banks of the river.

Even I am not that lazy.