The Falls

In Giles County, Virginia, not too far from the quaint little town of Pembroke there is a place where the Little Stony Creek leaps and dances through the mountains for mile after mile.  Fed by branches and springs, it gathers speed and size, until it takes a leap off a precipitous ledge and instantly drops more than 60 feet, where it dashes onto rocks, splashing in a captivating natural water show.  The splashing water falls back to earth and becomes a calm pool about the size of a municipal swimming pool.

It looks so calm and peaceful.

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It was 1972 and I was a 14-year-old enjoying the summer before I started high school.  My Uncle Bob was a hotel manager and, every year he would take his family to Virginia’s Mountain Lake Hotel, which he managed in the summer months.  You may have seen it, nestled in the mountains in the movie, Dirty Dancing.

Yep, that’s it.

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Uncle Bob’s son, John, was my age and in the same grade at school.  We were inseparable. 

John invited me to spend the summer with them at Mountain Lake and I jumped at the chance.  As the manager, Uncle Bob told my parents I could wash dishes to earn some money and Aunt Betty, Mom’s closest sister, would care for me like one of her own.  John’s sister, Lisa was like a little sister of my own, so we all looked forward to a summer of shear bliss, playing and enjoying life as only kids our ages could.  We rode horses, hiked in the mountains, and fished in the mile-long and half-mile-wide Mountain Lake, in between the time John and I spent working.

Sometimes early in the morning, we would go out on the balcony and watch the fog-shrouded hillside across the valley, where deer could often be seen quietly enjoying the salt lick which my uncle made sure was always replenished. 

On the night of the 4th of July, Uncle Bob sent someone up the mountain to the hotel golf course, which sat atop a mountain, at the edge of a cliff.  There they put on a fireworks display that rivalled any I had ever seen, and the sound of the explosions were amplified by being contained in the valley, and echoed like cannon fire.

I can’t imagine a better way for a 14-year-old boy to spend his summer.

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Around August, Mom brought my sister, Chickie, her friend, Sabra, and Mom’s friend, Sharon, when they stopped by Mountain Lake to pick me up and continue to Washington DC.

During their stop-off at the hotel, Uncle Bob suggested that he take all of us to see the Cascades.  We all eagerly accepted his invitation.

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In doing my research before writing this post, I ran across one website named, “Giles County Home, Virginia’s Mountain Playground”.  The site said, “About 150,000 visitors a year visit the Cascades. Without question, Cascade Falls is one of the most beautiful waterfalls in Virginia and possibly on the entire East Coast. Little Stony Creek falls over a vertical cliff in several different streams. Several streams cascade a couple times on the way down while others fall the whole distance of the falls.

“The 69 ft. falls crash into a large pool surrounded by two hundred foot cliff walls from which large ice formations hang in the winter. The scene is both breathtaking and peaceful as the falls combine both power and beauty. The falls are also fairly easy to view, with wooden stairs and platforms on one side of the pool allowing a visitor to get very close to the falls as well as allowing a photographer many different angles for photographs.”

In my experience, the writer of that piece did not exaggerate…not one little bit.

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Like other visitors, we parked our vehicles in the parking lot and took the easy two-mile walking trail to get to the Cascades.

Typically, we kids moved at a quicker pace than the adults, alternately running, walking, and playing beside the path.

Some kids about our ages were walking with some adults toward us, stopping now and then to yell out a girl’s name.

They stopped long enough to describe her as 14-years-old, 5’7”, with blonde hair and blue eyes, and ask if we’d seen her. 

We hadn’t.

If we saw her, they asked us to tell her they were looking for her.  They then continued their hike back toward the parking lot.

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We walked along the trail as the sound of falling water grew louder.  Passing a huge boulder brought us into sight of the falls.

I don’t think I had ever used the expression, “awe inspiring” before that.

Wow.

We teenagers found our way to the pool and I was the first to jump in.  I hadn’t brought a swimsuit and my sodden pants made kicking through the water difficult, but I made it to the base of the falls, where I climbed onto the rock ledge below the falls and felt like I was in the wildest rainstorm ever, as gallons and gallons of water splashed down on me.

It was glorious.

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John and the girls played in the pool a little but mostly stayed on the edge, in the shallows, so I owned the pool.  However, the current coming outward from the falls made it tiring to swim, so I paddled over to the others. 

By now John was climbing up to where a narrow ledge snaked off the trail and out under the falls.  If he could do it, I could do it.

I moved out onto the ledge, which got narrower and narrower until my tennis-shoe-clad toes were gripping only about an inch of rock.  My fingers clawed rock smaller than that.

The ledge widened again as I got to the falls.  It wasn’t exactly a cave, but there was a hollowed out place beneath the ledge over which the Little Stoney Creek fell.  It certainly wasn’t dry or level, but there was plenty of room for my cousin and me to stand and talk…er, yell, at each other.  The tons of water crashing down made an incredible roar.

As John started back along the ledge, I stayed behind so as not to crowd him.  My hand reached out past the fine spray and was suddenly slapped down. 

Holy cow!  The force of the water was incredible.

John was safely back on the trail but, before I followed him, I had to do one more thing.  I advanced into the spray and ducked my head forward.  Luckily I didn’t move fast, as the water’s force increased and began to push my head down, testing my balance and making my shoes’ grip on the rock more tenuous.

I pulled back and edged along the narrow cliff to rejoin John.

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Mom and Uncle Bob and Mom’s friend got to the falls and wouldn’t allow any more of our arguably dangerous shenanigans.  Before long we headed back to the cars.

Back at Mountain Lake we kids laughed about the fun we’d had at the Cascades, until one of the vacationers staying at the hotel overheard us and asked, “Did you say you were at the Cascades today?”

We nodded.

His eyes widened, “Did you see that girl?”  He could tell by our expressions that we didn’t know what he was talking about.

I answered, “Some people asked if we had seen a girl who was with them.  Why?  Didn’t they find her?”

He nodded soberly, “They found her this evening.  She and her friends were playing around the falls.  Evidently, when nobody was watching her, she fell in and got stuck in, under the rocks at the bottom of the falls.  She floated up a little while ago.”

He said more but I didn’t hear most of it.  I was thinking.

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I was thinking about how John and I had climbed up behind the falls and how I had leaned forward so that the force of the falling water had almost pulled me down with it…almost.  I was thinking how the girl, whose description was so close to my own, could have leaned just a little farther than I had…  I was thinking how I had swum through the pool, against the current, and sat on the rock ledge beneath and just outside the blast of the falls, laughing and yelling at my relatives and friends.  And I was thinking about something else the vacationer at the hotel had said.

“Apparently, the current beneath the falls pushed her under a slab of rock at the bottom of the falls.  She stuck there for a long time.”

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I recently ran across an article published in the Roanoke Times in 2016, about two people who drowned at the Cascades within 24 hours of each other that summer.  The reporter, Travis Williams, interviewed Giles Lifesaving and Rescue Squad Captain Nathan Frazier.  Frazier went over how dangerous the falls are and said his squad gets called out to the Cascades a few times every year, but not for any drownings.  He said that none of his crew members could remember a drowning there prior to that summer.

They might not know of any drownings at the Cascades before 2016, but I do.  That day in 1972 a little 14-year-old, 5’7” tall, blonde haired, blue eyed girl had set out for a day of fun, and ended up stuck under a slab of rock…a slab on which a 14-year-old, 5’7” tall, blonde haired, blue eyed boy would perch and laugh and yell at his friends.

Yes, I remember.  I remember it well.

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