Cascading Sunlight

"Come forth into the light of things, Let Nature be your teacher."
--William Wordsworth, British poet

Today after a splendid picnic at the vineyards along Lake Seneca, we found ourselves taking a hike through the Gorge at Watkins Glen National Park. What a magical place! Certainly a photographer's dream, with endless opportunities to snap the light, the water and the towering walls of the Gorge, which are a fascinating display of sedimentary strata lined with every imaginable variety of moss, fern, plant, tree and fossil left by literally thousands of years of water rushing over the rocks.

The rocky pathway through the Gorge winds for over a mile and a half along the rushing waterway that plunges down the glacier-formed hillside. Over thousands of years, the water has slowly and steadily cut away at the soft sedimentary rock and formed the Glen's rugged gorge and spectacular waterfalls. You can choose to walk either up or down the winding rugged pathways and the Gorge's 800 steps, a fact we learned the hard way after entering the Gorge from the bottom on our first visit, only to find a parking lot and shuttle bus waiting for us at the top! We were all too willing to catch a ride back down to the bottom where we had parked the car and vowed to climb the Gorge from the other direction on future visits!

This is one of the Gorge's 19 waterfalls and the light was particularly magical at the precise moment we were climbing past it. Today was exceptionally hot for the Finger Lakes area, and we were glad for the coolness of the water and the moss-lined walls of the Gorge. Although the water was generally low throughout the Gorge today, the tumbling waterfalls are always a highlight of the walk and never cease to create a moment of awe-inspiring beauty along the way. The seclusion of the Gorge makes these waterfalls plummeting over the steep precipices truly unique, and the walk always offers a rare opportunity to capture nature at its most raw and rugged best. Truly, I never tire of the hike.

No visit to Corning in the summer is ever complete without a visit to Watkins Glen, a picnic at the vineyards along Seneca Lake and a hike through the Gorge. Today we did all three and came away with another series of summer shots to document summer at the Finger Lakes. Although there are many pictures to share, this one particularly caught my eye today with its shimmering shards of light breaking through the trees onto the water plunging over the jagged rocks, creating a perfect, magical moment of cascading sunlight.