Graves Canyon
October 29, 2006
I’d seen so much amazing scenery in
the last two weeks that I felt fulfilled, while poor Joey had
been stuck at work most of the time and had to endure my story
telling or look at all the pictures I emailed. So I agreed to
push my weary body for one more adventure, and I’m sure
glad I did.
We headed out on a clear Sunday morning to
Big Piney country, thinking perhaps the smaller waterfall below
Longpool Falls would be running. There wasn’t even a
trickle, but the sun had started to light up the treetops so I
spent a lot of time lying down with my camera pointing to the
sky, while Joey chased after insects with a new flash
he’d gotten for his camera.
We were done with Longpool so quickly that
I had to pull out my Plan B, which was a drive, hike and
bushwhack to nearby Graves Canyon. I stopped several
times on the jeep road along the first leg of the hike and made
feeble attempts to capture on camera some of the brilliance in
the trees overhead.
The section of Graves Creek we were headed
for runs through what I call a true canyon - the banks on both
sides are vertical and there are few places where one can get
down to the creek. Fortunately on my last visit I had found an
access spot and marked it on my GPS receiver. We were there in
no time. There was a beautiful waterfall right on the creek. I
didn’t have the patience to wait for the sunlight to move
off of it, so I went downstream to Tim Ernst’s Forever Falls, but Joey got a great shot of it.
Photo © by Joey Bentley
That afternoon in Graves Canyon was as
great an outdoor experience as any. Though my buddy was
somewhere a couple of hundred yards upstream, I enjoyed the
beautiful Ozark stream in relaxed solitude. The air was still,
the temperature mild. The canyon was hushed except for the
splashing of Forever Falls upstream and the musical splashing
of a small cascade on the creek. I wasn’t in any hurry to
leave, nor did I ever want to.
