The aspiring young writer sat, quietly fingering his pen and pad.
He was allowing the wonders of his environment to soak into his very being. He breathed in slowly as a halcyon breeze embraced him with scents of nature’s green fragrance. He wondered at the blending of yellow and orange as the sun slid quietly below a distant hill. He listened intently to the wind as it rustled its way through the darkening forest. He closed his eyes and heard the soft bird calls that heralded the closing of the day. Beyond all this he was swamped by the sound of the gushing waterfall.
With eyes still closed, in his mind’s eye, he saw sparkling raindrops sliding over green and silver leaves, forming baubles of twinkling droplets. He saw these cascade through a lattice of blue-green grass-blades and soft mossy mounds, where the gentle slope of the dale sent the escalating trickle dancing over oyster-grey pebbles. He saw water running into the slope’s sweet crevices of soil with its treasures of shells, clay and shale, that over the millennia had purified these passing crystal flows, stripping away all impurities until playfully spilling over the rocky ledge, and falling as a rain-bowed stream of liquid light through the fragrant musk of the valley’s mist, plunging with a torrent of sound into the frothy waters below.
He finished his scribbling and scrambled to his feet. As he searched for where he had left his bicycle in the darkening wood he wondered what mark he would receive from his teacher for his efforts. Almost home, he stops beneath a street lamp. He fumbles out his notepad and reads: ‘The waterfall was very nice and it splashed a lot’.
As he peddles on, he is haunted by the notion that his aspirations of becoming a best-selling author were a long way off…