Grotto Falls

It's getting to that time of year where I literally cannot post pictures fast enough. I take too many. Sometimes I don't even get them off the memory card before I'm reaching for the camera again to capture another beautiful thing…it's overwhelming. Too much beauty. That frantic sort of flaming up that makes you feel like you have to catch the year by the tail before it races away forever…

Lucky for us, we are learning about water in homeschool right now and there are ALL sorts of great things to learn about water…outside. And we are doing all of them. Our long, hot, summery September led to a late fall, with the leaves in the mountains at their peak right now, mid-October, rather than fading away at the end of September as they often do. It doesn't feel like summer anymore. But the days are perfect and golden and we all know this can't last, so the question is just can we fit in one more thing? One more hike before the dark is upon us?*

(*Wow, a bit dramatic maybe? That's what fall does to me. It's a curse.)

Well, let us come down from these desperate precipices (precipi?) and simply enjoy a few pictures. Later, we'll be glad we did. This hike is called Grotto Falls, in Payson Canyon, and it's so short you can barely call it a hike. Especially because when I went to shoulder Clementine in the hiking backpack, Malachi pulled it out of my hands and put it on his own back instead.

"We can take turns," I said.

"No," he said. "I want to do it, and I want to be mad about it the whole way."

I agreed that such was his right, and I wouldn't dream of depriving him of it. And since Malachi is never happier than when he can be martyred and cross about something, so, the time passed quite pleasantly for us all.

I don't know when or why Junie adopted this stick

The falls is pretty. It falls into a little cave area (hence the name Grotto Falls) and makes a little pool before running downstream again. I haven't been to a waterfall quite like it before!