The Falls That Lift (One Sixty-Two: Day 145)

Writer’s note: One Sixty-Two is a season-long series of blog posts connecting baseball’s major-league players to life’s universal themes. Just as there are 162 games in a season, so there will be 162 posts in this series. Let’s play some ball.

Day One Hundred Forty-Five: Francisco Cordero, Cincinnati Reds

There are days when the stress feels like it will swallow me whole. I go for a run, or duck out to the gym, and try to breathe deep and let it all subside. But September 2010 is not an easy time for us in some ways. Like so many American families right now, we have seen better days in the way of finances. And it’s hard sometimes to know just when it will get better.

You feel a bit like one of those white-knuckle closers, who are forever filling the bases with runners before somehow wiggling out of it. Francisco Cordero of the Cincinnati Reds has 35 saves in 43 chances, but he also walks nearly as many batters as he strikes out, and he puts an average of 1½ men on base per inning. Rarely does a Cordero outing run smoothly. Reds fans can feel the stress almost as soon as the big right-hander begins pitching.

So in these Cordero-like days at Hynes Central, I’ve got to figure out just how much anxiety I want myself to feel on a day-to-day basis. I can worry all day long if I want – there is no law against that. But it doesn’t seem like a smart idea. And I can’t imagine how it would help me, my wife, or my girls.

So, as always, I search for perspective. This weekend, I found it in a place I never knew I’d be. It took a winding highway, a dirt road, a trail and dozens of steep steps to find it. But my, was it worth the trip.

Tannery Falls is located in a part of the Berkshires called Savoy Mountain State Forest. It’s not a place that you’ll find in most New England guidebooks. But my wife found it nonetheless. In an overnight trip that we took to this area over the weekend, we decided to check it out.

After winding our way along the Mohawk Trail that also goes by the name of Route 2, we turned onto an unmarked road outside Florida, Mass. From there, we drove up into the mountains for several miles before turning onto a dirt road. After nearly a mile of gentle driving over the many rocks on this road, we found a parking lot. The trail started from the lot, and as we followed the blue arrows we found ourselves walking alongside a brook. Soon enough, though, the trail took us down many steps. When we reached the bottom, we looked up and saw before us a pristine waterfall in the midst of the Massachusetts woods.

From 80 feet above us, the water of Tannery Falls cascaded down some 35 feet into a tiny pool, then rolled down the rest of the way via a rocky chute. The white water bobbed and weaved all the way into the shallow pool that lay before us. While only one other family was at the falls when we arrived, numerous others had been there before, and they’d left their mark by taking flat stones off the ground and making small sculptures around the edge of the pool with these rocks. Amy added one as well, and we stood together and watched the water drop down to our feet. The tiny pieces of rock art served as a human thank-you gift of sorts to the falls themselves.

This wasn’t the largest waterfall in the world, nor was it the largest one I’d ever seen. But as Amy and I looked at it, took pictures of it, and listened to it, we weren’t feeling any emotion that you could confuse with stress. This was about as beautiful as life gets – a husband and wife, walking hand in hand through the woods far away from the challenges and triumphs of life, taking some time to enjoy nature at its best.

Tannery Falls. That’s my new catch-phrase. Whenever the stress seems like it’s cascading down on me with the force of a Francisco Cordero wild pitch, I will say those words and think of that glorious display of falling water. Because if this world can contain something that beautiful, and if I can savor its majesty in the same spot where Native Americans watched it 300 years ago, then I think I also can endure a few bumps in the road of life. There is no stress worth worrying about when I can choose instead to breathe deep and visualize the white water and the gifts of stone, all while feeling the warm pulse of my wife’s hand in mine.