My paternal grandparents didn’t always live in Ithaca, NY, but they did for my whole life.  We visited twice a year, most years.  Christmas, and after our summer month in Maine, around my birthday.  The same times I usually visit my own parents now.  Taughannock falls is a gorgeous 215 foot spectacle at the end of a flat, family friendly hike.  I think I posted pics of it during my trip last summer, when the above was also taken.  My childhood memories do not feature the falls so much as the walk there.  I loved being able to run out into the shallow streambed between the numerous smaller falls, and walk the flat sandstone, wading occasionally as this child is.  It was one of those larger than life adventures that only happen when you are smaller than life.  As a child, it’s easy to experience that magic because you are literally smaller, and your worldview is limited to a few years and a small area.  As we get older, we tend to do everything we can to shrink our world, settling down in one place, with one job, one house, one vacation spot, and a small group of friends.  This makes it very hard to let life be larger than you so you can have larger than life adventures. It takes an effort to find the feeling of a small child traversing a waterfall for the first time. Often we are so concerned with safety and security that we are unable to break the bubble we have made around ourselves and we suffocate slowly.

Break free.  Breathe.  Run.  Play.