Wonder

I’m trying to be a better person – kinder, more patient, a healthy eater. I want to be the sort of person who exercises and enjoys it, carries a water bottle, and drinks it. It’s not going well.

The thing is, at this time of year there’s Mothers Day, then my birthday, then my husband’s birthday. After that, Easter. That means all sorts of lovely things to eat for weeks at a time and plentiful supplies of chocolate. Which I love and hate in equal measure.

But the thing I most want to do is live in the moment more. I did some research recently for an article about how we’re living in a post-entertainment culture, a distraction culture, where the tech companies have us all addicted to clicking, scrolling and swiping, and are making a fortune from it. Not really news I know, but the facts and figures made uncomfortable reading. So much so that I had to write about it. And now, here I am distracting you from cooking/exercising/drinking a nice healthy bottle of water, because you’re scrolling this post. Sorry.

The last time I truly lived in the moment, almost completely, for three whole weeks, was in Canada. We made a trip there last autumn and I’ve blogged about our incredible drive through the Rockies. Today, trying to drink more water, I was thinking about a place where I’ve never seen so much of it.

Niagara Falls consists of three waterfalls lying between Ontario, Canada and the state of New York, USA. The largest and most impressive of these is the Horseshoe Falls, known as the Canadian Falls, although in reality it straddles the border between the two countries. There are also two cities with this name – Niagara Falls, NY and Niagara Falls, Ontario.

The views of the Falls are most impressive from the Canadian side. You can get right up close to the staggering and dramatic water flow of the Horseshoe Falls. The other two – the American Falls and Bridal Veil Falls – are still a sight to behold but smaller, both situated within the United States. You can take a boat out onto the Niagara River to view the Falls from below. The yellow jacketed people are from the Canadian side, the red jackets from America.

One thing I could not stop thinking, and saying, (I have a patient husband) is, There is so much water! How can it just keep coming? I couldn’t get my head around it. I knew the facts: it comes from the Great Lakes; they contain 18% of the world’s freshwater supply; that water comes from numerous rivers and streams in North America.

But when you stand next to that roaring wall of water (and I mean ROARING even though I’m deaf), the sheer volume of it is still incomprehensible.

We viewed the Falls from various angles, including underneath where you walk through a series of rather damp tunnels to a place to stand behind them. There are no words for the feeling you get when 168,000 cubic metres of water plunges past you. That’s in just one minute. We stood there for ten. I’ll let you do the Maths. It is utterly staggering.

After that, we looked for somewhere to have lunch but there wasn’t anywhere apart from an expensive restaurant overlooking the Falls. I gazed longingly at the queue, but suggested we wander along the road to look for a snack stall. After all, this holiday had cost a fortune already. But my husband was already queueing.

‘We’ve come this far,’ he said. But they were turning people away. By the time we got to the front of the queue, I found myself whispering one of those ridiculous prayers (because in the face of things like wars, poverty and world hunger, it really is NOT important)

‘Please, oh please!’

There was one table left. It was for two people.

I’ve decided wonder is the key to living in the moment, which is why children are so good at it. There won’t be many Niagara – type days, but I’m thinking about my 9 month old granddaughter who finds everything a thrill – light on grass, an HDMI cable, her own hands. Can we relearn that?

Of all the photos I took of Niagara, this is my favourite.

Thanks for reading. Have a wonder-filled day. I’m off to look at our HDMI cable from a new angle.

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