Two friends flee New York City at midnight, chasing Niagara Falls. Detours through lakes, Walmart parking lots, and hollow tourist traps test their resolve—until the falls demand surrender. Immersed in the cascade, time dissolves into water, and a fleeting rush of wonder restores their city-starved breath.
*****
Yoni and I sat on the ledge outside the restaurant window, having finished one of our more chaotic services, smoking a cigarette in silence, letting the thoughts in our minds return to us after six hours of being at the behest of others. It was after midnight on a Friday night in New York City. I flicked my cigarette on the sidewalk where it would burn itself out in a puddle of sewage and turned to Yoni. “Should we go get the car?” He stubbed his cigarette into the pavement, stood up and walked up to the truck parked right in front of me.
We jumped into our rented Ram Dodge with not much of a plan but to reach Niagara Falls by morning. After chugging coffee from a gas station in New Jersey, we drove for four hours through the dark. Both of us were leaving America in a month, after having lived in New York for several years. I was making plans to start a whole new life in London after a bad breakup, and Yoni’s visa expiration granted him the motivation he needed to go backpacking through Europe without a definite timeline. So we were seizing our final opportunity to see this continent’s natural wonder.
By 5am, as our eyes began to hurt and our bodies tensed, it didn’t seem smart to drive farther. We didn’t get to the falls as we had bragged to all our friends we would. But we had got about halfway. We pulled into a Walmart parking lot somewhere on the border of Pennsylvania. We locked the doors, pushed the front seats back all the way, and curled into ourselves for a few hours of sleep as the summer morning light began to slip through the windows. The hot air in the car woke me up by 6am, but I fell in and out of a contorted sleep to the sound of Yoni’s snores in the driver’s seat.
After another four hours of driving on a dreary Upstate highway, we arrived at what Google Maps labelled “Niagara Falls.” We found ourselves in an empty town of concrete block buildings, overpriced parking lots and a street lined with souvenir shops selling sweatshirts printed with stock images of a waterfall not to be seen–or heard. With the rows of Himalayan Tandoori food trucks, we derived that this might be where you’d find the most Indians outside of India. We also discovered a pizza vending machine–perhaps the first of its kind–but opted not to explore this gastronomic invention further.
We followed the crowds through the state park that announced Niagara Falls on every surface, yet we still had no sensorial proof that the falls existed. At noon on Saturday, I began to doubt the genius of this little adventure that dawned upon me the week before and regretted that my eager friend and I had driven twelve hours for souvenirs and disappointment. People had told me that the Canadian side was better, and I was starting to believe it could be worth crossing the border–me without a passport and Yoni in his uncertain immigration status. Perhaps it would be better in Canada–today and forever–it’s time to start a new life.
All at once, we saw the lines for an observation deck and finally heard rumbling water, offering a mild reassurance that there could actually be something to see here.
Both of us, having no patience for lines, immediately veered away from the Mist of the Falls boat trip. From the cliffside, we saw the boats in the river, packed to the brim like sardines, individually wrapped in plastic ponchos, and hoped that there must be some other way to view this world wonder.
Signs pointed to a Cave of the Winds. The ticket line was shorter and the tickets cheaper, but they told us to come back in two hours for a designated entry in the very late afternoon.
We killed time with a double cheeseburger that perhaps wasn’t “the best burger you’ll ever eat”, but it wasn’t terrible, and then we drove to what looked like a beach on an island nearby. Along the highway, we skidded past the Canadian border and took a left turn, which seemed to indicate ‘Canada’, and I, for a moment, most certainly thought I accidentally deported Yoni and our friends back in the city would never forgive me.
The road kept us in this country, thank goodness. At the beach, we changed into our bathing suits on American sand and treaded in international waters, watching a patrol boat float in the distance as the seagulls flew freely back and forth across the lake. I sank underwater. The trip wasn’t all ruined, I thought. There’s something beautiful about submerging yourself in lake water, even when the drive takes all day.
We returned to the Falls State Park for our timed entry and again found ourselves standing in line. Nobody walking back in the other direction was wet, although wet was promised to us. Though we were told multiple times to prepare to see Niagara Falls, this line led us into an exhibition room full of information on how electricity has been harvested from the incredible force of falling water I had yet to see. The next door led us to a movie theatre where I was about to lose my mind if I came all this way to watch a documentary in a broken town. Yoni pulled me through the EXIT door that came to another line. Finally, outdoors, we waited for an elevator to take us to the bottom of the waterfall. There was a giant fan pathetically misting us as we moved along, and I was ready to accept defeat.
They let us on the elevator–the last two people before we’d have to wait for the next way down, and by then I would’ve jumped off the cliff to become a waterfall myself. But we made it–finally–onto a boardwalk made of wooden stilts. Following everyone else’s queue, we put on the ponchos that had been handed to us to protect ourselves from the drizzle. It seemed silly because there was no drizzle at all.
Walking along the cliffside, hearing water now, we looked over the wooden beams to see seagulls crowding on the rocks and purple flowers growing between the cracks. Water ran delicately over and under the boulders and into the basin. After a few steps, I had a good view. Looking upwards, I saw the wall of water crashing against the rocks. The way the water splashed and foamed and caught the sunlight was majestic, but it did not yet feel like I was seeing something that was any more special than a hidden waterfall off the side of the road in the Catskills.
I felt a light spritz coming off the wall, light enough to make the yellow garbage bag stick to my skin and vacuum seal me in my own sweat, but not enough to feel like my clothes would be at all dampened. So, I took the garbage bag off and stuffed it into my pocket, where I held my phone and wallet too.
I was bare-shouldered, walking towards the noise, trying to take my time with the approach, letting other people rush past me in their yellow bags. We walked up to a higher platform, where the crowds of yellow ponchos stopped to take photos with phones that were also individually ponchoed up. Some on the platform posed with arms extended up and outwards like stretching themselves into the size of the falls, magnifying themselves for the picture. Many shielded their eyes from the water, clung to their backpacks, and stepped over the puddles. An older woman sat on the floor with her legs crossed, looking at the falls as if cuddling up on a living room floor to watch a movie. I had reached a form of acceptance then–that it’s nice to make things into a spontaneous adventure, but the world’s wonders of magnitude are not worth the crowded trip.
I rose again to the next platform, the floor beneath my feet puddled, and my sandals stood in a pool. In a second, the wind sent a rush of Niagara towards me, and I was for the briefest of moments absolutely underwater. I forgot everything in that second–the lines, the drive, the life I drove from. I felt my skin, the air in my body, the empty space in my lungs after the exhale and before the next inhale came in.
I was hit again with a rush of water. My shirt grew tight and heavy on me, so I pulled it off. My hair, which was tied into a tight bun, loosened, and I released it all onto my shoulders. There was nothing holding me anymore. I was only in my bathing suit now, swimming in Niagara Falls. I stayed under the water until my body molded into its flowing form.
Then, Yoni took his turn under the falls as I held our stuff on the sidelines. I watched him rub his eyes with fall water and shake out his hair too. The heavy water obscured his outline, and he dissolved into the foam. I ran into the crowd of yellow garbage bags, hugging our pouch of phones to my body. I came to be next to him. Facing our bare backs towards the water, the droplets pierced our skin like sending a message in morse code to us alone. Yoni and I pressed our shoulders together, like a wall of our own, parallel to the force of nature in front of us.
We stood under the waterfall for a long time, though time was measured only by water. We watched people pass and evaded the judgemental or envious stares from strangers. A man walked by us–the only other person ungarbed. We exchanged eye contact, silently acknowledging that we were of the same kind, separate from the others, as if only the three of us knew the secret about the waterfall.
Every few seconds, we’d be hit with another rush and be briefly underwater. Yoni turned and said to me, “each time the wind blows, it feels stronger than an orgasm.” And it’s as though he pulled the thought out of my mind. Each time the water blanketed me, I had the breath pulled out of my lungs, my hot skin was hit with a cold electric shock, and my body froze–all happening so quickly that I did not notice until the breath came back to me again. I released my vision from the pressure of sight and melted into the sensations.
After perhaps half an hour, it came to us both at the same time that we had felt the capacity of the elation, and a deep exhaustion overcame our bodies and minds that did not weigh us down but rather lifted all the heaviness off us. We were entirely drenched, as was the plastic bag in my pocket, and the items that don’t bode well with being wet.
We walked back through the tunnel, went up the elevator, and strolled along the ridge, listening to the cascading falls hit the platform, foam through the rocks, and flow into the basin. We looked over the edge with a view of where we had been standing, thinking how close we had been to this wonder and how far we felt from it now.
Looking across to the Canadian side, there was a block building labelled in neon as “casino” and a zipline running along the bank of the lake. A boat was being boarded with red ponchos, with not a single space left on the deck.
Now evening, on the much less crowded observation deck, we saw the whole waterfall at a slight angle, but the view did not interest us much. The view from the Canadian side would certainly be incredible–to see the whole stretch of the falls laid out in one immense sight like bearing witness to the edge of the Earth. But I also felt almost a kind of pity for those on the other side of the border, who cannot swim in the falls like we can here.
Our 12-hour drive had found its purpose standing under the water itself, and everything else was just fluff. We left the park, found our truck, and drove out of the town in silence.
In Buffalo, we ate at the bar where buffalo wings came from. We ate the original sauce and the spiciest one, which wasn’t all that spicy–and paired the wings with jalapeno peppers dipped in sour cream. I persuaded Yoni to try the fried vegetable, though I failed in convincing his Jewish soul of the delicacy that is a fried pickle. We drank a beer, licked our fingers, and piled the bones into a bamboo plate. The meal was nothing spectacular, just that one must eat the traditional foods when travelling to new places.
We had quite a drive ahead of us, at least to get halfway back to Brooklyn tonight, but our phones were both at a single-digit battery, and the barman couldn’t help us with our mildly outdated phone models. So, we prepared ourselves to navigate with paper drawings and via the constellations. We were up for another adventure within this one. If it were for anyone, it’d be for Yoni and I.
As the dark settled upon us, I drove toward a state park where we thought we would spend the night and wake up to a lake by morning. Yoni controlled the music from my dying phone until he dozed off to a pop song sung by Ed Sheeran, and I–overjoyed to be behind the wheel of a truck–drove through the rain for another two hours.
When I finally looked at my phone, there was a flashing green screen as if it had been hacked by aliens who wanted to hypnotise me so I could fulfil all their alien demands. The screen was unresponsive to my touch, and I noticed a few bubbles collecting under the front camera. I put my phone in the glove box and let it have a fit without my bothering it.
We pulled into the empty parking lot of a state park outside of Syracuse. I was hesitant, but Yoni had the nonchalance of a kid who has broken all too many rules in his life. In full darkness, we reclined under the rain drumming on the metal until bright lights of a patrol car flashed through our comfortable slumber. The patrol women, standing in the rain, told us that we weren’t allowed to be car camping and we should go back to the city where we came from. We feigned ignorance, as if she were talking to a baby. When she realised, we were from just a little further off than Syracuse’s city, she was more forgiving but told us to go find somewhere else to sleep. A Walmart five minutes away became our trusted home for another night.
In the morning, we returned to the park’s lake. We walked around a beach of brown sand that looked more like a muddy construction site and rented a tandem kayak to go out to the depths of the water where the lifeguards wouldn’t see us taking a dip without our life jackets. I floated again, as I did in the waterfall. Half of my body was soaked, and the other half was exposed to sunshine. Sound waves from the surroundings were dulled by the frequency of the water. It was calm. After doing a few somersaults, we were clean and fresh again, and decided that life is only worth living if there is access to a waterfall or a lake or a creek nearby–where else is one supposed to shower?
In the car, my hair dried into its natural curls like it does only when it has been washed by nature, and I dressed in my flowy overalls as I can only dress when I feel like I am a creature of the forest. My sight was refreshed and sharpened after two days without mascara, and my skin was plump from the unfiltered air.
We stopped at a diner in a small town off the highway. The dining room hung off a cliff and had a wall of windows that offered a great view of the river below. Yoni ate lunch at his first classic diner, though he had already been living in this country for five years. He approved of the grilled pita and tzatziki that reminded him of his corner of the world.
Our drive back was quieter than the one going North, not because we ran out of things to talk about, but because we were both enveloped in the kind of calm that comes with leaving the city.
This calm vanished instantly as we followed the traffic through the Holland Tunnel and came out to the dusty, noisy, crowded, dirty streets of downtown New York. My phone still wasn’t working. The few photos Yoni had taken while I was standing under the waterfall were perhaps gone forever, and I could prove to no one online how beautiful I looked and felt in that moment. But it seems it helped me learn that I need not prove such things to anyone at all.
We drove into Brooklyn, and the anxiety of the city and soon leaving the city flooded our veins again, as did all memories of heartbreak that I was able to forget while I was briefly gone. It was then, as I sat in the pick-up truck crossing the bridge over the East River, I decided with certainty that I would find my future home near a body of water that could reflect the sky and the trees like my own does.
