About three hundred million years ago, the mighty Alleghenian Mountains towered over what today is the Atlantic coast of the United States. Higher even than the Himalayas of today, these ancient peaks slowly washed out to sea. Today, their stumps form the rolling hills of the Piedmont. On the edge of this ghost range is the Fall Line, where the ancient bedrock drops off to the sedimentary coastal plains to the east. The Fall Line was given its name by the English colonials because all the rivers of the region came crashing down in falls as they crossed it, marking the limits of riverboat navigation. Here, where the Potomac plummets down over eighty feet into the narrow Mather Gorge, is one of my favorite places to behold the beauty of nature. Thither the road bore me.

The indigenous Algonquin peoples who once called this land home had no word for time. Approaching the park, time begins to slip its normal bonds. As in a dream, the years weave through each other, forming a temporal tapestry. The drive to Great Falls winds through shady wooded hills spotted with mansions and farms, echoes of Nineteenth Century splendor squeezed between the primaeval forest and the Twenty-First Century asphalt road.

Entering the park as afternoon melts into evening, I walk past a group of pretty college girls carrying geology books. Few other people are around, adding to the serene atmosphere of the broad shady pathway that runs alongside the ruins of George Washington's Patowmack Canal and the remains of the Nineteenth Century village of Matildaville. The quiet tranquility of the upper park quickly disappears as I turn down one of the many side paths which lead towards the falls.

Above the falls the Potomac is about 2500 feet wide. This huge volume of water is shot over the Fall Line and compressed into Mather Gorge below, less than 100 feet wide. The river rushes thunderously, fat with the deluge of one of the wettest springs on record. The water, the color of murky home pressed apple cider where calm, is violently churned into a ferocious foam as it races over the jagged metamorphic granite islands and cliffs which give Great Falls its name. The lush verdant green of the Virginia summer rings the view with oak, pine, and sumac.

The sun is already setting, a mere bright splash in the trees to the west. The Virginia side of the river is already slipping into the slate blue mystique of pre-twilight. The cliffs on the Maryland side have a pale rosy glow as the sun god kisses his wife the earth goodnight. Overhead only the occasional turkey vulture soars, while off in the trees more dainty birds sing their evening lullabies. A couple of white necked herons hops around on the opposite bank, tending to their cliffside eyrie. The mosquitos are awaking for their twilight breakfast (namely myself). The ancient lichen-encrusted stones, the well-worn bones of the ancient mountains, bristle with young trees. Here and there, the fallen and decaying trunks of storm-slain trees are shaggy with the intense green of new vegetation.

Over the river, there is a lookout point on the Maryland coast. There, several young couples embrace and watch the sun set over the Virginia treetops. A family of Japanese tourists stands on the observation deck near where I choose a spot to sit down and write. They ask me to take pictures of the group, using all four of their cameras. Later, I spot one of them videotaping me as I sit on a boulder typing on my laptop - an amusing example of tourists making mutual tourist attractions of each other. Downstream in the gorge, a small group of people have climed down the cliffs to the edge of the river. One brave soul, visible from here only as a white shirt, crouches on the ledge reaching out to but never quite touching the water. His companions hang back, clinging to the cliff walls.

Humanity has long been drawn to this place. Before the arrival of the European colonists, the Americans long used the base of the falls as a meeting place. The name of this river in fact comes from the word potomac, which means "trader" in the language of the Moyhumpse (a.k.a. The Dogue), the indigenous Alqonquian tribe who once lived here. Seeking to push riverboat navigation's frontier past the Fall Line, George Washington led the construction of the Patowmack Canal which bypassed the falls on the Virginia side for over two decades before the C. & O. Canal in Maryland made it obsolete. Washington's partner founded a village called Matildaville which today exists only as stone outlines overgrown by trees, abandoned after the canal passed into history.

A thought that has struck me often in this place is that the roaring of these rapids has not been the only thunderous sound along the Potomac. This mighty cleft in the earth was once also a cleft in the heart of a nation. Here was the border between the United States and the Confederacy. Sitting in this serene setting, it is strange to think that once this river divided brother from brother in the most lethal war in all history. In this very place, at Great Falls, artillery flew over the river twice in the summer of 1861. In spite of the imposing natural barrier, it can still be hard to grasp the concept that this once was an international border and the front line of a bitter war. Looking across the river, seeing the same cliffs and the same trees, and watching people on the other observation deck, I can't help but to see the whole as a unity. A river that once divided warring nations to me appears as the centerpiece which unites a shrine of nature where people come to find beauty. I wonder if the soldiers who fought here ever beheld the scene as I do, and found my vision as alien as I theirs? How sad a thing war is that a place such as this should ever be seen as a divider of brethren.

Happier times inevitably followed as sanity returned, and Great Falls became a thriving amusement park in the early Twentieth Century. There were restaurants and lodges, a carousel and a trolley, lookouts and lightshows. Mother Nature reclaimed her temple however, and much of these structures were washed away in a flood. Eventually, the land became a national park. The canals, cannon, and carousels of the past are no more. Today, peaceful wooded paths wind through the park, and the majestic falls stand as a moving meditation.

Gazing off into the distance, it is easy to become mesmerized by the weaving waves of white washing over the unseen rocks below. The sharp still crags poking above the water, spotted only with a few young treelets and pieces of driftwood, form a Zen-like counterpoint to the rushing rapids and cascading chaos of the falls. Here is yin and yang, motion and stillness, force and resistance, action and inaction. The sound of the rapids, like the roar of a great ocean during a storm, is tranquilizing in its titanic sound. I could spend eternity in this dreamland, and in such places, eternity certainly will touch you. Watching the scene, it is easy to think this will go on forever. Upstream, just barely at the edge of visibility, the wide smooth waters begin to churn ever so slightly. The white foam swirls build up size and complexity as the river streaks over more and more hidden boulders, building into a crescendo of roaring foam before crashing down and expending themselves in the pools below. The hypnotic patterns repeat, but ever so subtly different. A closer look reveals that every swirl is unique. The sun never shines at quite the same angle on the water. The seasons change. Gradually over years, the shape of the falls changes as the water carries the last remnants of the ancient mountains off to the sea, reshaping the continents themselves. Change is the only permanence.

My river trance is suddenly broken by the roar of a low passing helicopter, a gold striped white mechanical monstrosity which flies upstream hugging the Maryland shoreline. Soon after it passes, the serenity of evening returns to the park, and walking to my car, I return to the world of time.