Lower Indian Ladder Falls on Hornbeck's Creek скачать в хорошем качестве

Lower Indian Ladder Falls on Hornbeck's Creek

The Delaware Water Gap in the Poconos is chockful of waterfalls that even if one wishes to avoid the popular ones like Raymondskill, George W. Childs, and Bushkill, there’s still a plethora of waterfalls to choose from with short hikes and less to no crowds in an even more pristine Nature setting. The Lower Indian Ladder Falls at Hornbeck’s Creek is one such waterfall. At just over a mile hike, the wooded trail crisscrossing the creek eventually opens up to an amphitheater with the waterfall at dead center. It’s as awe-inspiring as a waterfall can get. And awe, as backed by recent studies, is beneficial to our well-being. Awe causes “shifts in neurophysiology, a diminished focus on the self … and a heightened sense of meaning,” says Dacher Keltner, a preeminent scientist studying awe. “It is impossible to overstate the role that the grandeur of nature has played in human spirituality. Psalm 19 sings out, ‘The heavens are telling the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.’” This, surprisingly, is from the book, “The Anxious Generation” (2024), whose author, Jonathan Haidt, discloses in the same book that he is an atheist. The book’s thesis focuses on the current Gen-Z’s addiction to the smartphone through no fault of their own and the author’s conviction that through specific measures this addiction can be undone. And awe in nature, if teens can be made to wander in Nature without their phones constantly demanding their attention with an endless barrage of notifications, is one such measure. I only mention the book’s thesis in case anyone wants to delve further into such well-written and well-researched topic. I would like to draw attention instead to where the book says, “You see a photo of Victoria Falls … and yet, because the entire image is displayed on a screen the size of your hand, and because you did no work to get to the falls, it’s just not going to trigger as much awe as you’d get from hiking up to a much smaller waterfall yourself.” In other words, you may view photos and watch videos of Niagara Falls, but the experience will nowhere near equal that of visiting a waterfall yourself, even one as small as the waterfall on Hornbeck’s Creek. Yet the most telling aspect of the book for me is the atheist author's perhaps unintended message that one need not believe in anything to be awed by Mother Nature. Such is her power. And when one finds oneself so moved by Mother Nature, in a somewhat fateful turn into irony, is when one finds oneself immobilized into utter disbelief.