Something to Marvel At

As Beverly and I walked down the sodden creekside trail, sounds of traffic from Interstate 84 behind us became the sound of Latourell Falls ahead of us. The transition was complete when the creek bent east, opening to a sudden view of the falls. We stopped to watch its 250-foot plunge down the north side of Pepper Mountain. Only thirty miles east of Portland, Oregon, the spot felt like a passageway into another world.

Deeper in the woods, the morning darkened and chilled. But like an echo of sunlight, otherworldly bright yellow lichen flourished on the basalt column beside the falls. Ice lingered here and there on exposed rock as if time were moving differently. Provided we did not think about the neatly carved directional signs marking the trail, the weathered benches, a wooden bridge across Latourell Creek, or swarms of tourists chattering and listening to iPods, the scene was almost prehistoric: a damp, densely firred canyon filled with reverberation from the falls, strange hues all around, deadfall hosting swarms of lush life, birds darting through shafts of mist. From just the right perspective, it was a vision of the truly marvelous, a teeming spot where the distant past thrived within the familiar present.

Trained as a geologist and now an impressionist landscape painter and master gardener, Beverly is at home in the natural world. She feels an intimate connection to forms of the earth, appreciates cycles of growth and loss, grasps the history contained within the wild. She liked being there by the falls.

Brooklyn born, a city dweller until I married Beverly and lived for fourteen years with her in the woods of western Oregon, I remain much less in tune with nature. Engaged, attentive, I am warier, detached rather than comfortable. Also, my balance still compromised twenty years after a viral attack damaged my brain, I found the uneven footing beside Latourell Creek difficult, the ups and downs quickly tiring. But I followed as Beverly moved through the woods taking photographs, describing what rocks revealed, naming plants and trees.

Near the frothing pool where the falls crashed with full force, I found myself thinking that this is just the sort of place Jules Verne could have set a scene in his series of sixty-four works known as the "Extraordinary Journeys." Strange, isolated, out of time, with the outsize power of nature on full display. But without, of course, the smart and beautiful woman. Or the disabled man.

A Verne novel's calm, masculine hero would be accompanied by a powerful male sidekick and a loyal assistant: harpoonist Ned Land and manservant Conseil following Professor Aronnax onto Captain Nemo's submarine, the Nautilus, in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea; nephew Axel and guide Hans traveling into a volcano with Professor Otto Lidenbrock in Journey to the Center of the Earth; servant Passepartout attending gentleman Phileas Fogg in Around the World in 80 Days; or reporter Gideon Spillet, sailor Pencroff, and his courageous boy Harbert alongside engineer Cyrus Smith and his servant Neb in The Mysterious Island. There might even be a male dog or monkey as well.

And none of them would be at a midday sightseeing destination just beyond a city's suburb. In Jules Verne's world, Latourell Falls would be located on an uncharted island or in some far-off outpost at the remote end or the deep core of the planet. Despite the pristine beauty, it would be plagued by threatening creatures and people with evil intentions. The man standing here, looking around, would be, like Cyrus Smith, "very learned, very practical." He would be "an unusually resourceful person," someone "ever ready for anything, competent in everything" as he explored the unknown, facing down every threat, making his own way. A man "of great mettle . . . a man of action." He would, in sum, be unlike me in every way. And any women would be back home, yearning for their men to return, not leading a limping, aging fellow thinking about stories of fictional adventure.

Verne had been on my mind lately, though I had never read any of his books. I...