Guardians of Grail

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Devil's Well at the Archer Taylor Preserve in Napa
you find yourself in Napa and, despite the natural beauty of the valley surrounding you, feel a subtle, yet undeniable sense of suffocating boredom, it may be time for a hike. And if you can find a hike with waterfalls, then all the better. There is a hike in or near the city of Napa1at the Archer Taylor preserve which features, at one end of it, the Devil's Well waterfall and swimming hole. Fortunately, the road will bring you to the other end of the hike,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], so you'll be able to work up a slight sweat and, when you finally reach the picturesque pool in the middle of the forest, freeze your shins off as salamanders crawl up your underwear. I recently went there with my friend Marlene and, if you go,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], you should follow the same rules we did: call the Preserve ahead of time, smile at every one you see,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], and eat your food before your buddy gets their salamander-slime-covered-hands all over it. Devil's Well trail in the Archer Taylor Preserve has a way of changing throughout the year. To truly appreciate it's beauty,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], one must visit it at least once a week, if not more. If that's unrealistic, shoot for once a season. To visit the trail in the summer is to enjoy a nice, sweltering hike through woods and past streams to a glorious trickling leak of a waterfall. To visit in the fall is to enjoy a nice hike over leaves and past dead plants to a somewhat wetter trickling leak of a waterfall. To visit in the winter is downright impossible. I suggest trying it during a particularly long and heavy rain, oh, and do it in the dark. first sign that something was different this time was that the very beginning of the trail had become a stream. The river had become a raging flood of water and forest parts,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], and hence,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], the trees were now our trail. Thankfully, I'm no foreigner to the outdoors,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], and by drawing on all my year of experience as a Webelo Scout, we were able to make it across a ten-foot-wide river in no less than 30 minutes, after properly walking up and down the bank looking for just the right log bridge. all thinly-veiled-attempts-at-seriousness, the trail does take on a new personality in winter. The trees above disappear into a gray mist, new streams and waterfalls flow all around, and the whole forest takes on an atmosphere reminiscent of crappy fantasy novels. Instead of birds,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], the sounds of rushing water fills the area, and the texture of muddy water fills your shoes. most memorable part of the day came from one of several river crossings. This one involved a Volkswagen-sized jump over rushing, genital-shrinking ice water. Thankfully,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], I had all of one-and-a-half feet of mossy rock on which to gain some speed. Knowing it was a close jump, I cleverly deduced the odds of making it as well as the depth of the water at the far bank using a technique I perfected as a child that I like to call, "letting someone else go first." This particular version involved letting Marlene go first while I cheered her on. "I believe in you!" I would shout encouragingly, "You can definitely make it!" Eventually she,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], as many others have, got fed up with my encouraging screams and did whatever she could to get away from me. In her case, it involved leaping, securing one leg knee-deep under water while grabbing the ground with both hands and pulling it ever-so gently toward her face. The plan worked perfectly. for the bad part. The bad part was that I still had no idea how to get to the other side and stay dry, only this time I knew most of me was destined to get soaked. After letting Marlene determine, through careful process of elimination, that every inch along the bank sucked as bad as the one she landed in, and re-evaluating a twisting root that extended a couple feet from the far bank and sprung back just so worryingly when prodded, I decided, "well, screw it." I crouched, panther-like,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], eyes fixed on the other side, toes ready to bound at a feather's touch, and soared, thrust my arms out in front of me like cartoon cat trying to catch his prey, successfully planted my left foot about four feet behind me underwater,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], and broke the fall with a careful combination of my collarbone and shoulder. After a brief period of idly letting hypothermia set in,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], it dawned on me that the river was doing what it could to re-appropriate my leg into a beaver home downstream,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], so I dragged my drenched, shame-soaked body onto less-wet land and ran ahead to make up for time. shortly after that river crossing, we found another river crossing. At this point, the sun was certainly past its shiniest part of the day, though just how far above or below the horizon it was was a bit tricky to tell, what with the rainclouds, tree canopy, and valley walls and such. It took only a few minutes of evaluating the crossing for "we should probably start going back soon" to become "now would be a good time to go back,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]," which soon thereafter became "hurry hurry I can't see where I'm going ow what was that no don't worry I'm okay ow hurry." We got out in record time with plenty of twilight to spare, and had so much fun and so few injuries that we just had to go back two days later.
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