Cold Water, Slick Rocks
Notes on noise, attention, and a waterfall in Utah
Last week, my wife and I took our two sons on a trip west. We visited Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons and settled outside of Park City, UT. A week outside, in new places, seeing things we’d never seen. Letting my boys see a side of my life they never got to be part of, because they weren’t here yet.
We lived in Salt Lake for a couple of years before we moved back to Indianapolis. My boys were born after that, so they never knew that stop. My girls did. Taking the boys back there was a strange kind of gift, and it caught me off guard how much I’d missed the place. Ten years since I’d been back, and somehow I’d forgotten how much I loved it. The mountains, the people, all of it.
Monday, we drove the Mirror Lake Highway. We fished a few spots on our way up. On the way back down, we stopped at Provo Falls, the same spot we’d stopped at with our girls fifteen years earlier.
We got in the water. We walked out between two waterfalls. The rocks were slick with algae, and the current was moving fast around our ankles. I had slides on, not water shoes, so every step mattered. Some of those rocks weren’t even set firm in the riverbed. One wrong step and I was going down. I was watching my footing and watching my boys at the same time, making sure they were safe while I kept myself upright.
The whole scene was too much to take in at once. Mountains, trees, rock, and the water moving down the side of the canyon. I stood there, thinking about how long that water had been running through that exact place for thousands of years, cutting the rock and carving the falls I was standing in the middle of. I put my hands in it and let it move around my fingers. Just noticing how it felt, cold and constant, I could feel the force of the water rushing past.
Somewhere in the middle of all that, the cold, slick rock, the noise of the water, watching my sons, remembering my daughters standing in that same spot fifteen years ago, something cleared. I was more present in that ten minutes than I’d been in weeks.
Here’s what I think was actually happening.
The cold forced my attention to my feet. The slick rock forced me to place every step on purpose. There was no room left over for the noise that usually runs underneath everything, the calendar, the emails, or the version of me that’s always half-managing five things while pretending to be present for one. The water didn’t relax me. It disrupted me. Once the noise finally faded, something else got through.
Environment and pace are two of the most reliable ways to force a shift in attention. A shift in attention is what actually opens up a shift in perspective. Not necessarily because new scenery is inspiring, but because our habits and patterns are tied to environmental cues. Your nervous system can’t keep running the same old pattern when the environment changes.
I used to think novelty was experiencing something brand new. But I am beginning to think novelty is anything that interrupts autopilot. Sometimes that’s a place you’ve genuinely never seen. Sometimes it’s a place you know well, but enough time has passed that the old version of you who last stood there doesn’t quite match who’s standing there now. Which is exactly what Provo Falls was for me. I wasn’t discovering something new. I was standing in a place I already knew, watching my sons instead of my daughters, and the gap in time did the same work a brand-new experience might have. Sometimes it’s just a familiar pace, somewhere unfamiliar, or an unfamiliar pace somewhere familiar. Different doors to the same room.
Sitting with all this afterward, I realized this wasn’t the first time.
It happened at my grandparents’ place on the Ohio River when I was a kid, getting out of the city into somewhere that felt safe before I understood why. It happens while camping, hiking, or sometimes sitting on my porch doing nothing at all. It’s happened in the shower, of all places. Every one of those moments registered, but I never recognized what was actually happening as it happened. They were fleeting moments that ended every time I came back to ordinary life; I flipped right back into the old pattern without ever noticing I’d been holding a tool the whole time, not just having an experience. That’s the real thing I’m sitting with. Not that I found something new at Provo Falls. That I finally noticed something I’d been mistaking for luck for most of my life.
I don’t think you always have to get on a plane for this. I think what’s actually happening — the attention finally landing on something real, the noise dropping out from underneath — is something you can learn to create on purpose, without needing a canyon or a waterfall to force it on you. Anchoring your attention to something real enough that the noise can’t run underneath it. Water through your fingers. Breath. It doesn’t much matter what, as long as it’s real and you’re actually in it.
I’m still learning how to do that well. It’s helped me the times I’ve done it right. I believe it would help almost anyone. I just don’t think you get good at it by reading about it. You get good at it the same way I got good at standing on slick rocks in cold water. By doing it badly at first, paying attention the whole way through. I looked like my one-year-old grandson who’s just learning to walk. Hands up for balance, slow steps, trying not to fall.
If you’re looking for it, you’ve probably already got a place like this. A drive. A walk. An hour of the day you’ve never thought twice about. Next time you’re there, don’t rush past it. Notice what it’s actually doing to you.
That’s the whole practice, not chasing some new experience every time, but finally paying attention to the ones you’ve already been having.
The water’s been doing this for thousands of years. Moving around whatever gets in its way, never stopping to fight it, just finding the way through. I stood in the middle of it for ten minutes, and it did more for my head than a month of trying to think my way out of anything ever has.
Sometimes, tuning in to life as it’s unfolding is all it takes. This time, it was cold water and slick rocks that forced my attention.
If this landed, if you recognized a place in your own life where the noise finally dropped away, or realized you’ve been calling something luck that was actually a pattern you never noticed, you don’t have to figure out what to do with it alone.
I don’t have this figured out either. But I’ve found I don’t have to figure it out alone, and neither do you.
I work with men who have adapted their way into lives that look right on the outside and feel wrong on the inside. We make the invisible visible. We trace the patterns back to where they started. And we build the capacity to consciously create the life you actually want.
If you’re ready to stop running the old programs and start driving, send me a message.
We’ll start with a conversation and see where it leads.
This is so cool. My husband newly retired from corporate and I leave Sept 3 for a 6 week cross country trip in out conversion van. Just us. We have 5 grown adults and 5 grandkids. We are taking this trip now as we know life gets busy and if we don't now than when?
I look forward to the change that the openess will bring. Thank you this price. It is helpful to see that other do the same to seek such moments. We took our grandson to the lake yesterday in NJ yesterday he just lit up while we recharged. It was beautiful to watch and feel.
This is so cool. My husband newly retired from corporate and I leave Sept 3 for a 6 week cross country trip in out conversion van. Just us. We have 5 grown adults and 5 grandkids. We are taking this trip now as we know life gets busy and if we don't now than when?
I look forward to the change that the openess will bring. Thank you this price. It is helpful to see that other do the same to seek such moments. We took our grandson to the lake yesterday in NJ yesterday he just lit up while we recharged. It was beautiful to watch and feel.