Discombobulation.

This is part 2 of a story to help me process ... and discover Freedom. (continued from part 1- Where am I?)
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I decided to follow the river down stream.  As I walked I thought through what I had seen and what I could remember.  This experience was to real too dismiss as a dream or fantasy, but my mind felt hazy enough to outright accept this as reality.  I was tempted to pinch myself again, but the pain was still a fresh memory.  The roar of the water brought me out of my reverie as I walked closer to the cliff.  I couldn't see any water coming down the cliff face and wondered at the noise.  Each step seemed to amplify it exponentially.  I tried to continue my thoughts about where I was, but the noise was drowning them out.  My curiosity of the sound soon became greater than my curiosity of my circumstances and as I approached where the river met the cliff I could think of little else.

It was an odd noise.  It was definitely water related as it had the sound of crashing water that a waterfall would make, but it also had an eerie warble or echo to it that sounded out of place.  As I got closer my left ear developed a distant hum thump.  I could only describe it as if it couldn't make sense of the sound waves it was hearing.  I could see now the river did not continue along the cliff, but disappeared.  With this new information I quickly concluded, as the mind can do sometimes, that the waterfall went into the cliff somehow and the weird out of place sound was an echo of some sort from crashing into a cavern.

The volume seemed to max out and as I neared, the hum thumping disappearing as my mind now understood the sound.  It was still loud, but I was used to it enough that I could formulate thoughts once again.  The hole in the cliff face was about the width of the river and barely taller than it.  It looked like the river crashed so hard into the cliff face it made its own hole to continue on.  There was no splashing or over-spray, the water simply disappeared and crashed somewhere below the sound echoing from the mouth of the cave.  In fact, now that I was standing next to the cliff face, the sound was actually quieter, as if the echoes were only shooting outward from the cave mouth.

There was definitely no way to cross the river.  Besides the water moving too fast and being extremely cold, there was not a way I saw to climb up the far bank.  More likely I would get sucked into the over hang of one side or the other and end up down the hole I was looking at now.  Even if somehow I were able to cross, so far I had seen nothing but prairie and it would be a long walk before I discovered anything else.  I decided to walk along the cliff face back to where it met the upper portion of the river.

I looked up towards the top of the cliff and it was even harder to make out than before.  The sun was still shining bright and the sky was such a brilliant blue it was hard to look at.  Every once in awhile I would see a small lip and a nice handhold in the cliff face that I would stop and try to climb.  The highest I made it was about 10 feet and then I would get stuck or panic that I was too high.  It was unrealistic that I would be able to climb to the top anyway, but it was fun to try.  The height of the cliff was hard to fathom.  1000 feet seemed too high of a guess, but anything less seemed too little.  At such an awkward angle, standing at the bottom, I just accepted it as being really really tall.

The tree at the top of the hill caught my attention now and then.  I sat to rest once and just stared at it.  I couldn't tell what kind of tree it was.  I thought maybe if it was still alive it would probably be a fruit tree of some sort.  Even though it looked dead it had a lot of character to it.  The kind of dead tree you might read about in a book or see in a movie.

Now that I was well away from the water falling, the noise was all but gone.  And now that I thought about it, there wasn't any other noises.  No rustling of wind, no buzzing of insects, no sounds you would imagine to exist being outside.  My footsteps barely even made a sound in the soft grass, if any at all.  I suddenly clapped, the silence weirding me out.  The sound echoed off the cliff face, but dissipated quickly.  I yelled.  It was the first time I used my voice since opening my eyes.  My throat was scratchy and an awkward sound escaped, but similarly echoed and faded quickly.  I cleared my throat and yelled again, a barbaric yawp one might say.  The echo didn't last long once again.  I had a thought about the grass acting as a sound absorber, and thought about it sucking the sound out of the air in the same way it seemed to have sucked the life from the tree.

Continuing on, I hummed to myself having found my voice and even sang a little.  Now that I was aware of the absence of noise, it was eerie and I couldn't walk too long in the silence before filling my head again with some sort of noise.  I thought randomly about different things.  Each thought seemed fleeting and I found myself avoiding any sustained thought about where I was.  Almost like I was reserving any further pondering until I had seen and explored what ever there was to see and explore.

I was far enough past the hill now, I could see that the river was wrapping around towards the cliff and I was where it met the cliff face in short time.  From here, as far as I could see up stream, the river followed the base of the cliff.  Other than that, the river looked exactly the same.  Flowing quickly, and disappearing under the far bank.  Along the cliff side the water had warn away enough rock, there was a slight over hang there too.  Cautiously approaching the bank on my side, I laid down to get another drink as it had been quite awhile.  For some reason, seeing the water again made me thirsty.  Satisfied and refreshed, I stood and rubbed the cold out of my hand.

Although still quiet and muted, the periodical splash of water was a welcome sound.  I already liked this side of the river more than the other side and certainly more than the silence in the middle.  The grass rose and inclined a little where it intersected the cliff and river, and upon further inspection I could make out a little ledge.  I walked to the ledge and from here could see the water was about 6 feet below .  The ledge was about 12 inches wide, narrower in some places, wider in others.  It looked like it was naturally occurring, uneven and steep.  I could make out a couple of places where the trail was broken by a ledge, but continued on above it.  I tried to follow it with my eyes, but besides going up, I couldn't make out much more as it blended in with the rest of the cliff face in the distance.

I considered my options.  Following the trail was the obvious choice.  At least to go as far as I could and see where it went.  It was definitely narrow and the way looked difficult, but having followed the river to the waterfall and having walked the entire face of the cliff, I couldn't image what else I would do.  I looked at the sky to gage how much more daylight I would have and stared in surprise.  The sun hadn't moved at all.  I had the impression it was moving earlier, but now that I was thinking about it, that was more from me moving and it's relation to the cliff face.  As I thought more purposefully about time, I realized it hadn't moved at all.  Time had certainly passed, I guessed it had been a couple of hours since I opened my eyes, but the sun hadn't moved.  My mind wrestled with this inconsistency and I sunk to the ground confused.

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continue to part 3- Revelation