The secret waterfall

Is there a scene in some adventure tale that depicts a secret cave hidden behind a waterfall? In a Tintin book maybe? (Or Lord of the Rings? Or Planet of the Apes?) It seems like an iconic image anyway, but I just can't place it. All I know is that when I was a kid I wanted to discover a secret cave behind a waterfall, and explore it.

There are lots of caves around here in southern France. Cotignac butts right up against a massive cliff that is full of holes. Some of these holes, high up, are home to hundreds of swifts that dart and swirl in the skies in search of insects. Lower down are bigger caves, hollowed out hundreds of years ago by local troglodytes. Some of these caves are still used today by people who own houses up against the cliff, although they use them in fairly pedestrian ways – as garages, for instance, or to store patio furniture. Not exactly Tintin-esque.

There are also waterfalls around. A nearby town – Sillans la Cascade – is named for its huge waterfall, which is a popular destination for weekend walkers. Although, before you get to the deep blue-green pool at the base of those falls, you encounter several barriers with scare signs posted on them. Danger de chute! Acces interdit! Things like that. But there are wide paths worn around those blockades. That's one thing I appreciate about France: It's a relatively less litigious environment than North America, and so people have easy access to potentially dangerous places like abandoned mills, ruined castles, and slippery cliffs. Sure, there might sometimes be signs warning you away, and sometimes even easily-breachable barriers, but they come across as little more than half-hearted municipal suggestions. Nothing to really stop you.

There are waterfalls right here in Cotignac too. There is an easy well-worn path to one of them, and we've been many times. And there's another one too, which isn't exactly unknown, but also isn't exactly easy to get to. It's hidden high up along one side of the cliff, and there's no real path, and I think it might be on private property anyway. Jasper and I finally made it to this "secret waterfall" one recent weekend while Maddox was having an all-afternoon play-date at Hannah's house, and Quincy was enjoying a rare opportunity to have the house to herself. To get to the waterfall, Jasper and I had to beat our way through tall grasses and vines and wild roses along a barbed-wire fence, and then scramble steeply up over crumbling shale alongside a sharply cascading stream. Jasper is a strong climber, and a sensible one too. More than once, as we fumbled for footholds in the slippery rock, she suggested that we stop. "It's too dangerous, Dad," she'd say, "Let's go back before one of us gets hurt." Fair enough. But if she was gonna talk precociously like a parent, I had to respond like an eight-year kid – "Oh come on, just a little bit higher? Please?" – and after three or four dodgy maneuvers, we hauled ourselves up to a large hollowed-out bowl shrouded by trees in the side of the cliff, with the waterfall suddenly thundering down above us and gathering in a wide pool at our feet.

A couple of days later, Eric and I revisited Jasper's secret waterfall while the kids were at school. It was then that we discovered the secret caves as well. There were multiple entrances, including a big one carved into the dry cliff on the far side of the pool, and even one small wet one – barely big enough for a malnourished troglodyte to slip through – partially hidden behind the roaring plume of the waterfall itself. We resolved to come back the next day again, with Jasper, and with headlamps.

And so, the next afternoon, Eric and Jasper and I set off on foot one more time toward the secret waterfall. It really is a lovely walk. Deep-throated croaks of bullfrogs lurking in shallow pools choked with mosses and algae. Black-and-white skittery flashes of magpies in the fig trees. Weedy fields dotted with red poppies and purple irises and rustling stalks of wheat. We munched on tender shoots of wild fennel. We talked about that time many years ago, when Eric and I, along with our friend Noodles, set out with flashlights to explore the abandoned tunnels of a long-defunct iron mine carved deep inside a Connecticut hillside. Some previous trespasser had done the dirty work of cutting through and bending back the steel bars that were supposed to keep foolhardy teenagers like us out of the mine. So only common sense – which we chose not to possess that day – could have prevented us from risking our lives inside the lightless subterranean obstacle course tricked out with sharp stones and broken ladders and deep vertical shafts that appeared suddenly at our feet.

There wasn't quite so much danger lurking behind the secret waterfall here in Cotignac. The caves didn't go very deep. Most of them were pretty well waterlogged, and the one dry tunnel ended in a cave-in after about 15 meters. So, while it was definitely fun and exciting, it's wasn't exactly like my iconic comic book imaginings. No Tintin in pleated pants disappearing through a waterfall with an old-fashioned flashlight in his hands and an exclamation mark above his head. No Snowy with a worried look. No Captain Haddock making a blustering hash of things. And as we explored, we had to be wary of broken glass. Because, of course, Jasper's secret waterfall isn't exactly a secret to people who've grown up in Cotignac. Evidence suggests that local teenagers have been climbing up here for years, to explore, to carve the cliff face with their names and initials and earnest declarations of unrequited love, and to party.