The Power of Peace: Pedernales Style

In this place, the only sound I hear is the beating of my heart.  Lub-dub. Lub-dub. I am weightless, floating, submerged.  Water fills my ears and softens my sides.  I move with the gentle motion of the river, with the motion of the universe.  My eyes are closed.  The sun is gently warming my nose, my forehead, tickles my toes: just the parts of me that aren’t hidden under the cool water. These minutes I want to hold forever.  Nothing is entering my consciousness besides the feeling of my body and its place in the world.

When I finally sit up, I am looking up river.  The sun is bright in the midday and it is hot outside, but it doesn’t bother us here in the river.  I reach out my hands to greet my toddler, to entice him into the water to join us.  He has just woken up from a nap that was induced by the swaying of his father’s back, in his ride in the backpack down the rocky trail to this river access.

We are soon greeted by a female ranger who sternly warns us that we need to be heading up the trail now.  We are at the tail end of our 9 am to 1 pm reservation time in the Hamilton Pool Trail area, and we needed to have already left to be back at the parking area by one pm.

This was my third time visiting Hamilton Pool, and the first time I had been down on the river side.  We had ventured down the river trail about halfway through our time.  We had all been having a good time swimming in Hamilton Pool until a poopy swim diaper caused us to have to make an early departure. We decided to try going down this way afterwards to make the most of our time left. Now that I know what kind of solitude and peace can be found there, I will go again, despite the fact that the trail was a bit long and rocky to get there (it is only 0.6 from where the trail splits, but it seemed long both ways due to the terrain).

I also make an intentional decision to hold on to that feeling of complete peace I had floating in the river that day.  It was akin to the feeling one gets during the shavasana at the end of a yoga session: a feeling I need more of in my life.