All the Difference posts are about those people (and ideas) who dared to step off the busy highway and to follow one less worn for wear. Away from the crowds, these individuals walk to their own beat, with unexpected and singular results that may not always be for everyone, but that, my guess, was never the point.
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Carleton Watkins. Just east of Oregon’s famed Multnomah Falls is a small gorge, named after my hometown, Oneonta, New York. Not looking like much from the Old Scenic Highway, it’s often overlooked; there are no monumental cascades visible from the road like some of the other parking-lot stops, just a dark, narrow, mossy chasm, where icy, rushing water squeezes between what looks like the stems of two basalt toad-stool protrusions growing from the rock walls, one on either side, their caps reaching out across the slippery current, as if about to touch. I always wondered why it was called Oneonta—there are a couple Oneonta’s across the US and I couldn’t imagine it had anything to do with my upstate New York birthplace. What did I know?
