By the time we finally arrived, parked our car, and made our way toward the guard rail I could tell Eva needed a way to refresh herself.  “Come on,” I said walking ahead to the rail.  “It’s a beautiful sight, but you should just close your eyes and feel the mist on your face.”

She stopped dead in her tracks and looked at me with a look I couldn’t understand.  There was caution, worry and a kind of appalled shock.  She held her hands slightly out away from her well turned hips, ready to run away.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.  “Are you afraid of heights?”  She walked lowly towards me and the rail.  What the hell? I wondered to myself.  “Come on.  You’ll like it.  It feels great!”  She came and looked over the edge with hesitations, but there was no real fear.  She didn’t look at the Falls much.  She seemed to be looking all over the space past the guard rail; looking for something disgusting to jump out at her.

Finally she looked over at me, bewildered, still distrustful “Tell me what Mist I’m supposed to be feeling.” 

“What do you mean?” I asked.  A great cloud of water vapor is constantly rising from where the titanic falls hit the rocks and pools below.  It is a gentle and steady presence on the skin, and can’t be missed.  It’s all over the place! 

“We have a word, Mist, in German, but I think, perhaps, it means something different in English.  What do you mean when you say ‘Mist’?”

“Uuhhh, the water droplets in the air?  You see all that white stuff coming up from the waterfall?  That’s mist.”

She smiles and laughs and tries to refuse to tell me what it means in German, but of course she has to now.  “It means garbage.  It can be used sometimes to mean ’shit.’”  She smiles mischievously.

“Really?”

“Yes.”  It is embarrassment, not mischief.  Her cheeks redden, and the water vapor in the air cannot cool it.

I put my arm around her, and walk her away from the railing to drier territory.  “I suppose, then, you won’t want to ride on the boat here called Maid of the Mist.”

Her head jerks to look up at me.  “You’re making that up!”

Image via Wikipedia