Toward the eastern end of the continent, where two great countries meet, the mighty Niagara River flows toward the Atlantic Ocean and acts as a border between the state of New York and the province of Ontario. The River has been there since long before there were names like "America" and "Canada," "New York" and "Ontario." The deep, cold waters of the Niagara flow ever eastward, until they reach the Falls. Suddenly, the mammoth river stops moving horizontally and plunges over a tremendous cliff. Endless millions of gallons of water drop off of the great cliff, fall for what must seem an eternity, and then pound down upon the great rocks below. The great rocks themselves are former pieces of the great cliff which have broken off under the mighty force of the ceaseless river.

Where the water pounds on the great rocks, foam and mist are created, with the foam floating on the waters below, and the mist rising high into the cool, damp air above. It has been this way for thousands of years, and so it will be for thousands of years to come. But, long ago, something strange and wonderful happened in that mist. Before the coming of the White Men, when the Indians worshiped the spirit of the falls and were awed by its truly awesome grandeur and power, the mist suddenly came awake.

Floating in the mist was all of the stuff of life the molecules of life were present from the animals and plants of the river that met their deaths from plunging over the Falls, and the static electricity of the everflowing water was an everpresent source of energy. One night, long ago, a terrible storm raged over the Falls. In the midst of this storm, a bolt of lightning flashed down from the heavens and dove into the mist, which had retreated under the force of the storm until it was but a thin veil over the swirling waters below. When the lightning hit the mist, it became the last and key ingredient to life, and the mist was no longer just mist, but was a thing of little substance but much thought and feeling. It did not float in the mist, but was more a part of the mist, or a pattern of thought and feeling that ran through the everpresent, everchanging cloud.

After it became awake, the thing of the mist was at first annoyed when the Indians would come to worship it. Over time and after watching the Indians as they talked with one another, the thing of the mist first felt loneliness, as it could not talk to anyone or anything. It was the first time that it had felt loneliness, but it would not be the last. When the White Men came, they initially treated the Falls in much the same way as the Indians had. They would stare in wonder at the water as it hurdled over the cliff and roared down upon the rocks waiting below, but they looked right through or around the thing of the mist, and its loneliness and frustration grew.

As it watched the people who stared at the Falls, the thing of the mist made careful observations; the people came in different sizes, colors, and shapes, and there seemed to be three general types: the big powerful ones who sometimes had beards, the slightly smaller ones who often had long hair, and the small ones who were not always careful or wise and needed to be cared for by the bigger ones.

Then, there were the sad ones. It did not happen often, but people sometimes came to the Falls for a different reason. The thing of the mist did not know words, but it could feel whatever the people were feeling, and the sad ones were always painful for the thing of the mist. The sad ones would come, and their sadness was overwhelming and reminded the cloudbeing of its own neverending loneliness. The sad ones would step to the edge of the Falls, stare into the flowing waters as if hypnotized, and then end their existence by leaping into the plunging waters and onto the rocks far below. For the thing of the mist, this caused terrible pain, for it felt their despair, their tremendous terror as they fell, and their excruciating pain as they landed. Then, their lifeenergy, with all of its sadness, would become part of the thing of the mist, and its loneliness and frustration grew.

Fortunately, this did not happen often. As time went on, the thing of the mist learned important things: it learned some of the language of the people by listening to them and watching them, and it learned how to make itself known to the people in small ways. One of the strange things that it came to realize was that the people had different ways to communicate with each other, which meant that they sometimes could not understand one another. But, the thing of the mist came to understand many of the people's words, which made its life less lonely, as it could eavesdrop on their ideas in addition to their feelings.

The ways by which the thing of the mist learned to make itself known were manipulations of the environment around it. It sometimes entertained the crowds that gathered to watch the Falls by stretching up into the sunlight to create rainbows. This usually brought on many Oooohs and Ahhhs from the crowd. When the small wooden things called "boats" brought the people to the foamy feet of the thing in the mist, it would swirl the waters beneath to play with the boatpeople. Some of them liked this, and some did not; some got sick. The thing in the mist would also play with the gulls, terns, and other birds who flew through it. It would swirl and change the breezes so that the birds would dip and turn and rise. Some of them liked this, and some did not; some got sick.

A concept which was, at first, even stranger to the thing in the mist, was that the people had names. Being the only thingofthemist in the world made names seem unnecessary, but it came to understand the necessity of names as it realized how many different people there actually were.

On a hot summer day thirty summers ago, a family came to see the Falls. The big person with the long hair held a very small person in her arms. When the thingofthemist reached out a misty hand to playfully drench the family, as it sometimes enjoyed doing, the person with the long hair looked at the small person in her arms and said, "Oooh, Carl you're all wet now!" At that moment, the thing of the mist gave itself the name, "Carl."

The people started shining bright, colored lights on the Falls at night and, without any way of knowing what they were doing, they made Carl stronger by pouring energy into him at night, when there was usually less energy because of the darkness. The blue lights felt especially good to Carl.

Then there came a day which changed Carl's life forever. One of the sad ones came to the Falls, and Carl immediately knew why the person was there. The person, who was one of the large ones who sometimes had beards and were called, "men," came to the iron railing right where the Falls went hurdling over the edge of the cliff, and he stared into the water for an eternity. The man's sadness was terribly painful to Carl, who had never been able to figure out how to block out the feelings of others, and Carl dreaded what he knew was going to happen.

Carl decided that it was going to be different this time; he was going to do everything that he could do to stop the tragedy unfoldingv beside him. He pushed himself in the direction of the man, and completely drenched the man and all who stood near him without realizing what their fellow human being was planning to do. The man stood his ground, while the other people backed off.

Carl reached to the heavens and stretched himself out in the sunlight to create a truly magnificent triple rainbow. The crowds were very impressed, and the sad man even gasped quietly. Carl was making progress, but he still had a long way to go.

A lone dark, heavy cloud passed overhead, and Carl seized the opportunity. By stretching one thin finger skyward to touch the dark cloud, Carl induced a bolt of lightning to shoot down to the waters below. The energy was incredible, and a distant memory of his dramatic birth flashed through Carl's mind. The crowd was astonished at the unexpected lightning on what was otherwise a beautiful summer day. The sad man actually looked away from the mesmerizing water to glance at the sky above. A little more progress, but still far to go.

Carl took all of the energy he had gained from the lightning, and all of the energy of the Falls, and all of the energy he received from the sunlight, and directed it into a huge piece of rock at the edge of the Falls beneath the flowing green sheet of water. The boulder broke away and crashed down to the rocks below, where it shattered with explosive force and a noise that made thunder seem like a whisper. The sad man stared down at the rock, and then backed up to sit at one of the benches. Carl had wanted to make the man realize how real and terrible his destruction would be if he leaped to his death and, for a while, Carl thought that he had succeeded. The man was still sad, but he was now confused, and he sat motionlessly on the bench as the sun inched its way down toward the western horizon. Carl watched and rested, as his efforts had drained him of most of his strength.

Suddenly, the man stood and walked toward the Edge again. Carl could feel that the man's sadness was still overwhelmingly strong, and the man's confusion had vanished. Time was running out, and Carl did the only thing that he could think of, which was something that he had always assumed to be impossible: he communicated.

Carl rushed over to surround the sad man in drenching mist, and Carl summoned every memory that he had that was happy or exciting or joyous or wondrous or positive in any way. He flooded the man with his memoryfeelings, and he reached down into the man's mind and pulled up all of the good memories that he could find there.

Carl backed off and shrank down near the surface of the foamy waters below, as this last effort had drained almost all of his energy. He wondered if he had gone too far and expended so much energy that he would not recover. For the first time since his birth, Carl realized that he might not live forever.

Meanwhile, the man at the Edge staggered backward a few feet and sat or fell down on the hard ground. He was completely astonished at what had happened, and he was surging with inexplicable happiness and wonder and excitement. He did not know what had happened to him, but he did know that his life had forever changed. He was consumed with a desire to understand Nature in all of its wonder and glory, and he wanted to spread the word that Man and Nature could live in harmony and grow together. He now had a purpose in life, and the plan that had been so recently a certain necessity to him, now horrified him. He could not understand how he could have ever considered destroying anything as precious as life.

Carl had to know whether his efforts had achieved their end, or if he had almost destroyed himself in vain. With his last bits of energy, he reached up to peer over the railing. The man still sat on the ground where he had fallen, but a wide grin was spread across his face, and his eyes danced and sparkled with the joy of life. Like another bolt of lightning, all of Carl's energy returned to him in that instant. He stretched himself skyward and, with some difficult twisting and maneuvering, he accomplished a trick that he had tried unsuccessfully on several occasions. The people below gasped as they witnessed the first horizontal, circular rainbow ever seen by Man.

The man who used to be sad stood, brushed the water from his eyes, and joined the crowd in enjoying the magnificent beauty of the colorful halo above the Falls. He then turned and strode toward his motel room in the city. The crowd rushed to the railing to look for the rocks which they heard falling, but they saw no falling rocks, for the thunderous sound that they heard was really Carl's joyous laughter.