It was the kind of day when colors pop under a gray Oregon sky and the air is pregnant with coming rain. We made our way up a gravel logging road that wound though a fern-filled forest with a magnificently swollen creek flowing at our side.

The air was filled with mossy goodness and trees with barren branches hung wraithlike from every cliff and bank. There had been a lot of recent rain and waterfalls were at their winter peak. There were many, and not just where the creek rushed high between its banks. Frothy runoff converged to flow down roadside knolls and the faces of cliffs, an overflow of water seeking release from the saturated earth that could no longer hold it.

We were chasing waterfalls and this remote location near the small community of Dora in rural Coos County was the mother lode.

We pulled off the road at our first stop, a little concrete bridge where the water rushed fast and loud. The thundering could be heard as soon as the vehicle doors were opened, an impressive, persistent roar that revealed the force of nature in pure and powerful form.

Further up the road we stopped again, and, following the creek on foot, we were rewarded with a cluster of places where water tumbled furiously over rocks and drop-offs in glorious fashion.

Bearing witness to such an abundance of flowing water satisfied an underlying longing in my soul. Unlike the Upstate New York of my childhood, in Northern California, where I live, most creeks are seasonal and it's a rare winter when they rush as abundantly as in this lush and spectacularly verdant place.

I suspect this day will be forever emblazoned in my memory, my first one graced with the wild magic of Oregon's winter waterfalls.