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An adaptation of a synopsis...

Toward the mid-point of the story, the Shepherd leads Much-Afraid to the "Place of Anointing" where she will make the choice for downward mobility and begin the final phase of her journey to the "High Places." As they stand together "at the foot of the cliffs" they hear the "voice of a mighty waterfall...whose rushing waters sprang from the snows in the High Places themselves..." As she listened, Much-Afraid realized that she was hearing the full majestic harmonies, the whole orchestra as it were...thousands upon thousands of voices...yet still the same song:

From the heights we leap and go
To the valleys down below,
Always answering the call,

To the lowest place of all.

When the Shepherd asks Much-Afraid, "What do you think of this fall of great waters in their abandonment of self-giving?" She replies, "I think they are beautiful and terrible beyond anything which I ever saw before." "Why terrible?" the Shepherd asks, already knowing the answer. "It is the leap which they have to make, the awful height from which they must cast themselves down to the depths beneath there to be broken on the rocks. I can hardly bear to watch it." However, at the bidding of the Shepherd, Much-Afraid looks more closely, and begins to see her experience with his eyes and to hear "The Song of the Waterfall" with his ears and so is able to make the rest of the journey. The Shepherd says:

At first sight perhaps the leap does look terrible, but as you can see, the water itself finds no terror in it, no moment of hesitation or shrinking, only joy unspeakable, and full of glory, because it is the movement natural to it. Self-giving is its life. It has only one desire, to go down and down and give itself with no reserve or holding back of any kind.