Yosemite, Part Seven - Number 26 on my life list.

Part 7

North Dome
Go to Part: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

It was another lazy morning with no reason to rush.  My next campsite on North Dome was only six miles away.  It was quiet, with the exception of a numerous variety of bird calls.  In the valley below, I watched two birds chase each other.  Seeing their backs from above gave scale to the deep valley.

“Let’s have cereal for breakfast,” I said.

“Mmm, that sounds good, but maybe put pants on first?” I replied.

“Right, good idea,” I agreed.

Yes, that conversation actually happened.  No reason to pretend we don't all talk to ourselves on occasion. It happens considerably more often when I've been alone in the woods.  And the amazing thing is, these short conversations with myself are generally friendly chatter and not just the usual berating.

I put on pants, ate cereal, and said farewell to another great campsite.

I made my way toward Yosemite Point, but my first stop today was to stare at a tree.  It wasn’t exactly part of the itinerary, but the size of the tree made me stop.  The micro-world taking place on its surface compelled me to get out my camera.  When closely examined, it was easy to see it as a world as wonderful as Yosemite itself.   Every lofty pine is a planet covered in lime green moss meadows, timberland ravines and cliffs.  There are grooves in the bark like tiny dry riverbeds and deep gullies. Spider webs stretch over them like tightropes and zip lines.

Anyone that happened to walk by would have seen a man with his hands against a huge pine tree, leaning into it, his eyes inches from the bark, panning its surface slowly.  I was engrossed in a world that I have often looked at, but never saw.  

I didn't actually see anyone until I got to Upper Yosemite falls. The creek was too low for the falls to draw the crowd it usually does, but I passed two couples coming up from the valley.

“Did you just come down the mountain?” one of the men asked.  “Is it hard to hike up?”

I have found that the level of difficulty is so subjective, that I didn’t know how to answer him.  After a short  pause I just said, “Not hard enough to not give it a try.”

They didn’t give it a try.

I crossed a wooden bridge over the creek then began my climb to Yosemite Point.  Enduring the heat with rare moments of shade was well worth the reward that awaited me. The sky was bright blue and nearly cloudless.  The sharp peaks of the battleship gray mountains rose high in the distance like big top circus tents. I crept right up to the edge and saw the whole of Yosemite Valley laid out before me: the village, the serpentine highway, and cars that raced along like toy Hot Wheels. The opposite effect of that micro-world on the tree. My familiar macro-world was now in miniature.

When nearing North Dome four miles later, I stopped at a summit thinking I had arrived.  The view offered a new angle I hadn’t seen before, and was every bit as impressive as the one at Yosemite Point.  It planted a wide grin on my face.  It was the kind of elation that pours over you making the hair on your neck rise and your skin shiver.

I was ready to put down my pack, set up camp, and stare at the view for the next few hours, but after reviewing my map I realized I hadn’t yet made it to my destination.  North Dome was actually the smooth rounded peak two thousand feet away and two hundred feet below.  From this height, it looked like a great white whale.  Not a real one, but the version in cartoons with the disproportionately large head that slopes down to an undersized tail.
   

I dropped my gear off on the tail and hiked along the spine to the top of the big round head.   When I returned, I decided to setup camp where I left my pack. I unrolled my tent on a rectangle patch of land that had been flattened by previous tents.  On the other side of the log there was a fire ring and an unobstructed view of the large flat face of Half Dome.  What started as a tiny point in the distance, that I was hiking toward all week, was now up close and massive.  I sat on the ground against the log and enjoyed another tuna salad pita while considering my good fortune to be alive and sitting at another amazing campsite.

The sun began to tuck behind the horizon. I climbed back onto North Dome as the sky turned salmon pink.  I watched a shadow creep up Half Dome until it covered all but a sunny cap on top.    Soon that too was gone.  

Drivers heading down the serpentine highway began to turn on headlights.  From up here, all that bustling activity was completely silent.  I couldn’t even hear a single cricket’s chirp.  It was so quiet, that occasionally I heard faint voices coming from backpackers on the other side of the valley. 

“There is pizza and cold beer down there,” I said to myself, all alone on the granite dome.  I began to see the appeal of a restaurant or two.

I found a boulder with a perfect dimple worn into it forming a comfortable seat. With the sunlight gone, and the pink faded from the sky, a few campfires on the other side of the valley popped into view.  Not even a wisp of cloud shrouded the brilliance of the starlight. 

“Eee, eeee, eeeee.”  The sudden presence of a bat fluttering above my head startled me.

“Oh, hello, Mr. Bat. I thought I was alone.”

Maybe an hour later (but who really knows) I was beginning to get cold and sore from sitting on granite, but leaving wasn’t easy.  This night has made the short list of the most amazing nights of my life.  And in that ephemeral moment I wanted to memorize every mountain slope lit by the half moon, every tree forming the saw-toothed edge of the horizon, and the position of every star that hung so radiant above a view that stretched for miles. 

I started to head back to camp in the darkness, thinking of a warm crackling campfire, but turned for another look.  Half Dome looked so beautiful under the azure glow of the half moon.

I’ll just stay a bit longer, I thought. I laid on my back and stared up at the stars. 

The temperature continued to drop, but I needed to feel that moment of closure when I felt like I could call it a night without having wasted any of it.  In my life, most of my anxiety comes not from the bad things that could happen, but all the good things that could happen, but through some fault of my own, might not.  This night was too great and too rare to allow it to end too quickly.  Consequently, that “bit longer” turned into an hour.

In the deep silence under the stars, my eyes kept closing slowly, but I wouldn’t allow myself to fall asleep.  Just then a bright meteor shot across the sky exactly where my eyes were focused.  The fiery tail lasted for a few seconds then faded away.  I grinned. There was my moment, I had my closure. 

I wished on that shooting star that nothing had to change.  Not that I didn’t want to eventually leave and experience other things, but that the way I felt never had to change.  I want to feel like that always.  And why not? Life is constantly offering opportunities like these if only we choose to make them happen.  I know that I can’t do this all of the time, but is it more crazy to measure a successful life in moments like these, than in dollars in the bank?  Everything I surround myself with in pursuit of having a comfortable life cannot hold a candle to how I feel in these moments when I have the least.

I got up and stood with both hands leaning on a trekking pole. I panned around in a complete circle to see it all one last time then headed back to camp.  Reflective flakes in North Dome’s granite surface sparkled. Its color in the moonlight looked like snow and even the fine gravel crunched like snow under my steps.

When I got back to camp, I struck a match and dropped it into the fire ring onto dried pine needles surrounded by finger-thick twigs that I arranged earlier.  It roared to life in a few seconds. As it burned down, I placed wrist-thick branches on top.  I warmed myself while watching them burn for quite some time. When I couldn’t keep myself awake any longer, I crawled into my tent.

“But, what about bears?” several asked me before my trip.  What about living a version of my life that didn’t include this unforgettable night on North Dome?  Honestly, I do appreciate the concern, but the latter worries me far more.

Part Eight >

Go to Part: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Yosemite, Part Six - Number 26 on my life list.

Part 6

Yosemite Creek

Go to Part: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

I slipped out of my tent before sunrise. I tried to be quiet. My neighbors were scattered on the ground in sleeping bags, like caterpillars that cocooned last night. My shoes gnawed noisily at the gravel, so I made a wide arch around their camp. Once out of earshot, I walked freely and alone on El Capitan.

The sun was still behind the mountains.  It colored the sky above me pink, but left a layer of blue over the valley, like a sunrise in the plains turned upside down. I sat and stared at Half Dome with my camera sitting in my lap and my sleeves pulled over my cold hands, waiting.

During Yosemite’s peak season, as many as nine hundred people will hike to the top of Half Dome in a given day. I preferred to see it from across the valley where there were no crowds. 

To further guarantee this solitude, I came to Yosemite after the tourist-luring waterfalls had dried up for the year. Some might say I didn’t see Yosemite at its best, but I believe being there alone in silence, with or without waterfalls, was seeing it at its best.

The sun crested the granite skyline and beamed at me like a lighthouse beacon. The point of golden light soon fanned out and illuminated the tips of distant mountain peaks. If I spent as much time watching sunrises as I do watching progress bars crawl across computer screens, could I be this happy every day?

I watched until the sun was high enough to shine onto the quiet valley below. The campgrounds were filling with light. A few bleary-eyed campers were surely up and breathing in this brisk morning air with me now. I got to my feet and went back to camp. My gangly shadow walked in front of me like a man on stilts.

I crawled back into my sleeping bag to get warm. I dozed off and woke when I heard my neighbors getting up. I took down my tent, ate breakfast, and got back on the trail.

Every time the trees parted this morning, Half Dome was in the distance, growing larger and more detailed with every mile. 

When again surrounded by tall pine tree trunks, I saw a squirrel running toward me, leaping from branch to branch. He stopped in a tree overhead just off the trail. He stared me down and chattered angrily. I’m unable to spell the sound he was making, but I’m sure it translated to, “You shall not pass!” His body convulsed with every chirp and squeak. His tail twitched and flicked. 

He tried hard to instill fear into me, seemingly unaware of our significant size differences. He only managed to put a grin on my face and for a moment the loudest sound in the forest was my laughter. It’s great to be in such a mood. I wish I could bottle it and take it home. If I was in this mood at home, however, those familiar with my normal demeanor would suspect recreational drug use.  And justifiably so.

I hope my laughter didn’t make the squirrel feel inadequate, though. This was his shining moment to prove he could defend his enchanted forest. I couldn’t help it. I was in an extraordinarily good mood and his defiance was adorable. 

Regardless, I eventually moved on. I guess as far as the squirrel knows, his defense worked. His home was, after all, safe from the human intruder. I liked to think that as I walked away, his squirrel friends scurried out of hiding to celebrate the successful standoff. Maybe he was approached by the attractive female squirrel that he had a crush on for years. The one who never thought he was good enough for her. Maybe with his new fame she finally noticed him. Maybe he walked right passed her and embraced another, a cute-but-nerdy female. The one he suddenly realized had always loved him, and would have loved him no matter what happened with the human. Maybe the attractive female squirrel stormed off upset, but the others didn't care because they all thought she was a bitch anyway. Or perhaps a childhood watching bad eighties movies severely limited my imagination.

I walked away smiling at the thought. I hiked into these woods to cure my boredom, and it was working. Sometimes I'm in such a good mood on the trail that I stop to write these thoughts down in my journal, believing they are actually interesting or humorous. Then I come back home wondering what the hell was wrong with me. I suppose every cure has its side effects, a general apathy towards work and responsibility of course, but in this case euphoria and an unusual cheerfulness as well.

Another frequent side effect of hiking is increased appetite. I turned on the spur trail to Eagle Peak to find an unforgettable spot to eat lunch. My shadow was now squished to the shape of a bulbous dwarf, with the sun blazing hot overhead.

I found some shaded bedrock facing the valley and Half Dome. I pulled food out of my bear canister as a man walk passed on the trail behind me.

“Quite a view isn’t it!” he said. 

Over three million visitors to Yosemite each year and he was the only person I remember seeing today. 

I didn’t leave immediately after eating. I wasn't hiking many miles becuase I wanted to camp near Yosemite Creek tonight, which wasn't far away. I wanted this to be a relaxing vacation. I left plenty of time to slow down and enjoy the views. I could stay up late next to a campfire, sleep in as long as I wanted, and take drawn-out lunch breaks like this one.

I took so long that I got sore from sitting. I stood at the edge and looked into the valley. I imagined leaning out, catching the wind underneath me, and gliding peacefully to the valley floor. (Go hang gliding, number 35 on my life list.) 

I searched around Yosemite Creek for a campsite. I wanted to be close to the creek so I could drink as much as I wanted tonight and at breakfast. A minor thing, perhaps, but made wonderful when rationing water all week. A minimalist life is filled with small, easy to acquire pleasures. This joy is indistinguishable from the joy I get from the more expensive things that require more work to obtain. Or maybe it’s just that new things keep life exciting, and deprivation makes old things seem new again. Either way, in the end I’m happy.

I found an area fifty yards off the trail that had many worthy places to setup camp. It was hard to choose. Feeling light as a feather without my gear on my back, I rambled through the sparse trees over granite bedrock to locate the best spot. Not a single care, or person, in sight.

I chose the highest spot on a plateau of solid rock that had the best view of the woods around me. In the middle a fire ring circled white ash and the remains of blackened logs. Surrounding that were several crisscrossing logs to sit on. 

I spent the remaining sunlight collecting firewood. The thought of sitting by a fire with my book made me happy all day. Before the sun had even set, I had the fire going. As I sat on a log to read, the sky dimmed to dark purple and the stars came out. My world a few hours ago stretched out for miles, as far as the eye could see. The night shrank that to the three-foot radius around my fire.

The flames warmed the left side of my face, but the wind kept my right side cold. I moved closer to the fire, sat Indian-style on the ground, and continued reading in the flickering light. 

It took less than an hour to realize I was too old for Indian-style. I stood to get more logs for the fire and my spine, ankles, and knees popped like I was walking over dry twigs wrapped in bubble wrap. The fire showed its enthusiasm for the extra fuel. It crackled and gave excited flicks like a flag snapping in the wind. I continued to read for hours in a more age-appropriate sitting position. 

Sounds emanated from the fire all night, often loudly. A log broke into two shooting fireworks of ash into the sky. On another log, the red hot bark made a tinging sound like cracking glass. Air escaped one log with a high-pitched buzzing hum that felt like something dramatic and unsafe was about to take place, but faded with an anti-climactic silence.

When the fired died down the night went perfectly silent, other than the wind calmly whooshing through the valley. My eyes got heavy, but I fought sleep as long as I could. I wouldn’t have had to if I had more days like today. The rareness of them forces me to hold onto them as long as I can.  I took my book to my tent and crawled into my sleeping bag.  I read until I dozed off.  My book slid out of my hands and dropped to the ground, my headlamp still glowing on my forehead.

Part Seven > 

Go to Part: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Yosemite, Part Five - Number 26 on my life list.

Part 5
El Capitan 

Go to Part: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Most Monday mornings I’ll roll out of bed eighteen or twenty seven minutes after the time set on my alarm, depending on how many times I hit the snooze bar. I get ready for work then shuffle off to sit in my windowless office. I answer emails and take phone calls, all for the purpose of keeping a factory's computers running.

Rarely does one weekday feel any different from the others. Fifty weeks out of the year I'm immersed in my routine, often daydreaming about a future where rolling out of bed is met with enthusiasm. The other two weeks of the year, however, I'm on a trail.  And during that time that depressing reality never enters my mind.

This Monday morning could never be confused with any other.  It began with a stop at Cascade Creek, potentially my only water source until tomorrow. It looked like boulders rained down on the land eons ago, some as large as Airstream Campers.

The creek was indifferent to the piles of rock in its way. It moseyed over and around the boulders as needed. Gradually it carved the rock into granite waterslides and pools. Meanwhile, ferns and a variety of green-leafed plants filled every niche between water and stone. 

Before pouring over a small waterfall then escaping into the woods, the creek filled a pool with clear water. I sat next to it filtering it into my hydration pack. My freshly rinsed shirt lay drying in the sun on warm bedrock. I put it back on when it was still damp.  I felt cool and refreshed; ready for the new day on the trail.

The morning stroll started out easy, but became more demanding as I ascended to the top of El Capitan. The path was dusted in a fine soil, like powdered cocoa. It meandered through a forest of giant pine trees, with thick trunks covered in bright lime green moss, and cones the size of thermoses.

The air smelled like a mixture of Christmas trees, cedar sawdust, and the aroma moments before a thunderstorm. My nose was pleased. It was the kind of scent that gets implanted into your memory forever. The whiff of a similar fragrance, even years from now, will indeed transport me back onto Yosemite’s North Rim. 

I saw another hiker a hundred yards ahead, the first I have seen since entering the trailhead. Slowly our distance dwindled, as he frequently stopped to rest. When I finally passed him, I saw he had a white beard and a green bandana covering a white crew cut. He wore cargo shorts, boots, and thick wool socks pulled around his calves. An eight-inch sheathed hunting knife hung from his belt. If passing him in the city, I may have given him a wide berth, but out here we were kin. 

About halfway to El Cap, the dusty trail turned to grayish-white rock, porous gravel, and coarse sand that crunched under my steps. It radiated the heat and light of the sun. The trail became less discernible now that it was made of rock. I momentarily went a few yards in the wrong direction, and paused to look for a cairn to show the way. The white-haired hiker caught back up with me. 

“Do you see where the trail picks back up?” I asked. 

“Actually I was following you,” he said. 

“Well, clearly that was a mistake,” I said with a smile, but he seemed to take my joke as an obvious statement and remained straight faced. We soon found cairns to lead the way and I put some distance between us again. 

Finger-sized lizards and the occasional slender snake scurried along the ground in front of me. Grasshoppers frequently jumped wildly to get out of my way, their short flight accompanied by rapid clicking. So much activity on the ground, but at eye level everything was serene. The number of trees thinned out and opened the view for miles. The mountains seemed to go on forever, each distant ridge a fainter shade of blue as it faded into the horizon. 

Under the shade of a tree sat a boulder, curved on top forming a perfect place to laze. I laid on top. The bend in the rock and the cool surface felt wonderful on my spine. I closed my eyes and listened to the breeze jostle the leaves. 

“Looks like a good spot for lunch,” said the white-haired hiker catching up with me again. 

“Sounds good to me,” I said. He sat on another boulder a few feet away that lay beside two short trees. He pulled out a camp stove and set water to boil. 

He lost the name, “white-haired hiker”. Through conversation I began to know him as, “the tax attorney from Ohio”. At least my job didn't sound as mind-numbing as that, I thought.

"I backpack five weeks out of the year," he said.  "I get ten weeks of vacation, but spend the other five weeks with my wife."  Alright, so, he wins.

We discovered that we had planned the exact same route. I worried I would lose my precious solitude. He pulled a hammock from his pack and walked over to the two nearby trees.

"So, how'd you do coming up that scree slope at the end of the rockslides?" I asked.

“I started late yesterday," he said while tying the hammock to the trees. "I didn't find a way up before it got dark, so I just slept at the bottom of the hill then figured out a way up this morning.”

I was selfishly pleased that he had as much trouble on the scree slope as I did. I did not like how my difficulty shone a light on my relative inexperience, but if he had trouble… 

He told me the story of when he ran out of water in Death Valley. As a person that loves to talk and write about backpacking trips, it’s a little disturbing to know that the best stories I'll have will be from when my life was in danger. His trouble in the hottest desert in the United States trivialized any issue I’ve ever had, so far, on the trail. 

Stress on the trail is different than stress at work. I feel like I’m gaining useful experiences and learning important things about myself. I feel proud of myself once I’ve gotten through it unscathed. At work my job is usually repetitive, so the stress is just stress. 

His food finished cooking, so I pulled out a foil pack of tuna salad, a half piece of pita bread, and a mixture of nuts and dried fruit. He ate then nap as promised. I got a head start on the trail, but when there were no bends or hills, I could see him behind me. 

He caught up again when something caught my eye and I had to stop for photos. I didn’t notice at first because the word “Snakes!” was written in the gravel ahead of me, along with an arrow pointing to flat rocks just off the trail. I curved around to avoid the area while scanning the ground for movement. When I looked back up, the volume of bright green moss growing on the pines was too brilliant to ignore. 

I struggled to get a picture that would do it justice, but I couldn’t do it. I heard the crunching footsteps of the tax attorney from Ohio behind me. He walked toward me while staring at the warning on the ground and looking out for snakes. 

“Hi,” I said. “Just had to stop for another photo,” 

“Of what?”

Granted, in a land of a million photo opportunities, most people wouldn’t consider this one of them.

“All the green,” I said. 

“Hmm? Oh yeah, look at all that.” He pulled his camera from a hip pocket, snapped a photo, then continued up the trail. 

We leap-frogged each other this way all afternoon. I’d pass him when he stopped for a break. He’d pass me when I stopped to take photos. At one such passing, he mentioned that he was low on water, so I helped keep an eye out. I knew he wouldn’t get to a source of water the ranger guaranteed until the following morning. There were stagnant puddles here and there, but nothing safe. I passed him again at Rainbow Creek. 

“Bone dry,” he said. “I saw it on the map, thought this is where I’d finally find water.”

"We might find some puddles in the creek bed,"  I said.  "You can use my filter if you want."

We hiked down the empty creek until we found something. There was a meager source of trickling water, that looked clean.  He filled his bottles, and then we got back on the trail and put some distance between us again.

Not a mile later, I was tiptoeing over stones to cross a portion of Rainbow Creek that had plenty of clear water flowing by. Like gas stations, you seem to pass water sources all day, until you really need it. 

When I neared the El Capitan summit, the view stopped me in my tracks. My mouth hung open like a cargo bay door. So far as I experienced it, Yosemite never looked more beautiful. The granite rock I traversed all day dropped three-thousand feet to the pine carpeted valley floor. Beyond the valley the layers of blue mountains were back, fading into the horizon. The tax attorney passed me again as I took photos. He stopped to do the same. 

“Why do I live in Indiana?” I asked. He didn’t have an answer either. 

The summit of El Cap was flat, nearly treeless, and jutted out into the valley giving us amazing unobstructed views. We dropped our packs on the ground and hiked toward the edge. We passed a group of backpackers; a couple with their daughter. We all wandered around El Cap fusing that unbelievable view to our memories. I found a tree and sat in its shade. Before long, the tax attorney from Ohio joined me again. 

“My name’s Rick, by the way, I don’t think we ever formally introduced each other.” 

“I’m Ryan,” We shook hands. 

“You plan on staying on El Cap tonight?” he asked. 

“I think so. I passed an established camp site on the way out here that looked pretty good.” I worried we would end up hiking together all week. I actually enjoyed talking to him and I know I could have learned a lot from his experience, but I get so few weeks like this. I really wanted to spend the time alone. 

The site I referred to was perfect. It had a stone fire ring, spectacular view to watch the sunset, and only one nearby tree. I noted that specifically because I knew he slept in a hammock. I felt bad, but what could I do? I mean, of course, besides just being honest. 

When we left the summit, I stopped at the campsite. He continued toward the tree line. I stood for a while looking at the valley. The family of three plopped their gear on the ground fifteen yards from me, making it clear they were staying there for the night. 

I searched for another site, but failed and came back. My tent has to be staked in the ground to stand upright, and finding a spot where I could stake a tent on ground made of solid granite proved to be as difficult as you’d expect. Not only that, but I had my heart set on watching the sunset and sitting by a warm fire, which are only allowed in the limited established fire rings. 

“Do you mind if I setup camp right over there?” I asked the family of backpackers. I didn’t expect them to care, but asking made me feel better about it. 

“Oh of course not, go ahead,” the father said in an accent I couldn’t place, but I assumed they were from a Scandinavian country. Throughout the night I could hear their chatter, but I didn’t mind at all. In fact, I loved hearing the accent in their words and laughter, even though I didn’t understand any of it. They could have been laughing and talking about how they planned to murder me, and I would have been grinning dumbly at the wonderful sound of their voices. 

I ate another meager supper and watched the sunset. It was beautiful. The setting sun turned the sky to amber. The color of everything around me: the coral white granite, the pine needles, the stone fire ring; all suffused with the orange glow in the sky.

 At nightfall, I gathered wood and got a fire going. It was another brilliant starry night. City lights from miles away popped into view. Their light mirrored the starlight like they were not cities at all, but majestic lakes. 

Backpacking has a way of simplifying the pursuit of happiness. Place yourself all alone on a beautiful trail. Put one foot in front of the other, repeat. All too often my default mood is one of cynicism or boredom, but with enough time given to hiking, giddiness becomes my default. That transition began to solidify tonight while I looked at the amber sky and listened to the crackling fire.  And would continue to do so exponentially every day this week.

Part Six > 
Go to Part: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

A Backpacker's Life List by Ryan Grayson is licensed under a 
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Yosemite, Part Four - Number 26 on my life list.

Part 4

Rockslides
Go to Part: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

For three miles, I climbed over the boulders and fallen trees that covered the old vanishing road. I moved like a chameleon crawling along branches, each careful step verified before going forward. A fall here could have made the rest of my trip quite difficult. I suppose a fall here could have made staying alive quite difficult.

After stepping from one boulder to another, my camera was unleashed from the cord holding it against my pack’s shoulder strap. It swung from the strap around my neck and banged into my arm. I watched my lens cap pop off and fall between a pile of large stones and out of sight. For a moment, the gentle breeze was accompanied by hushed expletives.

I had no intentions of leaving the only lens I brought unprotected. I laid face down over one of the boulders, so I could reach for the lens cap. “No snakes, no snakes, no snakes,” I willed as I blindly stretched my arm in. When it comes to things I want to avoid on a solo backpacking trip, not taking photos rates only slightly worse than a venomous snake bite. Luckily, I felt the cap instantly and retrieved it. I blew off the dirt, secured it to my camera, and devised a way to make sure that would not happen again.

After traversing the final rockslide, the trail dead-ended into a thicket of trees, shrubs, and thorned bushes. I looked up a scree slope to my right. A scree slope is an accumulation of broken rock fragments sometimes found at the base of mountains and cliffs. The pieces ranged in size from coarse sand to pea gravel, mixed with larger jagged rocks.

“It’s not that bad, only about sixty feet,” the ranger said this morning regarding how far I'd need to climb to reconnect with the trail.  He didn’t say it was a scree slope, but this had to be it.  I put my camera in my pack. I didn’t get photos of this area, but I would need to bushwhack and use all fours to make it up.

With every two or three feet I went up, I slid down one, like climbing a mound of gravel at a quarry. About a quarter of the way up, it got much steeper. Disturbing images of falling down the hill and rolling over jagged shards of granite, entered my mind, followed by the desperate descent back to civilization that would follow. I stopped to look for cairns, flat stacked rocks that mark a trail. The ranger said I would see some. I saw nothing; no trail, no road, no cairns. I eased back to the bottom, mostly by sliding on my butt.

I paced back and forth along the trail looking for a safer way up. At the dead-end's side of the scree slop there was foliage growing through the gravel. I worked my way up grabbing shrubs and thorn bushes for support. I got further than before, but got stopped at another obstacle that seemed too risky, considering the ranger’s insistence that it wouldn't be that difficult.  I was getting frustrated.  I went back down for one last futile attempt to find cairns, but gave up and went back the way I just came.

Every move was cautiously considered. I grabbed rock ledges with nervous, sweaty hands. My knuckles turned  white when gripping plant stems and tree branches. Trekking poles were nearly useless in the gravel, but worked well when holding them horizontally behind a pair of tree trunks and grasping them like ladder rungs. At this point, it was more dangerous to turn back than it was to go forward, so I pressed on.

I chose my route based on the next thing I could grab. This inadvertently led me to an area on the hill that, if I were to fall and slide to the bottom, would give me a few hundred foot free fall to look forward to. My rising blood pressure swelled the ugly veins on my forehead. Each footstep sent pebbles rolling down the hill. I heard them falling over the edge. Then falling. Then falling. A rather disturbing sound.

I spotted Manzanita shrubs up ahead. I sold Manzanita branches in my pet store for parrot perches and recognized their smooth twisting trunks and branches instantly. The wood is too hard for large parrots to easily destroy with their powerful beaks. I never thought that information would come in handy again, especially for this reason.

I crawled on hands and knees while grasping them for support. They were indeed strong enough. Their contorted branches scratched red lines into my face and arms, but I didn’t care dammit, I was getting up this hill!

The lower branches pushed at my forty pound humpback and forced me to lay flat to finish my climb. I felt like I was in boot camp crawling under barbed wire, only I was on a gravely hill that ended with a deadly drop.

I want to believe that in a parallel universe, there is a Ryan that didn’t open a pet store, a smarter Ryan perhaps, but nonetheless a Ryan with no knowledge of the tensile strength of the Manzanita branches. Maybe this other Ryan would have chosen a different path up this hill and fell to his death. I want to believe that because it would validate my decision to waste my early to mid-twenties running a pet store.

Wishful thinking maybe, but after spending four years cleaning animal shit every day, who wouldn’t want to believe that it would one day save their life in Yosemite National Park?

While still crawling on the ground, grasping at the branches, I looked up and saw a rock wall that had once supported a side of the old road. I was able to get to my feet, over the wall, and back on track. It was easily the most nerve-racking moment I’ve ever had on a hike, but I made it. I wanted to get on hands and knees to kiss the trail, French kiss it even. I was that happy. But instead, I took off my pack and had lunch.

The road was more intact up here. A long section curved into a tunnel of trees, without a single rockslide blocking my path. The traffic has been gone for decades, but I imagined the road in its glory days. Open carriages and Model Ts coming around the bend, passengers leaning out to point at the view. For some reason, I could only imagine this in black-and-white, running at the wrong speed, and accompanied by honky-tonk piano music.

Fade to today and it’s a dilapidated overgrown stretch of road, no longer on maps. A man is sitting alone in the middle of it, crunching on crackers and turkey pepperoni, minding his own business.

Somewhere in the trees, a branch cracked. I turned to see what it was. The leaves rustled. The heavy footsteps of a large animal fled into the woods, fracturing more sticks as it ran. I didn’t see anything, but I thought it sounded more like a bear than a deer.

“Rainy days and Monday’s allll-ways get me-eee dowwwwn!” Probably too late for that, but I sang the chorus anyway, and made myself laugh out loud.

It wasn’t until I stopped for water that I realized there wasn’t much daylight left. I searched for a good place to setup camp while I hiked up another mile. The trail curled around a hill that I suspected would have a good place to setup camp on top. I wore myself out rushing uphill to secure my place to sleep before nightfall.

The top was a rocky plateau with few trees, perfect for viewing the stars. A scorched ring of stones lay in the middle for a fire. I slid out of my backpack and stretched my shoulders. After removing that burdensome weight, the feeling in my legs gives me a sense that I could jump on top of buildings. I leaped into the air, probably twelve inches off the ground, but for a brief moment felt like Superman.

I surveyed the area and chose a place to pitch my tent. I moved a few sticks, logs, and dry pine needles next to the fire ring to use later. Within a few minutes I had fire crackling and ate a small meal. The sun, that I thought would be gone before I setup camp, seemed to wait until I was finished before heading in for the night. The Milky Way splashed a celestial river across the dark sky.

The sky at Yosemite isn’t the darkest I’ve seen (that award still goes to Isle Royale), but sixty percent of Americans can’t even see the Milky Way due to light pollution. I gazed at the sky and wondered why we bother to light up the night. Especially in small towns, like back home, that more or less close by 6 PM. The night lights have not been shown to reduce crime, nor have they been as effective at reducing car accidents as reflective lane markers. My assumption for why we do this reminded me of something I mentioned before.

“But, what about bears?” Maybe it’s just another irrational fear. Nyctophobia, fear of the dark. I'm certainly not without my own fears, but I’m convinced that an important first step to living an interesting life is learning to accurately assess risk. If nothing else, maybe doing so will convince us to bring back one of the most beautiful things any of us will ever see: a truly dark sky.

I grabbed my book, kicked off my shoes and socks, then sat by the fire. I leaned my back against a log. I warmed my feet by resting them upon a stone of the fire ring. The light from the fire shrunk my pupils, dimming much of the starlight, but the crescent moon still beamed brilliant. Moments like these make all the effort worthwhile.

I let the fire burn down to reduce the light, so I could see more of the stars. I lay on my back with interlaced fingers behind my head. I reveled in that feeling of getting dirty, but not caring. A log popped, sending ember and ash fireworks into the sky to join the starlight for a brief moment before winking out.

As my pupils dilated, the Milky Way came back into view. When is the last time you went somewhere you could see it shining so brightly? I took three planes, two buses, and a train, climbed over miles of rockslides and traversed a dangerously unstable scree slope.

And it was absolutely worth it.

Part 5 >

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A Backpacker's Life List by Ryan Grayson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.