Wawona -- September 2021

  Taft Point. 

  It’s been twenty years since I’ve been here. It was my fortieth birthday the last time I took the mile walk to the edge of the wall that looks down 3500 feet to the Valley floor. It’s an easy enough saunter but coming up from sea level this morning, and now sitting on a rock at 7500 feet, my breath is short. Not enough, I tell myself, for concern. 

  The point is crowded, I chat with a few people keeping my knowledge of the surrounding vistas to myself. I am tempted to correct their wild inaccuracies about which peaks and waterfalls are which, but I am not feeling very sociable. Yosemite Falls is completely dry. Lost Arrow Spire casts a slight shadow.  Mount Hoffman is commanding as the highest point visible in the distance. Pak Wu and I climbed it on a memorable summer day years ago.

  I take a quick look straight down, experiencing a vertiginous flash, before moving south to another point with views of El Capitan. A girl in bright yellow shorts, a black halter, mirrored glasses and an alluring and knowing smile passes by and nods hello, which adds to my already quickened heart rate. She finds a spot further down the rock, perhaps, like me, seeking a quieter place to enjoy some solitude. 

  Vultures coast on the thermals. I watch one hover for ten minutes without a single wing flap. They slowly drift away toward the meadows beyond the Cathedral Rocks. The sky is hazy, as expected, fires have been burning in the Park all summer. The air quality is slightly better than it was last year at this time when I was up in Tuolumne Meadow and out at Dog Lake. 

 I am sitting in the sparse shade of a skinny pine. A gentle high country wind is the only sound and I devour the silence. For lunch I eat some nuts and chocolate. I have plenty of cold water. I take a few pictures and notice that I am off the grid. No cell service out here at the point. True freedom.  

  A raven startles me by appearing from below the cliff with a whoosh and lands ten feet from where I sit. She (as I imagine for some reason. Her grace? Wisdom? Weariness?) gives me a long look and walks into the shade of another struggling pine. We look at each other but not directly. Staring is rude. She pretends to be otherwise occupied and I slowly reach for my iPhone. 

  Now I have been trying to get a good picture of a raven for thirty years. I have fifty or sixty blurry photos of black smudges set against a blue sky or a snowy slope.  It has become a joke, my inability to capture one of these wild and clever birds so that it is recognizable. I was lucky to get one a few winters ago when two landed on the hood of my jeep. I suspected they were taunting me for reasons of their own. 

  “I’m going to take your picture, if that’s ok?” I ask, just above a whisper. She gives me a look turning her head back and forth so each eye appraises me. I notice a good amount of grey in her feathers. This is an old bird and I can feel her age. I respectfully take a few quick images and then put my phone back in my canvas pack. 

  “Thank you!” I humbly offer. She gives me another long look, with curiosity it seems to me, as I write these notes. We sit together, three yards apart, for about twenty minutes exchanging our occasional sidelong glances. The eye that focuses on me is unmistakably intelligent. And I can’t help but also think there is a hint of humor in her stare. But, of course, that is only my feeble interpretation. There is no way I could ever know this. Foolish, I understand, to give animals human emotions.  

  I tell her a silly story about a piece of my life that still confounds me and she appears indifferent to the odd events that occasionally pluck my incomprehensible heartstrings. Finally I say, “Well, I better get going.” I get one more look, that piercing eye filling me with joy and wonder. Then she walks out into the sun and I see some of her feathers are actually white. She flaps hard and after our quiet interlude the noise from her wingbeats seems louder than I expected. She drops down toward the Valley and out of my view.  

  It is now late afternoon and the trail that leads out of the woods to the fissures is busy. There are more people out here on this September day than I thought there would be. I give the girl in the yellow shorts a wave and start back to the jeep. A steady flow of hikers are streaming to the point. It is, after all, a warm late summer day and I don’t blame any of them for wanting to be at such a place of beautiful views. It seems that we all had the same idea. 

  There are so many people at the trailhead that I decide not to go over to Glacier Point. I suspect it will be a mob scene and I’m in no mood to be around so many people. So I make my way back to the Wawona Hotel. 

  I check in and lug my duffle and cooler up to my room on the second floor of the Washburn Cottage. I open the three large windows and let the smells of pine, manzanita and mountain misery float into my small, but clean and comfortable, room. My home for the next two nights. The view is of the back grounds of the hotel where a fire road leads into the pines. Very pleasant. And quiet.  

 A notice handed to me with my property map informs that there are active bears in the area and to report them to the desk if I see one. Would I? Probably not. They are harassed enough without me adding to their stress. I hope though that I do see bears as I haven’t in the last several years. 

  I’m ready for another walk so I head over to the Pine Tree Market to check out the swag. Our buddy who has been minding the store for years is still there, smiling and friendly. Nothing catches my interest and I saunter back to my room. 

  I take a book, Helgoland, and my journal out to an Adirondack chair on the front lawn. I spend a leisurely hour  reading about quantum physics.  Carlo Rovelli writes, “What does Nature care whether there is anyone to observe or not?”

  What indeed?, I heartily agree. 

  I take a cool shower and feeling fresh and energized I go down to the dining room to find that they are only serving a buffet. The line is long and I feel like I stumbled into one of the Elder Hostel gatherings at the old Cattlemen’s Saloon. Again, feeling claustrophobic, I cut and flee. My escape route takes me to the Tenaya Lodge at Fish Camp where I’m given a nice corner table. Over the years I’ve had fine service here and tonight is no exception. I feel slightly dehydrated so I stick with water.  My Harris Ranch brisket burger is satisfying. Cambria, my waitress, is delightful.   Back in my room, windows open to the night air, sounds of crickets, breeze in the pines, I fall asleep reading the poet Saigyo.  

  Before sunrise I am at the new parking lot and visitor museum at the south entrance of the Park. There are no shuttles running to Mariposa Grove. There is the Washburn Trail that leads two miles to the old lot and mine is the only vehicle here this early. I lock the jeep and shoulder my pack. My good ole Jeep! Dusty, a bit scratched, 165,000 miles and a faded and chipped Steal Your Face sticker that I put on the rear driver’s side nineteen years ago this month. Who knew? 

  I start up the trail just as the sun appears above the trees. This part of my hike is new to me. I’ve never been on this trail. The last time I hiked from the old parking spot across the street was on a snowy winter afternoon with Pak. They say timing is everything. Pak and I pulled into the Park within minutes of each other on that day. Me five hours from Santa Barbara, Pak four hours from Antelope. We hadn’t seen each other in a while and had a cabin in Wawona for a few nights. We were going snowboarding at Badger Pass in the morning.  

  We had a while before check-in so decided to walk the road to get acclimated to being in the cold mountain air. In our excitement we just kept walking and talking, getting caught up with each other’s lives. We walked and walked on the closed unplowed road as it snowed and snowed. It was a heavy warm snow. Before we knew it we were at the lower grove and I looked at Pak, he had two inches of snow on top of his hat. And so did I! We enjoyed the silence of the sequoias for a moment before turning back and going to our small rustic cabin. I started a fire and Pak cooked us one of his amazing dinners. Fresh Maine lobster, believe it or not.

  I have the trail to myself this cool morning and I keep a quick, for me, pace. There are fresh deer tracks on the path and then I notice other tracks.  At first I wonder if they might be mountain lion. But I estimate that they are too small, more likely bobcat. I’m momentarily thrilled to think a lion was stalking a deer right here, and very recently. Mine are the only other prints heading in the same direction.  But it was, no doubt, a smaller cat just nosing around. That curiosity thing.  

 I take a turn and all of a sudden I’m at the lower grove. There are a few people walking about. Handicap plaques are allowed this far down the road and I think about Mide and Brez. Brez did make it here and our plan was to convince Mide to visit and we even made tentative plans until they both, my dear brother and my brave friend, became to ill to travel. Another clear case of the indifference of the universe to our meager and fragile intentions. I think about the two of them very often, days like this particularly. 

  I survey the damage done by the storm in the winter of 2019. The visitor center’s roof was crushed by a falling tree as was the small bridge and walkway near the Fallen Giant. Trees are down in every direction. I know it’s just another piece of the forrest’s evolution but it shifts my sense of stability, like an earthquake or an volcanic eruption. 

  I stop and look at the large map of the grove. A girl joins me. She looks like an add in Outside Magazine, blazing smile and all. Her gear is flashy new; a bright fleece, high tech backpack, walking stick, sexy cargo shorts and boots that would be appropriate for base camp on Everest. She studies the map with intensity. 

  I am aware of my own outfit. Old faded black shorts, a canvas rucksack with metal clips, a tattered and holy (tattered) tee shirt with the sleeves cut off, my ancient grey chamois shirt and a tie-dye bandana. My boots are expensive, but broken in, worn and filthy.  I look like a old Long Trail end-to-ender from the 70s. If nothing else, I am authentic. She smiles again and we hike off in different directions. 

  I take a loop trail that tops out at another new handicap lot just above the Grizzly Giant. I hear voices toward that and the Tunnel Tree so I continue on to the Upper Grove. I rest on a log and drink some water out of my old plastic jug. I bet the gear girl carried a Yeti. Good for her! 

  It’s pretty quiet at the fallen log except for the chattering squirrels, buzzing bees, singing birds and swarming insects. A very young deer hops through the trees. It’s so little but has lost it’s spots. It’s probably the first time it has been on it’s own. It’s not wary at all and frolics around the undergrowth. I stay still until it dances over a small hill and disappears into the woods. 

 At the Upper Grove I’ve been alone now for almost an hour. Ferdyn’s Theorem: Every half mile that you walk deeper into the woods decreases the number of people you will see by 50%.  I haven’t done any serious surveys but it seems about right. 

  I walk the path a few times from one end of the grove to the other. Humbled. At the replica of Galen Clark’s cabin there is a fenced area with a few small sequoias. A plaque asks, What do you think these trees will look like in the year 4000? I am not optimistic and fear the situation, not only here but for the entire planet, is more dire than we imagine. It’s painful to think that the scales have tipped too far toward devastation. I wonder what hope there is for my young friends, Ellie, Juliette, Roux, Marcus, Mae, Sebastian, Vince, and Annabella. 

 Sequoia groves are very specific. They only thrive on west facing slopes at an elevation between five and seven thousand feet, approximately. As the Sierras become warmer this will change. Will the trees migrate up hill over time to higher and cooler elevations? It’s hard to say. Certainly there won’t be any answers in my lifetime. These grim thoughts are not the ones that I was hoping for this morning. 

  As I sit near the cabin my heart shudders as I remember that these trees were cut down for grape-stakes, shingles and toothpicks. Imagine that! 

  I wonder what kind of dreams Galen Clark had when sleeping up here next to the earth’s biggest creatures? Maybe mine will be better tonight. Last night’s were about an acid trip. I slept poorly. Where my mind wanders is beyond my ability to understand. 

  In the silence of the grove I read the Japanese poet, wanderer, lapsed monk, Saigyo and write these notes. My attention drifts and I keep finding myself just staring at the redwoods. I take a few pictures but the results are unimpressive. You just have to be here. A pair of ravens slice through sky singing that never-ending story song of theirs. Black flashes through the blue sky, green canopy and rust trunks.  They are gone in a blink. 

 I regain, somewhat, my balance. The quiet helps. I’m treated to an hour of solitude. Then I hear voices and a couple come down the trail from the direction of Wawona Point. The guy is talking on his phone and my mood instantly sours. They see me but keep a safe distance. He gets off the phone and they sit and have a snack while talking in hushed tones. 

  One more poem and I pack up my water, cashews, salmon jerky and books.  Saigyo wrote over eight hundred years ago,  

Brief life

mere passing dew

fades, is gone

leaving this body

to lie lasting the wild field

 I walk to the trail passing by the couple. “Enjoy!” I say. They smile sincerely. Good people I’m sure. Like me, savoring this pristine spot away from society’s distractions and poisons. My desire to shove his cell phone up his ass fades.

  I take a water break at a dry drainage where one early Spring morning years ago I counted dozens of snow plants. 

 A bright green, sap laden, pinecone hits the ground at my feet with a solid thump. It would have hurt hard if it was a few inches closer and split my head open. I pick it up, it’s hefty and sticky, and toss it into the undergrowth. 

  I’m alone again on the trail until I come across a group at the Tunnel Tree. I see a long line of walkers coming up the trail from the bus parking lot. I contemplate fleeing into the woods and bushwhacking my way back to the Jeep. I’m sure it’s what Doug Peacock would do. He probably would have never taken the trail to begin with. I understand his aversion to crowds and people in general. I am getting worse myself as the years creep along. 

 I loop back up and around to the service road which is empty of walkers. A ranger drives by, she slows and smiles, we wave at each other and I almost flag her over, but think maybe I can catch her at the bus lot. Unfortunately she is not there when I make it down. 

  I wanted to ask my usual question that so far no one has been able to answer. When Ralph Waldo Emerson visited in 1871 he walked the grove with John Muir and Galen Clark. He named a tree in honor of the Native New England leader Samoset.  No ranger I have talked to has known which tree this was. I suspect that knowledge passed with Clark and Muir. But I will keep up my research. 

  Another note from that famous visit was Muir wanted Emerson to camp a night in Mariposa Grove but Emerson’s handlers forbade it. They worried that the old philosopher would catch cold and be unable to complete his lecture tour. Both men later wrote about their regret of a missed opportunity to further their conversations. Emerson believed Muir to be a modern day Thoreau. A high compliment for both men. Emerson was always generous with praise. 

  I hurry past the lower lot, which is crowded, and get back to the Washburn trail. Of course, the trail is busy with excited groups plodding up to the grand trees. I pass forty or fifty people on the two mile descent. I try to hold Emerson’s wit in my mind. He often struggled with balancing society and solitude. He even wrote to Muir saying too much solitude wasn’t perfect either. A good mistress, he said, but a terrible wife. I have always shared Emerson’s dilemma. Although today I’d prefer to have more quiet and less trail chatter. 

  Five hours ago my jeep was the only vehicle in the lot. A beat up, road weary, dusty, nineteen year old friend. It looked at home parked near the cedars and sugar pines. Now it is surrounded by a hundred SUVs.  I feel like a time traveler and perhaps I am. I wonder how many others today meditated on Clark, Muir and Emerson. And never mind Saigyo. I feel much closer to all of them than I am to the tourists with their titanium walking sticks, water bladders with neoprene mouthpieces, flashy packs that would feel more at home on Annapurna, and cell phones that are never out of their hands. It’s obscene, but I’m the anachronism. 

  There is an information table at the visitor center with a line of eight or ten people. I save my question about Samoset for another time and get away from the noise and bustle of the parking lot. Acclimatization after absorbing Nature’s gifts is always difficult for me. I’m tempted to reach for my flask, so far untouched this week, but drink more water instead. The rye can wait. 

  At the Fish Camp General Store I get a sandwich, more jerky and some ice. I notice a painting on the far wall as the guy at the deli counter prepares my order. It’s a cartoonish rendition of General Custer meeting a tribe of Native Americans. They are depicted as goofy and backwards as their chief holds out a peace pipe to Custer. Custer, with the Seventh Calvary behind him, is flipping off the chief. A note says the painting was done in 1970. Anyone with even a slight knowledge of American history knows what happened that day in 1876. The buffoon Custer attacked the largest concentration of warriors ever assembled on the continent with an unprepared band of scared soldiers. One could argue that he got what he deserved. The painting irritates me and it’s interesting to think that what was funny, to some, in 1970 is considered racist today. Progress of a kind I guess. 

  I go back to my room and have a cool shower then take my lunch, Saigyo, and my journal out to the front lawn and sit under one of the great pines. Yet another raven flaps to a branch just above me and spends fifteen minutes talking away. Revenge perhaps for the story I told his sister up at Taft Point yesterday? I wonder if ravens are becoming less wary or more abundant. Or maybe just, finally, they’ve become more fond of me and accept that I am a kindred opportunist and traveler. Who knows? I listen with amusement until off he strongly flies cutting through the afternoon light like a reverse comet. Dark against bright. 

 I read more Saigyo envying the life of the wanderer poet. One of my dreams deferred.  I think that if poets like him could spend a lifetime contemplating beauty, decay, desire, impermanence, loneliness, then I should be able to dedicate a few days month to the same pursuit. I add to my list a word that Saigyo would be unfamiliar with, entropy. 

 Before I’m lulled into an afternoon nap on the lawn, I bring my cooler back upstairs and then go for a short walk. I stop at the Wawona Market and buy some presents. The rest of the afternoon is spent reading and writing. Just before dark I take the rest of my sandwich back out to the lawn and wait for the first stars to fade into view. I am exhausted. I stop into the parlor just to make sure Thomas Bopp is not playing the piano. I’m told he’s off for the rest of the season. A thirty plus year tradition of mine is broken. The room seems sterile without his songs and guests are quietly reading, playing backgammon and staring at their laptops. There’s not a martini in sight. 

  I get in bed early, windows open to the breeze in the pines. I have brought my bluetooth speaker but have no desire to listen to music. The sounds of the woods are more than enough to calm any anxiety that might well up. Much later singing coyotes wake me! Before falling back asleep I think, it’s ok to be alone. 

  Thursday — I woke to a hawk calling from the top of a tree, or perhaps just flying by, it stayed out of sight. Sunrise is a few minutes away. The morning is hazier than yesterday. A shift in the winds. 

 I walk up to the swinging bridge as the air warms. It will be another hot day although at this early hour it is a perfect temperature for walking.  As I get closer to the river I hear people laughing and yelling. Doesn’t anyone, I wonder, crave the quiet of Nature? I know I’m at the extreme in my need for silence but for Zeus’s sake people should try to shut the fuck up every now and then. 

  I find a rock a half mile from the bridge and sit tight while waiting out the noise. I’m right in suspecting they will soon be bored after taking fifty pictures of each other showing off by getting the swinging bridge to actually swing. Loudly, like a circus procession leaving the fairgrounds, they stomp back toward the road. Mercifully, I’m alone with nothing but the flowing Merced River. Saigyo writes:

My thoughts keep

growing lusher

like summertime weeds,

though the sadness of autumn surfeit

I know lies ahead

And truly there is much to think about, too much no doubt. All the stuff that goes through my mind on a two hour walk. It’s really rather overwhelming. I contemplate while sitting on these old stones the fate of my weary bones before I trudge on down the other side of the river. This is a fine spot and I can’t be sure when I will be back. There are quite a lot of other places to visit. 

  I linger for a time near where a long dead cedar tree that I studied for years finally fell. I think back to the trip where I told Dad that it was against the law to pick the wildflowers in Yosemite. He was thrilled at all the different flowers he was unfamiliar with. That was a Summer after a very wet Spring and the meadows were glorious with color. An artist’s dream. A few times he just couldn’t resist and several nights we had a simple small bouquet on the picnic table at dinner. 

  Today it is dry and the beauty is more subtle. At my slow pace I am very aware of tiny red blossoms path-side, mountain misery, the river’s voice, a woodpecker that, unseen, breaks the silence. It is always possible on walks like this to come in contact with otherness and experience small satoris that temporarily help make my cafard tolerable. 

  It is bittersweet to leave the mountains. Wawona Dome, silvery-grey, looms behind me as I plod back toward my Jeep at the hotel where I’ve already checked out. I know the world awaits with her everyday traffic and noise and confusions. The bustle of teeming life in the crowded city is more unappetizing to me these days than it has ever been. Perhaps, like the mighty sequoias, it is time for me to shift my range to somewhere more conductive to healthy survival. Let the metaphorical bark beetles of Santa Barbara do their damage while I seek emotional refuge in a place where my claustrophobia can be combated with open summits, fresh wind, deep forests and wild rivers. Less people being a pivotal requirement as well. As I turn the Jeep toward home my future transition to a friendly and charming recluse inches along, glacier-like, into a foggy and uncertain future.