John Muir Trail Journal, 2006

Fred Allebach

8/29 Rose Mountain Pass, campground outside Reno, NV

After our last series of trips, the AT and Mexico, I was ready to work. The discipline and structure of work give a sort of mindless meaning to life; you don’t need to think about what to do or what it all may mean; it is work-a-day life, all significance provided in a nice self contained package. I wanted that after 8 months of little formal structure and all adventure.

Now however, I am excited to be opening up a new trip. Another world awaits, one of unexpected things, of nature, of life outside the bounds of society’s constraints. It is exciting to be heading off to bears, to 12,000’ passes, to give up to possible giant snow storms. The Sierra Nevada is not Alaska or the Antarctic and we are not “extreme” adventurers, yet this trip provides for me a real sense of maybe finding the roots of what life is all about or at least the possibility of noticing real things, with no hype, veneer or societal camouflage behind them. We are going to be immersed in nature, under the stars, listening to streams, under the sun, in the wind and rain. There will be no stores or conveniences; all chores and work will have to be done by us alone, the cooking packing and hiking all have to be done and growing out of this direct simplicity are discoveries awaiting about what is really important. Maybe it is just nice to be self-reliant in a simple way, and all other hikers are doing the same, it is not a complicated world of status and hierarchy that awaits in the woods.

8/30

This is the first day, out of Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite to Lyell Fork. We made it 10 miles, kind of tough for the first day but we were advised to get out of the valley to avoid a particular bear. Now, by the substantial sounds of a small river, the sun sets as Kim plans and plots our advance tomorrow. We are in lodgepole pine at 10,000’. The tree line can be seen above as well as clear glacial features. With some anticipation we await our first night in food habituated black bear habitat.

8/31

The night passed peacefully with no bruin intrusions, a night of solid sleep with the river gushing and hissing below. Our new sleeping bags kept us nice and toasty. I was physically whipped last evening. I go for the hard break-in, no physical prep for the trip except eating more ice cream and then I pay on the first day. It is the same with my VISA card, I don’t like to run any credit; no matter how much I have to pay it is always paid off.   Surprisingly I am almost pain free now, a few aches but not bad, pretty nice actually here with a cup of coffee while Kim catches a few more winks. The dark early morning is my time for coffee and writing.

There is evidence here of major lightning as many trees have the characteristic split all the way down and are dead. It is quite rocky, white granite flecked with black, exfoliated into round shapes. The soil seems to be manly crushed granite and duff and a thin layer of life sustaining pelt, enough to contain the moisture beneath.

Kim felt an earthquake last night, along with the other 2 she felt in Clear Creek. She can feel a 4 on the Richter scale. I seem to not feel them.

9/1

We camped by some small lakes. Last evening we had a narrow escape from a giant thunderstorm that built up fast and threatened, but gave no more than wind and a dramatic view. The storm blew off to the west, giving us a little angst and drama in the process. Towards the end of the storm, the clouds just seemed to evaporate, dissipate, to disappear, such a huge, powerful thing was just gone. Last evening there were a few bumps in the night, something got our neighbors across the lake pretty good, someone running in the dark chasing something, yelling, commotion, all we got was some nosing around on our pots and pans. Our food/ gear strategy is to keep the bear containers away from camp, set the pots and pans out cleaned in our cook area, and to keep our packs close to the tent, either tied together or tied to a tree.

Last night we also had a frost and I heard a rockslide. The sun is intense, no escape from the high altitude UV radiation. The sun is burning me bad, making little nuclear power plants under my skin. Kim’s hands got fried, as she said, it put 10 years on them. At 10,000’ or more the sun is just burning in on you, no escape, few trees, little shade, and the sun is up for a long time, you bake, and bake, all day. It is worth having some protection, namely loose fitting clothes that cover you up.

It is so spectacular that it is almost overwhelming, every second, every view is stupendous, dramatic, awesome etc and it almost blanks you out; you can’t absorb that much intense beauty minute by minute, all day. The Sierra Nevada is incredibly scenic. To boot, you are many times above tree line and in an inorganic world shaped by tectonic forces and massively carved by glaciers. In Mammoth Lakes we saw a big earthquake fault, a fissure just right there. Right there, the earth is faulting, uplifting, shifting. This is a foreign world to that green softness of the valley. Here wind, snow, ice, rock and short seasons dominate. We only have a small window to enter this realm before the snows come again to bring months and seasons of quiet solitude. This is a realm where inorganic forces dominate, where life is a visitor, hanging on tenuously. We walk through marveling, almost as if we shouldn’t even be here and that we are seeing things we maybe shouldn’t see. It’s like the moon, a fantasy realm, a place too wild to be real, yet we are here.

The glacial features are very pronounced. Ice had its way around here, probably miles thick, massively scraping the mountains. All the terms are coming back to me about high elevation, glaciers and ice ages, krummholz, banner tree, couloir, arête, cirque, moraine, drumlin, esker, tarn, erratic boulder, loess, glacial milk, scree, hanging valley, u-shaped valley, firn, foot of the glacier etc.

We met a very nice young man named Ryan. He asked if this through hiking was “escapism”? “Oh no!” Kim and I said, besides, if it was, look at the numbing 9-5 you’re escaping from, that is a valid thing to escape.  We talked about vision quest, the hero’s journey, hike your own hike etc and Ryan was happy to find some folks he considered “real” and “alive”, not “walking dead”, and we were delighted for someone who was interested to listen to us.

One could wonder if escaping was just a form of hiking your own hike anyway.  There is something about the combination of being in and inspired by nature, in contrast to civilization, and having lots of time to ruminate, that brings out essential insights into the nature of humanity. If that is your cup of tea, then a long hike provides ample opportunity to center down and to connect with inner spaces long silenced by the hubbub of daily life. And then perhaps you bring this boon of silence, tranquility and peace back, to share, to leaven the world. There is something about being out there that causes many to question and explore inner spaces and it is always fun to meet a guy like Ryan who is willing to open that stuff up. To me this is so much more interesting and satisfying than the pro forma small talk you get with a lot of hikers.

We pulled up early at Garnet Lake, one made famous by Ansel Adam’s photo across it to Banner Peak. The water is so blue and crisp, with frogs and trout and reflections. In the afternoon is another aggressive cloud buildup but then it just disintegrates, blows off; there must be pockets of very dry air to suck the moisture out right into the sky.

9/2

The sun has been unrelenting, vicious, intense; at this elevation, out there all day baking. It’s like being at the beach, hardly any shade, trying to escape the burning rays. The sunscreen catches all the dust from the trail and you get super dirty. My theory: the dirt acts as a further sunscreen, so that the dirtier you are, the more protected from nuclear photons.

Questions of faith and morality always come up. Thoughtful or not, people want to know “where do you stand?” What do you think about the huge issues of humankind? Perhaps if you are already engaged at that level, then “hike your own hike” is a metaphor for one’s spiritual/ thoughtful journey up the mountain that is our lives.

I had a similar feeling to one I had on the AT, when I was life become conscious of itself, coming out of the vastness of time into the present, I was biology, crawling out of the ocean to end up here looking back on itself. Here, the sense of ice age is omnipresent; you are walking in giant cycles of global climate, axis shifting, orbit more elliptical, and then, an ice age, shifts again, and then it’s all gone, and here now what a contrast! The ghost image lingers in my imagination. It is kind of like watching ants scurrying under the base of a 4,600 year old bristlecone pine. There is a time gulf, an abyss of time. The moment encompasses a vastness of time that we can’t see or be aware of. The moments rest upon their deep context, out of time and eternity and I’m here with the sound of a post-glacial waterfall, with the black flecked and grey granite and my consciousness shares this space of such grandeur, depth and powerful forces. In our conversations Kim and I have dubbed this sort of idea as a “Quaker moment”, to signify that what is being shared is to be listened to and thought about before responding. Quaker moments give you the freedom to really open an idea or feeling up. 

9/3

Kim is very diligent and focused in getting all our hiking information in order, mileage, water, camp spots, options, resupply, permits, buses, car storage, everything. Apparently the PCT is harder to decipher than the AT and the information is not organized in as easy a way. PCT is for Pacific Crest Trail of which the John Muir Trail is a 220-mile section. The trail itself is not as well marked as the AT. For me it is the same, as my role is to take care of certain camp chores, keep an eye on safety; I am the tent setter-upper and the dishwasher. I pull up the slack of what Kim doesn’t do. Within our system is a nice balance between the underlying plan and freedom to change plans and allowing the trip to unfold. Kim is a good leader. We both get to make preference calls and we both extend ourselves for the other.

Tonight we are alone at Deer Creek Crossing, a nice intimate spot in the woods near a stream, mostly a horse, stock animal camp.

Bear fear is omnipresent; last night at Red’s Meadow, a big public camp area where we stayed over for a resupply day, the neighbors cranked big fires near their trucks and big tents and beat their chests in front of their wives and their barbeques. The bear hype is huge; all the rangers, all the literature makes you feel as if a bear will be behind every tree. In reality I haven’t seen any bear sign at all. Many hikers do not even bring bear proof containers, against regulation, as the containers are heavy and awkward; they sleep with their food to guard it. We met two men who had hiked the Sierra for 20 years and never seen a bear. I think we are getting hyped.

9/4

We awoke in the night to nature’s call and after we were back in our bags and the stars shone down upon us, Kim began to reflect that in the woods, all you need is God. Jesus is for the city, for society she said. Jesus is for people relating to people and “the city” or civilization, implies a separation from God. Out here there is no separation. We spoke of faith, physics, unseen dimensions, consciousness, life, death, things unknown, self-illusions, societal illusions, of where we stand in the universe and after a while it became clear that words have difficulty containing the intention. But under the stars we listened to each other’s muse of our innermost thoughts and understandings. This was a nice starry night of wonder.

Kim asked, after we had questioned the existence of everything, “is love something you have to have faith in too?” My reply, “love is a river we all can drink from, no matter where it comes from.” Kim awoke with this little gem from dreamland: “the sweetest sweet, no sweeter than that, it must be reason.”  

It is COLD with a strong breeze coming down the drainage, 37 degrees at 7:AM. Our conversation and imaginations have been stimulated by meeting Ryan, a true Christian, a searcher, open, not rigid or dogmatic. In one conversation talking about human evolution he said “maybe God anointed man 30,000 years ago at the great leap forward.” Isn’t it great that we can make pilgrimages like this, inside the trajectory of freedom and liberty and that our searches can meet, here in America, where we are free to create our own personal utopias, or free to be the walking dead of consumer culture. America, hike your own hike baby.

We read a book titled The Last American Man  about a character named Eustace Conway. Apropos of consumer culture Eustace added to recycle, re-use, reduce, he added reconsider and refuse.  Don’t get it, don’t buy it, leave it alone, traffic in things that have no substance, no direct physical impact, like thoughts and feelings under the stars. It is easy to see what you don’t need out here in the Sierra.

Kim made a great play on Kennewick Man, a 10,000 year old Caucasoid from Washington state, an anomaly in the fossil record, as he is not of the same line as Indians, and it is thought that only Indians came to America prior to Columbus. What was Kennewick Man doing? Where did he come from? So Kim invented Kennebunk Man, an early group of republicans with cigar boats inhabiting the coast of Maine.

9/5

The question of the origin, true nature and destiny of humankind keeps coming up. In the context of the modern, monotheistic religions, it has mostly become a question of formula. You follow the formula: you are good with God. As if you are not good enough already, as if one’s own choices are somehow flawed. This is the same difference between literal and metaphorical understandings, formula and improvisation, rigid and flexible.

Given that we have the capacity to choose, we have free will, then perhaps comes the necessity of having to proclaim our stand.  Since we are self-conscious we have to somehow articulate our understandings. Our understandings are not self-evident on the exterior of our bodies. Things are only evident to others if we SAY what we are thinking, as compared to animal behavior, which is more ritualistic and confined. Being self-conscious to the high degree people are demands that we explain ourselves, in a multitude of areas. Where we stand spiritually is one of those explanations.

Hence my thought (obviously suffering from too many Quaker moments) yesterday, “morality is nothing more than animal grace/ natural grace, brought to a conscious level.”

I wonder, in the context of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, why am I not already in God’s grace? If God gives grace following a proclamation of faith, (a self-conscious utterance) then really excellent people whose lives are nothing but compassion and good works, if they proclaim no faith, they get no grace. I would not be in God’s grace if I accepted a literal, formulaic approach, those folks say no, but since I accept a metaphorical, free-will stance, then whatever grace is, is I see that I have it already. To me it is not a matter of formula and oaths but of works and behavior, the quality of my thoughts and feelings. As Karen said, and seems to me to be intuitively correct, “God knows your heart.” Given that, you are already there, there is no reason to repent your humanity, as you are human; God has to know you are human and that all of life is a tribulation. No one can be perfect and wishing to be perfect and then acting as if that is enough to be holy, that is pretty illusory.

I also maintain that it doesn’t matter if I believe this or that about God, that it is the quality of my behavior and actions, which is the significant measure. I don’t need to be religious to have the impulse to serve and I don’t need to believe anything otherworldly in order to act like and be a decent human being. And if there is a God and God knows my heart, I don’t have anything to worry about as I am not an evil person, period.

This works/ grace thing is an old, dead horse. Let’s look at it fresh. If there is a mountaintop, why would there be only way to get there? Everybody knows people love to climb mountains different ways. To me this is intuitively correct, self-evident. The quality of the mountain does not change because people name it, see it and understand it differently. Obviously I am a free will kind of guy. But these things seem to make sense, just as it doesn’t make sense that of all world religions, only one is true.

To me the whole grace and works thing has been twisted around, as all of creation is as much of God as any other part. Nobody has to say anything to prove this; it already is. All have as much God-given grace as anything else. Free grace with no preconditions makes sense. Parents give it to children, why not God to all of life and humanity? When did this become a game of formula and strict rules where if you don’t ante up, you are out? When did it become postulated that life is a dress rehearsal and the real play is later?

It must be a question of the meaning of words and intentions here. We are talking about how and why people believe and behave. The point I make is that the proof is in the pudding and there is more than one flavor of good pudding. If you have good pudding, who cares what your order of operations is to get to it? If the end result is the same, what is the real difference?

My thrust here is that if all is connected, if all is a part of God, there can be no outside, everything is immanent within the system. And as I started out saying, these sorts of questions keep popping up. What’s going on here?

People cook up all these hierarchies and punishments based on judgments of degrees of goodness, degrees of asceticism. Does the couch potato reach as high in heaven as Mother Teresa? But these are all human judgments and projections, elaborate illusions that have no basis in any reality we can see or that has ever been shown to exist. As Kim said about Christianity, “I’m not in it for the gravy train.” I guess implied in the big three monotheistic religions is that there will be some reward for good behavior and obedience in an afterlife, and some punishment for the reverse. 

Could it really get down to some cruel game where you say “Uncle” (repeat the formula) and then you receive grace? I just don’t see that it could be this way; it is too childish, primitive and vindictive. It is monkeys jumping through hoops. This doesn’t do justice to our intelligence and capacity. If it is all about compassion and love, why would the creator play controlling games with that?

Seems to me that we are on the threshold of being god-like ourselves. We have the fate of the world in our hands. Our stage is now. The time to act and be true is now, not smugly stuffing inconvenient issues for an afterlife, avoiding and denying right action and good works in the now. And it doesn’t effect actual behavior if people arrive at the same things in different ways.

I like Kahlil Gibran, on good and evil, “you are good when you walk to your goal firmly and with bold steps. Yet you are not evil when you go thither limping. Even those who limp go not backward. But you who are strong and swift, see that you do not limp before the lame, deeming it kindness. You are good in countless ways, and you are not evil when you are not good. You are only loitering and sluggard. Pity that stags cannot teach swiftness to the turtles. In your longing for your giant self lies your goodness: and that longing is in all of you. But in some of you that longing is a torrent rushing with might to the sea, carrying the secrets of the hillsides and the songs of the forest. And in others it is a flat stream that loses itself in angles and bends and lingers before it reaches the shore. But let not him who longs much say to him who longs little, “wherefore are you slow and halting?” For the truly good ask not the naked, “where is your garment?” nor the houseless, “what has befallen your house?”

There seems to be an issue of arguing about the relative merits of how stags and turtles get from here to there. This is highly metaphorical. The point, they are fine as they are. The differences are a matter of style, not substance.

A quote by Kim concerning her interest in Christianity: “I’m not in it for the gravy train.” We agreed that it is strange that people seem to be in religion for a reward. 

9/6

If you think your actions here and now don’t count and it is all cool because you made an oath and now you have grace; that is a cop out.  That can justify all sort of savagery, like killing people who have made slightly different oaths than you.

I am free to decide, choose and consider. I’m getting comfortable here in my humanity. That makes me a heretic, as the root of that meaning is to choose. I’m the happy heretic of Quaker moments!

9/7

It is nice that there are no shelters. With shelters you have people rolling in at all hours of the night, disrupting your sleep, peace and tranquility. Here you can pull off at an already established site and be alone. Now that the thru-hikers have mostly gone through, there is hardly any talk about gear or how heavy your pack is, and that is refreshing. People are staying in their own gear movies.

9/8

It got cold last night, 32 degrees, all the meadow grass was frosted, lots of condensation on the inside of the rainfly. One full fuel bottle will last us 5 ½ days of wanton use and possibly 7 of cautious use, so our 2 bottles will hopefully last for our 11 day run from Muir Ranch to our Independence resupply. The bear canisters have made packing food difficult. The Garcia only fits 6 person days; the bearvault fits 8. They weigh 2 ½ pounds plus each. We need to carry three for 11 days, 2 people. It’s inconvenient and heavy, 7 plus pounds of just container weight. We’ll resupply at Muir Ranch either tonight or tomorrow and with 11 days of food, things will be quite heavy, they always are after a resupply.

Kim has over 40 gnat bites on her feet and ankles and awoke several times last night in itching agony. The lone pines look like saguaros silhouetted against the granite peaks. The day’s first sun licks the ridges across the valley. The cold of fall and winter knocks, warning “I am here”. A buck following a doe trotted through the meadow and the grace, poise and power of the buck transported me to a feeling of awe and connection with my Gravettian ancestors, the 25,000 year ago people sometimes called the Cro-Magnon. Here I witness in the buck the perfect grace and power of nature, and then it would be my role to hunt and kill that animal, hence the dawn of religion, as I grapple with life and death and spirits writhing and struggling to live. I must make sense of that, as I, while an animal, am self-conscious and must say it, think it, articulate it.

I transpose myself into life 25,000 years ago; I bridge the gap and why not, there’s nothing else to do. With a conscience I can’t just kill. With the choice we have, we must choose to try and make sense of the world around us. It is a mystery, that space that the buck trotted off into, but real, the hunger in my belly. Fred the Cro-Magnon.

9/9

At the hot springs camping areas near Muir Ranch the camping areas are entirely thrashed by backpackers, trash burned and strewn all over, feces everywhere, toilet paper, wrappers, etc., typical of a high use area.

There has been a lawsuit between some Sierra hiker groups and packers about the effects of stock use on the trail and surrounding environs, which has resulted in a certain animosity between some hikers and some packers. The underlying issues have been resolved already in other public lands, by requiring weed/ exotic free feed for the stock and requiring stock to be picketed in camp areas. This is entirely reasonable. I don’t know what else the hiker groups were complaining of, but after seeing the hiker area here last night and today, it would seem that hikers are in need of some additional regulation as well. 

It can take 2 hours to set camp, do dinner and clean up, teeth brushed, packs safe from bears etc., water has to be got, maybe sox and underwear rinsed, tent pitched and staked, sleeping pads gotten out, blown up, bags out and fluffed, stove out, water boiled, dinner assembled and cooked, dishes washed, more water fetched, stuff back in bear containers, containers stashed away from camp, dishes set out to dry, perhaps a fire, fetching wood and tinder, stretching and then, Yahtzee, reading to each other and lights out about 8:PM. The reading and games add an hour. It pretty well means active working involvement in every aspect of the day, all day long, no rest until you are horizontal. You could see it as an all day workout where you burn so many calories you can’t possibly replace them. On the Muir Trail I lost better than a pound a day.

We’ve had no bears yet but their spirit is powerful; every site has little piles of rocks next to the tenting area, evidence of preparation to do battle. A ranger told us that all the bear hype information was from about 5 years ago. Since the agencies have mandated the use of bear containers and put bear boxes in high use areas, the bears are actually leaving people alone and learning that food is not easily gotten. Today there are very few problem animals, as we learned. We saw one bear ambling down a rocky outcrop in Evolution Valley, and Kim noticed bear tracks on the way to the suspension bridge. Other than that there was no sign, no scat, nothing.

We’re seeing lots of people, even after Labor Day, many people out here, especially near easy access points, lots of serious backpackers too. It’s just a very popular trail. There are many very nice people; lots just pass by with little fanfare.

Kim continues to manage our planning very well and is a fine leader for our expeditions. She keeps out logistics on the front burner. I’m happy with how she does it and I like that I don’t have to do it.

9/10

I woke up in a blur, took stuff down to kitchen, put on water, had to crap, came back, open bear container, make coffee, make a fire- a world’s record! Now I sit with my coffee by the fire, very nice: dreams are something amazing, as with waking language use, the meaning stems from the sense and referent of the words used, dreams have their own senses and referents, they have meaning, it is just very fantastic. Dreams seem to have some suggestive power, clairvoyant even, so as for us to suspect that somehow dreams sew threads between unknown realities. They are perhaps keyholes to mysteries we hope to know but cannot open the door to now in our incarnate state. Other times dreams seem to be pure fantasy, like why would I be snow blowing the Weiss’ yard with lots of little kids around getting ready to go play baseball and I then asked Weiss if he remembered me? Another night I am battling pure evil, kill or be killed and I prevail.

We may hike straight through to Whitney now in 10 days, rather than get all boogered up on a long and messy resupply down to Independence, almost a week just to get 5 or 6 days of food!

Kim comes out this morning with this: out here we are free to be exactly who we are, the only constraints are what we bring, all are on equal footing, the trail levels all off, allows us to start fresh and bring forward what is truly inside of us. This is refreshing, very refreshing, if you can pull it off, as there is still pressure to conform out here, from various hiker subcultures: ultra-light, fishing, old style, but you can get over that by having the hike your own hike philosophy. There is still societal pressure, just less of it and in a more simple form. The societal yoke is lighter an easier to shake off. It is easier out here to find your heart, and to act in accordance with how you feel; there is less distraction, everything is direct and simple, the only complexity is in your own mind. If you can lift a few veils off of yourself, the woods become a marvelous stage for self-expression.

It is yourself that stands in the way, navigating your own mind is the biggest challenge. The challenges of life seem like they are outside, but in this house of mirrors, they are really inside- same as spiritual development, it’s not out there, it’s spread before you in your own head and heart, you just need to allow the keys to open the doors.

9/12

The walk through Muir Pass was a treat of inorganic forces deluxe; at 12,000’ it is almost all rock, with some grass and lichens but no bushes or trees. Here forces predominate as they would on planets with no life, pure geology and erosion. As you descend there comes to be more and more of the organic and 2,500’ lower at our camp now, life is tenuous; the post-glacial creek roars, the steep sides of the mountains are scoured by ice and life clings to sheltered areas somewhat free of the wind. On the evening of 9/11 we had gale force winds in Evolution Valley, extreme gusts persisting over the whole night. At Muir Pass the sun blasts, the rock is shattered and scoured, it is at the apex of Evolution Valley, where you do get the sense that the ice age just ended yesterday. At Muir Pass and other areas above tree line, it is at it was 10,000 years ago for the entire Sierra at lower elevations. Life has only crept back to where it is now in the meantime, pushed itself to the limits of what climate and temperature will allow.

We are pushing for Mt. Whitney with no resupply and owing to various issues we only made 8 ½ miles yesterday and are up early and will try for Mather Pass today, 500’ down and 3000’ feet up, in this steep terrain of major ups and downs, you have to stay after it to get your miles. We are on mild food rationing for dinners and while this is certainly no Everest expedition, it meets our needs for adventure and wildness.

There are many people here. Lots do loops, in from Bishop Pass, out Piute Pass, do some base camping, bag a few peaks, stay near a lake, fish, eat sausage and drink a bit; we’ll have to try one of these trips, kind of a leisure trip. Muir Pass is an exquisite example of rock and roll at its most beautiful and extreme.

Many backpackers don’t seem to know how to handle toilet paper, as it is everywhere. People are too squeamish to pack it and burn it in the evening fire and so unfortunately you see toilet paper and excrement everywhere along a high use trail like the John Muir. It is a health and aesthetic problem and backpackers will probably be regulated on it in the future. Now we suffer with bear containers, poo poo is next.

9/13

Kim told me I have good instincts for finding a nice campsite and for finding a good hamburger joint. Yesterday the actual numbers were 700’ down and 4000’ up in 12 miles, pretty good. I see Orion and remember when my Dad showed him to me. I think of all the generations of haplogroup M117 that looked up at Orion. My ancestors… this place here is quite similar to Gravettian post-glacial Europe. It’s nice to have that deep sense of ancestors, not just my Dad who lived and died, but also all who came through those long, cold nights with wooly rhinos, mammoths and the rest of the mega-fauna. I’ve always loved the LaBrea tar pits and all the animals and now my imagination can drift to my own people being there with them, albeit in Europe and not North America.

What is the qualitative difference between Cro-Magnon man and us nomadic back packers? Gear? Culture and belief are an abyss of imagination to compare. The actual day-to-day, physical tasks, eat, drink, take care of business, it’s just a question of degree. Here a stove and tent, them with wood, bow drill and skin shelter, me with REI parka, them with wooly rhino cape.

9/14

Here are rocks thrust up by tectonic forces, cracked, crushed and ground by ice, wind and sun, and then rained on to bring out brilliant colors, patterns and definition, of mysteries of deep earth forces and hidden happenings, these jewels were made to shine by the rain from a storm.

Yesterday as we walked towards Pinchot Pass the clouds thickened and at the pass they were nasty grey and hanging menacingly down and the wind was whipping and we beat it downhill on the other side fast, a fast 3.5 miles. The storms edge caught us with hail, snow and rain and we pulled into camp after a 15-mile day ready to settle in.  I took a dip in the lake as I was unclean and I got a bad chill that finally went away with double down bag treatment. Then this morning we did a quick 6 miles to a suspension bridge and a note for free food in the bear box. I went over and scored 2 or 3 dinners and Kim then got a few more dinners plus snacks; a real find! We could eat a horse. And tonight we skated through gusty, stormy weather to the second Rae Lake, to set up amidst snow flurries and unsettled dark grey sky moving by fast. It was and cold and windy. We munched big and chatted with the neighbors and after an early dinner, retired to the tent. We were just getting a small taste of what a big time Sierra storm could do. One reason we decided to park the truck at Mammoth Mountain was that Tuolumne Meadows and Mt. Whitney could get snow and your vehicle would be stuck there for the rest of the winter, no plowing up there.

9/15

Quaker moment: Jesus’ notion that the least expected would become the cornerstone, I thought of this as I dealt with some insidious inner dialogue about being angry about this or slighted by that, I saw that I was casting a net over myself and the way of disentangling this net was to find a part of myself that was more understanding than that, that the metaphorical cornerstone of the architecture of a new understanding lay not in the self who cast nets and webs but in a deeper self that saw beyond those superficial concerns, that was the cornerstone, a quiet part of myself which normally lay hidden in the hubbub of usual waking consciousness, there was my salvation from being trapped in nets of my own making, I thought, “this is what Jesus was talking about” and I connected that to other Gnostic ideas about how you walk on the road of yourself and you can’t go wrong, that the Kingdom is already here, you just don’t see it, and how with perseverance and interest, we can grow more god-like now, on earth, our time is now.

Kim said that perhaps literal religious folk are ones who congenitally lack imagination and therefore must take the word at face value. This would be congruent with a male dominated speech community style, just the straight information please. Or it could be that literal understandings grow out of a need for order, with a concomitant feeling of repugnance for muddy river country. It could be that different religious takes just reflect different communication and learning styles, as Kim said, people gravitate towards the systems that fit their styles and abilities.

Being inveterate dumpster divers, it was soon discovered that loaded down hikers leave lots of good food in the bear boxes, (on a certain section of the Muir trail, there are bear boxes at the campsites) among some of our choice finds: a huge bag of salted, whole cashews, a bag of sesame sticks, multiple dinners including 2 Liptons, 1 bag dehydrated vegetable soup, tomato pasta soup, beans and rice, Texas Mac-n-chili, potatoes au gratin, Mac and cheese with tuna and sun dried tomatoes and various dehydrated stuff, pad thai sauce, 2 Cliff bars, chocolate nuts and red licorice, nut mix, dried apricots, candy and Ed gave us a ramen, hot chocolate, tea and sausage and gum. So we pulled up and made a hot dinner early and then ate high calorie snacks as the cold wind whipped through. Over the pass today was arctic, bracing, suck the life out of you cold, seriously cold, all clothes on and hiking fast to stay warm cold. Fall has arrived in the Sierra. We got so cold on the AT that we knew we needed new sleeping bags and so far the new down bags have been perfect. I have a 15 degree and Kim has a minus 5 degree.

9/16

Every day and night cycle of the spinning of the planet mimics an inherent quality of life and death in biological reality, the dark and mysterious twinkling of endless stars in the night of imagination, glimmered at times by the moon, is analogous to the abyss of death, out in the vastness of unknown eternity, and then comes day, light, a new beginning, 1 day, 1 night, conscious, unconscious, life, death, the day, the dream, the here and the hereafter. Every day and night recapitulates the bounds of our lives.

9/17

We came over Forester Pass, at 13,200’, a long haul too, way up into realms of rocks supreme, ridiculous giant rubble everywhere, whole mountains of rubble, and then mile after mile of lunar hiking way above tree line. You can see the trees way down in the valley but it takes hours to get into them. We’ve had some bitter cold and thankfully the wind has died off. Mt. Whitney is around the corner, blocked by Tawny Point, the big destination is 2 days away. Three weeks on the trail has gone by quickly as we got into our long distance hiking groove. We have a pretty good system, it works, whatever we do, sharing the chores etc.

Last night we ate our free box Texas chili and this morning big Tex was knocking hard. Every campsite has a surrounding virtual minefield of poo. Out here it comes to be that you can talk about your poo in a matter of fact way, it is a legitimate discussion topic. With no usual routine, newspaper, TV, work, or anything other than to drink coffee and pack up, news of the quality of the poo poo passes as OK and even interesting. Of note, the high dollar dehydrated chili smelled about the same on both ends. Peasants used to divine various things from the shape and quality of poo poo. This is just one example of one wall that a person has to go through to get over having to have bodily functions and odors always managed, masked and hidden completely. Out here you must learn to stink and be dirty, and to allow it, go with it; if you fight it, then hiking will never be fun for you.

Kim has had trouble sleeping at altitude, 3 or 4 days in a row now of little sleep, but we are pushing to get out so she can call Jacob on his birthday, otherwise we would take a zero day and hang out and eat from our new found horn of plenty.

9/19

Yesterday we awoke at Guitar Lake and proceeded to climb Mt. Whitney, 3000” up and 4000’ down to here, a sort of climbers base camp. The views were incredible, a suiting climax to the John Muir trail, and the rubble, what a tremendous amount of sheer rubble, of all sizes. Whitney is 14,500’, the highest peak in the contiguous states.

I got my answer about what agencies will do about high-use human waste issues. In the Whitney Zone you must crap in a bag and carry it out. The wave of the future caught me by surprise. The altitude is too high to do any composting toilets and to pack it out by helicopter is too much danger for that task. This is what you have to look forward to in high-use public lands. Major tourist attractions always seem to have a poison pill.

Around Whitney is a madhouse of people trying to get to the top, the bozo factor is very high; it is an obsession, people getting permits months and months in advance, waking at 1, 2 in the morning and starting to hike up, parades of people with lots of gusto on the way up and totally whipped, limping with flashlights back. The descent is massive, 7000’ from Whitney to Whitney Portal and that just kills your knees and feet, especially considering that the trail is very rough, so every step must be critically focused. Anyone doing it one day from the Portal will have a 14,000’ total gain and loss.

The trip has brought us through entirely awesome and spectacular country, everyday being one more majestic adventure after another. The sheer scenic quality of the Sierra and the JMT is almost overwhelming. Particularly nice was the day we walked through many groves of Foxtail pines, kin to the Bristlecone. What a feel of stateliness and majesty, of the dignity of life, quiet, still, composed, ancient, gnarled, on the edge of where life can even be.  Around the edges of the Foxtail forest were areas of dried out trunks, where the forest had been but now, with climate change, less moisture, that part of the forest has died, ghost Foxtail forests. We walked in amazement in and out of tree line, into inorganic, into organic, sweeping views of breathtaking mountains in all directions, long walks, all day up and over a pass, pull into camp exhausted but still set up and make dinner and then a game of Yahtzee. We were part of a special place, where giant earth forces have shaped a land of large proportions, dynamic, tectonic, glacial, full of snow, granite and expansiveness and now we go to the next adventure, the Bistlecones and a year in Sonoma; we are tasting California well.

As the days go by on the trail, you start to see more faces and shapes in tree trunks, in rocks, everywhere; the longer you are out, the more enchanted the forest gets; it creeps into you. You take on the quality of the forest, instead of you looking at it, it becomes you, and you reflect it. A tranquility comes upon you just by virtue of living outside simply.

The smell of my feet has reached a level that is almost insupportable, rank, fetid and nasty. Three weeks with no shower and the feet just go off and the stale sweat smell of my shirt is a bit much as well. Time for showers and laundry! Time for a zero! On the AT I had tea tree oil tincture to put a drop in my boots. Major foot stank is a wall hard to get through. 

It is interesting to contemplate why people are compelled to climb the highest peaks. Mt. Muir, near Mt. Whitney was previously classified as a 14er but once reclassified as a 13er, no one climbs it. A 13er is not any chopped liver. It must have to do with status, of being able to say “I did this”, there is an element of mastery and conquest, perhaps similar to seeing how many Fortune 500 companies one can take over and own, but with peaks it is ownership of an intangible, and still, it can cost plenty, with gear, permits, food, supplies, this sort of activity can run well into the 1000s of dollars. Why though? Why do people get fast cars and want to pass everyone else? It could be for a sense of dominance, a sense of thrill of speed and of the chase, a flirting with risk, type A personality issues, but like lemmings people flock to the same peaks, the same tourist traps, the same hype for this or that, so maybe climbing the highest is being gullible for a certain type of hype, maybe people have a need to measure themselves against the highest odds, maybe modern life is so stifling of the spirit that stuff like mountain climbing fills a real need? I wonder why though, why the throngs to Whitney? The sheer numbers detract from the attraction. A popular place or activity is soon over run and no longer special. Maybe people are attracted to novelty? Or they want to feel they are in on the latest thing? Cro-Magnon men would not have climbed peaks for the hell of it, too much work for nothing, but then they were wilderness, they weren’t trying to get away from civilization.

9/20

We walked down to Whitney Portal and got a ride to Independence from a fellow hiker who got altitude sickness and had to go back. We hitched to Bishop, Kim called Jacob, then we got a bus to Mammoth Lakes; I took a cab up to Mammoth Mountain, got the truck, went back for Kim and we drove down to our favorite campground in Big Pine, having a nice dinner in Bishop on the way. At the campground were showers and the next day we did laundry and headed up to the Bristlcones, took the Methuselah walk of 6 miles and then back to Grand View campground, having finally gotten Kim to see the trees.

9/21

We were up early to drive way up to the Patriarch grove and after a nice leisurely, Bristleconey morning we drove back only to have a flat tire, necessitating hours of waiting, and then on to June Lake campground. Our experience of the 395 corridor is now deepened by being able to look over at the Sierra and know, “we did that.”

9/22

Up to Clear Creek by a new route through Quincy and Greenville was the plan, via Reno and then it was over, too short, I still want more, 3 weeks is just not enough, I need 2 months at least on the trail. Long distance hiking is a high quality thing to do, and it brings a transformation unable to be gotten any other way.