Boulder City

"Be at peace with your own soul, then heaven and earth will be at peace with you"

St. Jerome, on the feast day of St. Jerome, 09/30/2009

Little Jerome with his boulder city on the shores of Cathedral Lake, 08/17/09.

St. Jerome and John Muir had a lot in common. Note their similarities in the pictures above. St. Jerome lived over 1,600 years ago and spent much of his life monastically by praying, fasting and studying. He actually lived in a cave for a few years. John Muir lived 100 years ago and spent his life hiking and climbing in the brilliant sunshine of the Sierras. Actually, I guess St. Jerome and John Muir had very little in common, except for their beards. They both had really cool beards. They also liked Rocky Road ice cream, although this is pure conjecture.

Sierran Signage

3.5 miles out of Tuolumne Meadows on the John Muir Trail:


"You can hike ahead," we've told our kids, "but stop when you get to the signs." And off go the kids. When we meet up with them they are gathered round the signs which mark the way or announce the mileage. The kids are catching their breath. How many hikers over the decades have congregated around these signs while waiting for others? When we were young we'd stop at the signs and wait for my mom. When she arrived she would throw down her pack and collapse in a heap. "Ok, Mom's here!" we'd all say while jumping up and hoisting our packs, "Let's go!"

If you're lucky enough to hike in the same area more than once in your life, reaching a familiar sign can be like meeting an old friend. Hello. How are you? I have been here before.

At the signs, out come the water bottles and the M and Ms and the Power Bars. Somebody applies chapstick. Somebody scuttles off to pee. Somebody rustles through a pack in search of a bandana or a map. The older signs are covered with the rust of 75 Winters. The rust is flakey like a pastry, and when prodded with the tip of a hiking pole it falls to the ground and disappears into the pine needles. The signs lean precipitously and are supported by granite stones. They can be lifted and turned 180 degrees. Or 360 degrees.

The newer signs are smooth and metallic. They are lacklustre. But they still serve their purpose. They let you know that you've arrived, or that you aren't nearly there yet. They serve to orient you. Half mile to go. You are at 11,320 feet. You are here, in Kings Canyon. By the way, if you've brought your Golden Retriever to this point you should turn around and head back.

Entering Sequoia National Park at Siberian Outpost:

Selden Pass:

Other signs look like they were created by a Boy Scout who used the wood burning set he received from Aunt Rosie last Christmas. The sign is typically weathered like a retired park ranger's face. It may be screwed into a lodgepole pine branch which is buried into the ground. The branch smells like vanilla.

Sometimes there are no signs. Are we there yet? Did we miss the cutoff? Where are we? So, as we do in life, we just keep walking, trusting that we are on the right trail.

Already?

The other day, September 19th, I was walking our dog, Bella, down our street. Summer was almost over. I noted that one of the houses up the street had a cut-out ghost taped to the front door with the word "Boo!" underneath. "Wow!" I thought, "Halloween decorations up already? That could only mean one thing...It's Christmas time!"

Infamous Spaghetti

August 17th, 2009. 7:30 AM, Cathedral Lake

Sunrise over Cathedral Peak

Lydia and I celebrate our 18th anniversary with Clare, Sam, Max and Henry.

This was a much better venue than when we celebrated our 3rd anniversary with our daughter, Clare, (10 months old at the time) and my hiking buddy, Pete. "What was Pete doing there?" Lydia always asks even to this day. At that anniversary we were staying in some car camping spot half way between Lee Vining and Tioga Pass. I had tried to make spaghetti on our backpacking stove. I didn't have a strainer, and the noodles were overcooked and starchy. The meal had the consistency of fresh paper mache. We could have used the leftovers (there were lots of leftovers) for an arts and craft project, like the construction of either a piñata or a model of Jupiter.

Salmonberry

"Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous."

Leonardo da Vinci


Japonski Island
Sitka, Alaska
July 16, 2009

Sphinx Pass

The approach to Sphinx Pass from the West is steep. I negotiate the granite moraine in stepwise fashion and climb toward the 12,040 foot pass. The unfathomable tonnage of the boulders has settled on the mountainside like a pile of disconnected Legos. I must balance and listen as sometimes the rock shifts precariously under my weight, and a deep, slicing sound reverberates in the hollow spaces beneath my feet. I make a game of it. If I hike faster it is safer. No worries if a granite boulder, perched motionlessly since the time of the Pharaohs, suddenly shifts. I have already moved on. While ascending I marvel at how my inconsequential weight has changed this landscape in subtle ways forever.

When I rest I pick a stable, flat rock and sit. I put my palms on the surface and feel the heat from the sun which the rock has absorbed. I pick at the patches of lichen. It miraculously grows here, nurtured by the energy and nutrients ingrained in these rocks. The backs of my hands are already red even though I have slathered on the sunscreen. The water in my Nalgene bottle, icy just a few hours ago, is now warm. I look up at the pass, a perfect, symmetric "V". Or is it a "U"? It is close now. I know that a new panorama, a view into Brewer Basin, awaits me at the top. But for now I will simply sit.

Chigger-me-not!

On July 9th, 2009, on our way up to the Pacific Northwest for the big 'ol family reunion, we ventured off Hiway 5 in Oregon. We drove into the country and followed the McKenzie River along a two lane road with really nice asphalt through 100 person towns with names like Walterville, Deerhorn, Leaburg and Vida. "This is cheese country," I told the kids, attempting to foster their curiosity. There were loads of churches and covered bridges and small elementary schools with signs warning you to slow down because of kids crossing. The river was wide, like football field wide, and quiet and deep and green. We ate dinner at a place called Takoda's up the road in Blue River where the menus were heavily laminated and the salad bar had peas and radishes. I drank a 20 ounce ale and became way too happy. Lydia drove us back to our bed and breakfast, the McKenzie River Inn.

At the inn we tried fishing in the backyard of our guesthouse. It was dusk. True to form, we caught nothing and spent most of our energy taking moss off the rooster tail lure after we reeled it in. Discouraged, the boys went inside, leaving me to take one more cast in daylight's last gasp. I cast as forcefully as I could then began reeling in. However, the reel felt different. It was lighter. The entire upper half of the pole, I realized, along with the enire line, had become disconnected and disappeared. I was holding half a fishing pole. I spun in a quick circle. "What the?" I looked in the fast moving water which was now dark and fathomless, and I looked in the branches over my head. Not there. I shined a headlamp into the wet, knee-high grass along the riverbank and searched for the upper half of my pole.




While looking I noted, but did not pay attention to, tiny pricks on my lower legs below the hem of my shorts, as if someone were gently tapping my skin with a hairbrush. I never found the pole. It had probably flown into the center of the river with the exuberance of my cast and by now was half way to Walterville (where all the Walters lived).




Fast forward 24 hours. We were driving up to Seattle on Hiway 5 listening to the crackly, late-night AM radio sounds of John Miller broadcasting Jonathon Sanchez' no-hitter for the Giants down in San Francisco. My legs began itching. Hey, a mosquito bite. Or two. Or poison oak? Or scabies. Or a shrimp allergy, even though I hadn't rubbed shrimp on my legs recently. As Portland faded behind and the excitement of Sanchez' possible no-hitter mounted, the pruritis in my legs became unbearable yet magnificently satisfying to itch. This must be how our dog, Bella, feels, I realized, when we scratch her tummy. I scratched all the way to Seattle, and I scratched all the next day as we toured the Rock and Roll Museum in the Seattle Center by the Space Needle.

We met up with my brother, Joe, and his family in the museum's Jimi Hendrix exhibit. "What scourge of the Pacific Northwest has done this to my legs? Is this leg acne?" I asked him while I pointed at my legs. Joe looked at the hundreds of weeping red welts on my legs. A big picture of Jimmy Hendrix was nearby, and the famous rocker seemed to be examining my legs as well. "Holy cow!" Joe exclaimed, "You've got chiggers!"

Chiggers? These are chigger bites? I could only think of Steve Martin's bit about chiggers when he says "Something that bothers me more than terrorism and crime is when people come up to me and tell me that they have chigger bites!"

Apparently chiggers, barely visible to the human eye, love dewy, knee-high grasses along riverbanks in Oregon. They come out at dusk to celebrate the momentous occasion of their pregnancy and drill their reproductive organs and deposit their eggs into the skin of unsuspecting humanoids from California. That must have been the pinpricks I felt. The eggs and other chigger parts are easily washed off, but an allergic reaction ensues over the next 24 hours. I have never read Dante's Inferno, but I'm sure the book is about Dante's experience with chigger bites.

The chigger pictured below is standing on his hind legs and flagging down traffic, because he is having car trouble:



Please note that the image below is not my foot. (Although I wear sandals, I do not typically apply nail polish). This is the foot of someone who has chigger bites. This is a mild case.

Meadow at Upper Cathedral Lake

"Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words."

St. Francis of Assisi

backpacking food

Backpacking with children presents special challenges. Kids can carry no more than 7 ounces of weight in their backpack or they will find the first shady spot on the trail and refuse to move forward. This means that, apart from the clothes they are wearing, they can only carry a tube of chapstick, a dried apricot and a piece of dental floss. We had good family friends growing up who took their 5 kids backpacking. The "baby," Charlie, was 5 years old. After tossing off his backpack and throwing an admirable tantrum at mile 0.2, his parents convinced him to continue by allowing him to carry the bag of marshmallows instead of wearing his backpack. When they arrived at their first campsite, Charlie was a sticky mess. I remember our first family trip as well, in which my father carried his mammoth pack on his back and my little brother's pack hanging like a grocery bag from his hand. So, as you see, the father usually gets stuck carrying just about everything: the tents, the food, the sleeping bags, the water, the gear. It seems the kids and the mother get to skip up the flowery hillside like Julie Andrews with neat little packs while the father trudges behind with a Serpa-worthy pack towering majestically above his head like you see in those National Geographic pictures.

Backpacking food can be a powerful motivator for kids. Good food includes M & Ms, salami, cheese sticks and triathlete food like Power Bars and Power gels. We let our kids pick out their own energy bars at the sport's stores beforehand, so they don't end up with "Midnight Banana Luna Bars," or the "Chocolate Expresso Cliff Bars" which frankly look like bear turds. Freeze dried dinners are usually ok, though beware of Turkey Tetrazzini which can induce what I will simply call "death flatus." On a trip years ago with my hiking buddy, Pete, there was a Turkey Tetrazzini dinner which lead to the "Turkey Tetrazzini Incident," in which the tent zippers were ruined in our haste to evacuate. Also, avoid Pad Thai. Clare chose that for her dinner on our recent trip to Cathedral Lakes and could only describe the taste as peanut-flavored styrofoam. Pastas like spaghetti and lasagna are definitely safe bets.

Breakfast is tough. Henry was incredulous on his first trip when he exclaimed, "That's it!? Pop tarts and raisens for breakfast? What kind of breakfast is this?" Oatmeal with dried blueberries works slightly better. Dried milk is pointless and Carnation Instant Breakfast, though it contains some protein, can mimic giardia when it hits your intestines.

A good dinner bet and a hit with the kids is the "backpacker's pizza" as pictured above. Boboli Pizza dough is vacuum-packed and fits nicely in a bear canister. A small packet of sauce is supplied with the dough. A packet of pastrami and a few cheese sticks can be melted into the dough by heating over the stove. It's light weight, high calorie and salty and requires no refrigeration. Mmmm!