The Gift of Gabb

Mt. Gabb & Lower Mills Creek Lake

You can jump from the rock in the foreground into the water. The water there is deep and pure, and the submerged granite boulders seem perfectly content to spend the rest of their days looking up at the sunlight playing on the surface. The water roars in your ears as you enter its depths. All the dust and dried sweat and unpleasantness is washed off. You emerge snappy clean and now understand that nothing else really matters.

In late August, 1981, I hiked with my friends, Clifford, Evan and Mike up the Copper Creek Trail in Kings Canyon. Our first night out we camped at 10,093 foot Granite Lake. After some Top Ramen, we spent much of the evening cursing and saying "Your mom this and your mom that" and counting shooting stars and relishing the freedom and disinhibition which our late adolescence afforded.

At 6 AM the next morning Evan woke us. "I'm gonna' do it!" he blurted. Without hesitation, he jumped out of his sleeping bag, whipped off his thermals and ran down the frost-covered grassy embankment into the water. He immersed himself entirely and came up screaming with drops of snow-melted water glinting like diamond studs in his always curly and always entertaining hair. He ran back to shore and, still dripping wet and naked and slick, jumped into his sleeping bag and shivered magnificently, but for just a few moments. We were amused and impressed. "I've always wanted to do that," he said with the subdued bravado of a smiling polar bear sitting on an Eskimo. And with that, our second day began.