Beware the Dangling Participle

Back to Young Lakes...

I was 13 when Jay and J.J. (my brothers) and I were poking around the distant shores of Young Lakes on that glorious Sierran afternoon. The meadowy, water-logged grass stopped abruptly at the shoreline, and as we walked along our boots made sucking protestations in the mud. The wind blew in and out of our ears, and the pure, high altitude light clarified our vision and our purpose. Silently, we searched for the perfect rocks, the dense granite ones that felt good in the hand, the ones you could throw into the middle of the lake. And there the rocks would sink into the purgatory of the mossy depths, waiting for the next Ice Age to come along and welcome them like distant relatives.

We were alone, we thought, up here in the relatively inaccessible high country. But then we heard it, an unnatural splashing sound, different and out of sync with the sound of the water lapping the shore. Jay shushed J.J. and me. He pantomimed that we should join him and remain inconscipucous behind a granite boulder. We did so promptly.

We then heard a human voice, a lady's lilting laugh, followed by a large splash and more laughter and an exuberant shout. "Hey," we simultaneously realized, "There's someone swimming in our lake!" We cautiously poked our heads over the lip of our boulder like consternated marmots:

We all saw it at the same time. There, a stone's throw yonder, in ankle deep water and gazing at the mountains, stood a 20-something woman glistening naked in the afternoon sunshine, marble-white buttocks contrasting with her tan torso, joyous breasts, which seemed really big, shimmering and silhouetted against the azure sky, dark brown hair falling to her sloping shoulders and legs stretching upward from the ripples in the water to her womanly graces.

Holy Toledo! This was so unlike the life-size statues of the aboriginal women in the DeYoung Museum's dioramas, or the anatomy drawings in my dad's medical text books, or the lady on the cover of Herb Alpert's Whipped Cream album. Jay, J.J. and I stared ferociously. It was like Christmas in July, and for a long while we stood silently, desperately trying to stifle our rising respirations (no simple task at this altitude!).

Somewhere during that eon of a moment a different voice, a male voice, called from behind a boulder on the shore. It startled us and shook us awake like a phonograph needle dragging across a record.

"Lookin' good!" the male voice yelled. The naked woman laughed.

"Chad!" she replied. "Come on out and show yourself, you big 'ol hunk of love!" She had a Southern accent.

A naked man climbed to the top of the boulder and playfully posed like a man in a Mr. America body-building competition, flexing his biceps and tightening his flabby gut. A pair of gold-rimmed spectacles rested on his nose. He was hairy and grotesque. I hated him immediately.

But wait a minute. There was something familiar about his face, his goofy moustache, his voice, his ape-like demeanor. I turned to my brothers. "Oh my God!" I whispered loudly. "It's Mr. Twist! You know, the school librarian! Mr. Twist! Chad Twist!" He was like an encylopedia volume on the magazine shelf, out of place and out of context, a librarian in the Sierras, so it had taken a few moments for recognition to dawn.

Jay and J.J. gazed intently at the orangutan man from our hidden vantage. "It is! It is!" Jay finally whispered. "What is he doing out in the middle of the Sierras?"

We bit our lips, we put our hands over our mouths, and we pleaded with each other not to do it by mouthing the words "Stop!" and "Don't!" while gesticulating hysterically. But in the end it was all pointless, and our laughter burst forth like the water in Yosemite Creek cascading over Yosemite Falls in the middle of May. And once that happened, Chad and Princess Nekkida spun around and faced us like startled cats. The game was up.

We stood from our crouched positions and showed ourselves. "Hi, Mr. Twist!" I gleefully shouted, "What brings you to Young Lakes, the middle of nowhere, on a beautiful afternoon such as this?"

Mr. Twist stood in shock with his mouth open, his dewey decimals retreating in embarrassment. His lady friend, meanwhile, was screaming and running for cover, her breasts bouncing randomly and without purpose in all directions as if they were performing a Laurel and Hardy routine.

"Oh my, God, Oh, my God, Chad!" she bellowed from across the meadow, "Who are these little twirps?"

"Honey, please keep your voice down," Mr. Twist beseeched while carefully descending from his perch.

In the end the awkwardness belonged only to Mr. Twist and his silly friend, and we knew that. So we stood with huge smiles watching them fumbling with their towels and their boots. Finally, half-dressed and dripping wet, they skulked off to their campsite on the opposite shore.

Jay, J.J. and I turned, put our arms around each other and walked toward the setting sun. It was almost dinnertime.

Clare Renders her Opinion

Sierran Golden Trout:

"They might as well have fishing as an Olympic sport. That couldn't be any more silly than Curling."

(Clare, my daughter, while making cookies and watching the Winter Olympics)

Huh?

Lenten Vision

"Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees, takes off his shoes - The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries."

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The moonscape on the shoulder of Mt. Langley
Southern Sierra Nevadas, ~13,000 feet

08/24/06

Forever Young

There is a scene in the sleeper hit movie, Breaking Away, when Dave Stoller, the Italian-loving cyclist, races his bike through an Indiana cornfield. The camera pans out. You can see the greenness of the corn field stretching for miles over hilly undulations. Dave pedals effortlessly, and the simple purity of the surrounding elements, the light, the wind, the sky, highlight his restrained rapture as he pushes himself hard. The music accompanying the scene is the melodic french horn aria from the overture of Rossini's The Barber of Seville.


I first saw Breaking Away in 1979, the year it was released, with my brother Joe. We saw the movie on a school night at my mother's insistence. We needed to see the movie, she told us with an almost urgent tone, much the same as when she told us to go to mass every Sunday. Go figure! We knew, therefore, it was important.


It was later that same year, on August 19th, when we ventured out of Tuolumne Meadows to Young Lakes for a 6 day foray. Young Lakes sits in a typical Sierran 10,000 foot basin between isolated Ragged Peak and the Mt. Conness ridge:

The first 3 miles of the trail to Young Lakes courses through the high Sierran meadows bordered by Delaney and Dingley Creek. From the meadows you can look back to the brown pyramids of Mts. Dana and Gibbs, and west to the washboard foothills which fall off into the Central Valley. There is light and wind and sky. There are also the Rossini french horns if you hike alone and listen real hard. I remember hearing them.

This trip was particularly memorable. My two brothers and two sisters and I were all immersed in mid and late adolescence, the time of college applications and learner's permits and ridiculous corsages and boutonnieres worn to formals at the Cocoanut Grove. This was also the time when we were blissfully unaware of impending grown-up responsibilities. So it was good to frolic in the Sierras.

It was also then that my parents were reveling in the prime of their parenting career as demonstrated in this trip photo:

Also accompanying us on this trip were family friends, Don and Mary:

Don, just after his haircut

Mary, sewing her own backpacking clothes

Our Young Lake's campsite boasted a pristine view of Ragged Peak:

The nine of us slept under the stars like a row of supine pawns on a large, blue tarp with frayed edges. (On those early trips we never took tents). My dad would sleep on one end, and the rest of us would argue about who would sleep on the other end. Nobody wanted to be the dreaded "end sleeper." The end sleeper was vulnerable and subject to bear attack, sniffing mice, alien abduction and a restless, sleepless night.

Don brought along an emergency space blanket. Ahh, the space blanket. These are the silver mylar blankets compacted in a package the size of a bouillon cube. In an emergency situation, like a Summer snowstorm or unexpected loss of clothing or locust swarms, you could whip out the space blanket and wrap it around yourself and survive miraculously.

So Don was a little chilled one evening (he had the end position that night), and he wrapped the space blanket around his sleeping bag. However, there is no such thing as quiet mylar. Everytime Don would roll over, nay, everytime he would breathe in and breathe out, the space blanket would crinkle. It would crinkle all night long. It was agonizing, and not unlike someone holding a fistful of rice crispies next to your ear and squeezing relentlessly.

Don slept great. The next morning, though, his space blanket had mysteriously disappeared. He looked up in the trees, he looked in the lakes, he looked in the meadow. Vanished! To this day the mystery remains, though I hear rumors of a great buck with silver antlers which may be seen on the shores of Young Lakes when the moon is full. If you get close enough you can hear its antlers crinkling in the breeze.

The Ides of February

Magnolia

Oakland, CA (outside our kitchen window)

February, 2007

And so we arrive at the apex of February. This means, of course, that our magnolia tree is yet again enjoying its yearly adolescence. It's innumerable fuschia blossoms burst forth in hormonal fashion and exude a subtle but devastating fragrance such that the ants wading through its sappy branches go bonkers and start singing love songs.

Mid-February also means that, hey, it's President's Day! Happy President's Day everyone! If Grover Cleveland were alive today he would be 172 years old, which was the same age, incidentally, as Ms. Chamberlain, my piano teacher, when I was growing up:

Ms. Chamberlain

Mid-February also means that if you want a permit for a backpacking trip in Yosemite for August 3rd (exactly 24 weeks from now), you have to go down to the 24 hour Kinkos at midnight and fax in your wilderness permit application. Getting your permit request fax'd exactly at midnight improves your chances of actually obtaining the permit for the trail you want. And so I found myself at Kinkos tonight.


Our 24 hour Kinkos is in a very bad part of town, meaning it's located by train tracks, a freeway and a Denny's. The Kinkos itself, though, is a delight once you are safe and sound inside. There is good florescent lighting and lots of neatly stacked paper in colors with names like Rocket Red and Wasabi. The store smells like stale coffee and those carbon copy handouts my fourth grade teacher used to give me. There are paper clips and pens and a stapler if you need them. There are also pastey college students frantically collating their research papers. I like to sit and watch them. They're a hoot. Additionally, I find the hum of the copy machines soothing. It's soothing like a dryer running in the background is soothing when you take a Saturday afternoon nap on the couch.


The other night, my wife, Lydia, and I were wondering what to do for Valentines Day. I suggested we simply head down to Kinkos. Maybe we could help some college students with their collation. She simply rolled her eyes and quietly murmured "Dust Buster" much the same as the guy who says "Rose Bud" in the movie Citizen Cane. Ahh yes, the Dust Buster Incident. So I had bought her a dust buster for Mother's Day several years before. We all make bad choices. We just have to remember not to make them twice.

Wisely Choose your Hiking Buddies

If I were going to hike the Pacific Crest Trail, I would choose my wife and kids to accompany me. I would also choose our dog, Bella, because she makes me laugh. She is a supreme, grade A ding-a-ling. I would not invite our parakeets, however, because they would abandon me somewhere during the first 20 feet of the trail. They have no sense of comaraderie or loyalty. They are also lousy hikers.

I asked myself the question, "If I could also hike the 2,600 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail with anyone else, whom would I invite?" Could I assemble a "Dream Team" of hikers? Following, in no particular order, are my choices:

Cap'n Crunch:

Because everyone knows breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

Lieutenant Worf from Star Trek the Next Generation:

He could teach me Klingon poetry during the long, grueling stretches of trail.

Alice from The Brady Bunch:

She would keep the camp clean.

The Brawny paper towel guy:

He could assist Alice.

The parking attendant from Ferris Bueller's Day Off:

What can I say? This guy is as cool as they come. He would make me a better, more caring person.

Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride:

"Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya"

Maybe he could find the guy who killed his father out on the trail.

Mozart:

Because when I'm in the Sierras I hear his music.

That PBS painting guy:

Maybe he could teach me to paint!

The Von Trapp Familiy singers from The Sound of Music:

Eh, why not?

Nacho Libre:

He could keep the PBS painting guy in line.

Reverse Valentines

It was August, 1980, when my entire family and my brother Joe's nameless girlfriend pulled into the dusty and gravelly Onion Valley parking lot on the Eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevadas. We had driven all day from Santa Cruz in our dependable Chevy Beauville:

(Not the actual Beauville, mind you, but you get the idea. These vans were popular in the 1970s and were a sign of prestige and carefree suburban Catholicism).

Earlier that day we drove through Yosemite and over Tioga Pass. As we approached the pass we entered a classic Sierran afternoon thunderstorm, the kind where the thunder cracks like an almighty whip and everyone starts screaming, and the clouds are dense and Crayola black. The rain came at us sideways like darts in the gasps and gusts of the wind. But the Beauville kept us safe as we descended through the granite amphitheatre of the Tioga Pass Road toward Highway 395.

We set up camp at 9,200 foot Onion Valley late that afternoon. The storm had long cleared in predictable fashion. Our plan was to rise early and hike up and over Kearsarge Pass and spend a week heading South toward Mt. Whitney. We kids spent dusk running around in grand, adolescent fashion amidst the thistly shrubs and undergrowth which smelled like onions and wet dirt.

That night, tucked in my sleeping bag, I was still and quiet in an effort to extinguish the achiness in my eyes and the throbbing in my head brought on by high altitude sickness. But I didn't quite mind. The accompanying insomnia was pleasant in an odd way, and I was content to stare heavenward and count the falling stars and let the onion smell go in my nose and out my mouth with each breath. Everyone seemed to be snoring and oblivious.

"Dad," I said round about midnight, "Are you awake?" My hands were clasped behind my head.

"Ughh" he answered as if he were poked with a stick. "What do you need?" he finally asked like he was taking a call from a nurse at the hospital.

"Nothing," I answered. "Nothing at all." My headache was dissipating, and I felt quite fine.

The next day, with full packs, we hiked up toward Kearsarge Pass and saw the aptly named Heart Lake:

Heart Lake

Yes, it really is shaped like a perfect valentine. Ahh, valentines. A few years back our son, Sam, made valentines for everyone in his class. He had taken pictures of each of his classmates and carefully downloaded them and cropped them and resized them. He then printed them and cut them into heart shapes and glued them onto red paper. "To Scott," he would write, for example, to his friend Scott, "Happy Valentines Day! From Sam." So the recipient would receive a picture, well, of himself or herself.

Clare came into the kitchen and stared at Sam's valentines displayed on the counter. She stared a really long time. She picked one up, looked at Sam, then burst out laughing. "Sam," she said, "Don't you realize this is the stupidest idea ever? Who wants to get a valentine which is a picture of themselves? What is this? Some kind of a reverse valentine?"

I figured this was simply like getting a friend a gift that you yourself really liked, like a T-shirt that you thought was hysterical or a gift certificate to your favorite restaurant. Once I gave Turkey Tetrazzini Pete a CD of the five Beethoven piano concertos for his birthday. Pete is about as musical as a pile of moist sod. He simply looked at the gift and said, "Uhh. Thanks." I think he was just being polite.

Flanked by his Daughters

Wanda Lake

11,430'

08/09/2008, 6 a.m.

North side of Muir Pass

Named after John Muir's daughter, Wanda

Helen Lake, named after John Muir's other daughter, sits on the South side of the pass

Helen and Wanda Muir

Grover Cleveland

Quaker Oats guy

Patrick Star, Sponge Bob's Friend

The Usher's Consternation

It has been pointed out to me that the blog has taken a decidedly sophomoric turn, and for that, I am grateful and unapologetic. You see, my job is stressful. It's like a crock pot (or is it a pressure cooker?). During the work day, while meeting with my clients, I maintain a loud internal dialogue as the client rambles on and on like a busted car alarm down the street. While smiling empathetically and gently furrowing my brow and nodding my head like a bobblehead, I say to myself: "Holy cow. This guy's pathetic. How long can this go on? My blood sugar is plummeting. Doesn't this guy have chores to do?" So, as you can see, any escape from this tedium will provide welcome solace, like a healing balm on a really bad case of the shingles.

So I must publish pictures like this one:

Taken shortly before Christmas, 2009, this picture highlights the good works of some diligent neighborhood pranksters, likely the teenagers up the street who always walk by cursing and spitting. They are otherwise kind and gentle souls. I give them an "A" for indirectly teaching my kids the realities of animal husbandry and wifery by creatively rearranging the holiday deer on our front lawn.

We live in a very urban area, you see, and my kids are usually not exposed to such things. This is different than my brother John's family. John lives on a farm with his wife and 5 kids where there are lots of chickens running around (often without their heads, but then only for about 8 seconds) and continuous displays of animals doing animal things. It's like a never-ending movie version of chapter 14 in the 4H manual.

Every now and then, when the corn is mowed and the cows are lugubriously chewing their cud and plotting their world takeover, John heads into town for a movie. He once took his daughter, Brigid, to see a Harry Potter movie. Three year old Brigid finished her bucket of popcorn and her soda before the previews were completed, and then, before Harry got his first headache and bad flashback, she fell asleep on John's lap. Around the time when Hermione was starting to get really tiresome, Brigid peed. It was a nice long, warm, voluminous pee, and, as John describes it, it was not unlike someone pouring a potful of simmering chicken noodle soup into his lap.

John responded appropriately. He continued to calmly sit and watch Harry hamming it up with the Weasley brothers. For John, the pee was like He who could not be named: always present, always causing angst, but there was really nothing you could do about it. Like Harry enduring Voldemort, John could only sit there quietly as the movie played on. By the time the credits were rolling Brigid was stirring and ready to head home. John stood up and noted the pee, now cold, which had soaked through his Levis to his thighs. A stinging ammonia smell greeted him. He turned and noted a large, circular stain on a good 80% of his movie seat. "Oh, my!" John whispered. He quickly gazed this way and that, picked up Brigid and hightailed it out the exit and into the glaring Oregon sun. Once home he quickly changed into his bathing suit and jumped into his swimming pool.

I asked John, "Weren't you concerned about the next movie goer who would sit in that seat? Shouldn't you have told an usher?"

He responded thoughtfully, like a farmer with a piece of straw dangling from his mouth calculating how many bales of hay were in his field. "No," he said, "That never crossed my mind."

So, I remember the story of Brigid, and I think of this picture of Henry. Then I know that life is grand: