Tuition Well-spent

Iridescent Lake, 11,913 feet

08/23/2006

Miter Basin, Sierra Nevada

Choose a campsite where there is water. The water lapping the lakeshore or pouring over the boulders in the nearby creek will hide the nighttime sounds which startle you in the untouchable darkness: the leafs rustling in the cold wind, the mice skittering through the undergrowth, the tent flaps gently bellowing, the unknown somethings that fuel your wild imagination. The sound of the water will induce perfect sleep as you retreat into the womb that is your sleeping bag.

At some point, though, usually between the hours of 2 and 3 AM, when the constellations have shifted into unfamiliar orientations, you will need to exit the tent to pee. You stumble into the darkness and gasp. "Oh, my goodness!" you say. The innumerable stars and their coalescence into the Milky Way articulate what you have always known but could never say, that God has carved into in the palm of His hand. So you pee and go back to bed.

Speaking of peeing, at UC Berkeley there was a building called Dwinelle Hall. This is where I had my English and anthropology classes. Most of the students who frequented Dwinelle Hall had beards.

The men's restroom in the basement of Dwinelle Hall had a huge line of urinals. In fact, my friend Clifford told me it was the longest line of urinals in the world. Dwinelle Hall was built many decades ago during a time when bomb shelters were considerations in building design. The architects figured that if hundred of students needed to seek shelter you would need lots of urinals. This all made perfect sense to me. People have to pee. Especially during aerial attacks.

When Clifford took me into the Dwinelle Hall basement I was aghast. There was a line of 47 urinals lined up against a wall which was about 100 yards long. They were sparkling white and clean like military personnel going to a formal affair. They all had those hockey puck shaped white deoderizer things over the drains:

(not the actual line of Dwinelle Hall urinals, but you get the idea)

One Friday night after a movie, Clifford and I loaded up with a liter of soda and waited about an hour or so. We snuck into Dwinelle Hall and ran down the echoey stairwell which smelled liked mothballs. We made our way into the men's bathroom in the basement. We flipped on the lights and each ran to opposite ends of the urinal line-up. We called out to each other: "One, Two, Three!" We then proceeded to sashay like ballet dancers from one urinal to the other. We would pee just a small amount into each urinal then move on. Mind you, we wasted a lot of pee on the tile floor, but it was tough to turn on and off so quickly. I moved right and Clifford moved left and somewhere around the halfway point, at urinal number 23, we ran into each other. We performed a nifty pirouette (which we had choreographed earlier while drinking the sodas) then continued on our way. We both finished with pee to spare. It was glorious.

We then zipped up, turned off the lights and returned to our dorms where everyone was eating pizza and watching David Letterman.

Years later I returned to Dwinelle Hall to show Sam, Max and Henry the parade of urinals. The building had been remodeled, however, and the bathroom seemed to be absent. My boys were so very disappointed. They had been anticipating this visit for weeks.

Encyclopedias: Not Yet Obsolete

Henry and Max at Badger Pass, Yosemite National Park, 01/17/2010

Henry tried out for baseball today. Afterwards we took him to Sports Authority to purchase the requisite batting gloves and the required "protection" for, ahem, Mr. Johnson. Henry was so wound up and excited that he refused to remove the cup until bedtime. At Henry's insistence, his older brothers tested the cup's effectiveness by launching increasingly dense projectiles at his midsection. First came pieces of Lego, then Playmobile figures , then actual baseballs, then a basketball, then Encyclopedia Britannicas. He was well-protected.

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.

Don't Forget Your Spatula

Ahh, the spatula. Let us not disregard this fine utensil. How beautifully it removes the pancake batter from the bottom of the bowl, and how marvelously it can disengage a piece of toast stuck in the toaster. Let us also not forget its due place in world history. Archaeologists teach us that pharaohs were buried with their favorite spatulas so that could enjoy buttermilk pancakes in the afterlife. And Napoleon? That whole thing he did with his hand in his coat? He was holding onto his lucky spatula:

I wonder about the word spatula. The word spatula, known in English since 1525, is a diminutive form of the Latin term spatha, which means a broad sword or a flat piece of wood and is also the origin of the the word spade (digging tool). Huh? This is not so important as the inherent comedic value of the sound of the word itself. Say it over and over. Go on, try it. It's quite therapeutic.

In 1983 I spent a Summer working in the Santa Cruz Mountains at a camp for kids with Downs Syndrome. These gentle-spirited souls taught me more about life than my college professors. On one of our theme nights, the campers in my cabin wanted to carry spatulas and march around the mess hall chanting "spatula, cha cha cha, spatula cha cha cha." They waved the spatulas over their heads and all wore aprons. As their counselor I was obliged to join them. All the other campers jumped to their feet and paraded around the hall with us. The entire camp soon spontaneously formed a giant circle, held hands and rushed into the center then rushed backwards like one of those Italian tarantella dances you do at weddings when everyone had too much champagne.

I wonder about spatula-shaped mountains. Consider Banner Peak in the Sierras:

Or how about this distant peak, Hozomeen Mountain, seen when looking East from Whatcom Pass in the Cascades:

Or Cuernos del Paine in Chile:

And finally, some honorable mentions, which technically are not mountains, though they are spatulaesque in their own subtle ways:

The Master's Vision

Royal Arches Behind the Ahwahnee Hotel

01/17/10

(photo taken with Lydia's iPhone)

I remember a time in the early 1980s when my family visited Yosemite Valley. We happened upon a group of folks huddled around an older man with a white beard, a really cool hat and a commanding presence. They all had eager Nikons hanging around their necks and listened intently to the man who was speaking softly and occasionally pointing to the rims of the granite cliffs which loomed above. He had a knowing smile.

"Hey!" my mother whispered. "It's Ansel Adams! He must be giving a photography seminar." My brother Joe promptly whipped out his camera and snapped a photo:

(Not the actual picture Joe took. The actual picture is buried somewhere in the catacombs of photographic storage areas, the shoeboxes and yellowing albums which may be lost forever in the crawl spaces of my parent's attic.)

A few years later, Ansel Adams would die, leaving a legacy of stunning photographs which speak to that which I cannot articulate, which throw me into euphoric emotional upheaval, and which leave me speechless, whole and emptied of all that wrestles for my attention. When I study his photographs I often find myself repeating the words of my brother, Joe: "Wow! That is some serious granite crackage."

And now Sammy says that if this professional poker aspiration doesn't work out, he can just be Ansel Adams. I tell him, though, that there was already an Ansel Adams. So Sammy answers, "Fine, I'll just be a photographer who takes pictures as beautifully as Ansel Adams did. Ok?"

My Own Private Gastropod

Several months ago Ken Burns' national parks documentary, The National Parks: America's Best Idea, aired on PBS. Regrettably, I missed it. I had intended to spend several evenings sipping decaffeinated tea while sitting on the couch, steeping myself in the documentary's historical photos and cinematography depicting natural landscapes. I knew it would be stunning. However, it seems that for a spell of several weeks, work and all of its ridiculousness had spilled into my evening hours. It consumed me. (My proper perspective had up and left for Puerto Vallarta). Ken Burns would have to wait until another day.

Luckily, Lydia bought me the documentary this past Christmas. I promptly watched the first episode. So John Muir, the documentary reminded me, once climbed a tree during a storm. He wanted to embrace the tree in its upper reaches in order to feel what the tree felt as the gale buffeted its branches and the icy and pelting rain stung its needles and bark. Did John Muir sense the tree's terror? Or was it resolute courage? Or joy? If so, did he absorb the joy? When he climbed down did he kiss the ancient bark and thank the tree?

John Muir, the first known Tree Whisperer.

On my own hikes through the Sierras I often find myself smelling trees and kissing them. They smell like vanilla, and the residue they leave on my lips tastes like wood. Yes, wood! Sometimes I bless the trees. That's what the birds do when they flit through the branches. And that's what bears do when the sharpen their claws on the bark. I'm sure St. Francis blessed trees as well. He is better known, though, for blessing animals. (Once I tried blessing Sara, our semi-rabid budgie, and I wound up requiring a tetanus shot).

St. Francis blessing the animals (The geese are tardy; nobody gave them the memo)

I suspect St. Francis blessed garden snails also. Garden snails have long captivated me. When growing up in Santa Cruz I would sit in our front yard on those August afternoons when the sky was a warm and liquid blue and everything would shimmer in the heat, and I couldn't tell where I started and where I ended. I would observe the garden snails meandering through the sloping fronds of the agapanthus bushes. The snails were so patient and so unbothered by the passing of time and the impending dusk. They understood that the moments which had passed and the moments to come were irrelevant.

On one of those afternoons I listened to my Walkman (the 70s equivalent of the iPod). My Walkman was playing Ravel's Bolero. The music starts with the gentle snare drum cadence. It persists through the entire piece, filling the empty spaces between all the other notes played successively by each instrument. The melody is lyrical and intoxicating. On that particular afternoon, while listening to Bolero, I held the earphones tightly against my ears and watched a garden snail make its way through some dry moss. During the 14 minutes and 38 seconds of the piece, I watched the snail cover the same distance as the length of my pinky. It's antennae-thingies waved in time to the music. Its shell rose and fell almost imperceptibly, like the breath in and the breath out of a sleeping child.

When the piece finished, I removed the earphones from my sweaty ears and thanked the snail for sharing its own private rapture with me. Then, using my thumb, I blessed its shell as gently as I could. It was the only sensible thing to do.

Miraculous Tent Engineering

January 1st is kind of a weird day. By the time you get up and slog around Lake Merritt and drink your coffee and eat your waffles, it's already 2:30 in the afternoon. It's almost dinner time. So you decide it's a good day to clean out your EMail inbox, which now boasts EMails numbering in the thousands. How did I fail to delete the soccer snack schedule from last March, or the information about the free online V!cod!n? While wading through all the electronic junk, I suspect the best approach is to simply press "delete all." However, I'm glad I didn't. Because I carefully went through each individual EMail, I managed to salvage this little gem pictured below from an REI ad for a Kelty 6 person tent. I had saved this Email, because I recall silently examining it for several minutes. Then I imagined my own family of 6 in this arrangement. Then I laughed really hard.

The diagram shows the floor plan for shoehorning the 6 persons into the tent. I would like to dine with the tent floorspace engineers who designed this miraculous configuration and pry their minds. From where does their genius come?

Welcoming the New Year

Sky Blue Lake and Iridescent Lake

From the summit of Mt. Langley

08/24/06

(Sky Blue Lake is the clover-shaped lake in the center; Iridescent Lake is in the right foreground. The Miter separates the two. Crabtree Pass is in the ridge beyond Sky Blue Lake. The Great Western Divide is the most distant line of peaks, with the Kaweahs on the left and Table Mountain to the far right)

Happy New Year!

May the earth know peace.