Of Angel Wings and Stranger Things

Those memories came as quickly and definitively as my rhythmic stride along the narrow, serpiginous trail. I was solo and walking past Hamilton Lake and the Valhalla Cirque toward Precipice Lake. I would reach Kaweah Gap by late morning. I pushed hard and noted the sensation of the ascent, the rapidity of my breathing, the assuredness of my Vibram soles and the ridiculous reminiscences which distracted me like the gnatty flies hovering around my face.

It was July 25th, 1991, 23 days before my wedding. And for whatever reason, the altitude and scenery carried me along and forced me to review my every romantic imbroglio. Every, single one. I was being purged, I thought. How appropriate, right before my wedding. That was my understanding.

I walked past the Angel Wings, the largest rock wall in Sequoia National Park. The Climber's Guide to the High Sierras, Steve Roper's classic, sits on my nightstand. It is strangely reassuring to flip through it every night. There are 10 black and white photos in the book's center section depicting Sierran peaks. One photo shows the South face of the Angel Wings:

Even today I lose myself in this photo like a trout in a waterfall. And now I hiked beneath the actual, expansive granite face. And along came memories of Angela Wiggins, that fourth grade hottie whose hair-flipping, gum-chewing, look-at-me-I've-got boobies antics drove my GPA into a tailspin. I couldn't concentrate. My cursive deteriorated and looked like Sanskrit. I ate only toast. Dodge ball and 4-Square lost their appeal. I tried to attract Angela by keeping a pencil behind my ear and saying things like "Doy Ralph." I thought I was being cool. At recess I sat alone dreaming about marrying Angela as I watched her from afar. She seemed to float across the blacktop as if she were filled with lilacs and helium. And if she floated into my general vicinity I would hyperventilate.

After three days of this madness, I sent her a note. "Dear Angela," it said, "I love you. Do you love me?" Before lunch she returned the note. It was folded 4 times. I ran behind the baseball backstop and unfolded it. Under my handwriting she had written her reply:

"I love you in the wing of God."

I stared across the playground at all the kids running amuck. The letter fell from my hands. Wing of God? Wing of God? What the hell did that mean? This was worse than anything. I would have preferred, "You are a bug, and I will step on you if you get too close, you creep!" My interpretation, of course, was that she loved me as one of God's creatures, but nothing more. This was terrible. I sulked. I noted the lump in my throat. I went through the five stages of death and dying during lunch time, and by the time I reached acceptance I was enjoying my bologna with ketchup sandwich. I was ready to move on...

Past the Angel Wings I trod. I was 50% of the way to Kaweah Gap. 50%. After Angela I fell for Joanna Scarlatti. We were in the same class since kindergarten, yet now I really noticed her. She was demure, tall, bright and not unlike those painted Madonnas in the Michelangelo coffee table book at home. Her neck was long and ample; it connected her head to her body quite nicely. She didn't make me feel ill like Angela did, but she did make me feel warm, electric and really mature. We could discuss the California Gold Rush, parallelograms and explorers like Hernando Cortez and Americo Vespucio.

I wondered if she liked me when she sent me a note: "Do you love me? Sincerely, Joanna." Wow, I thought, do I love her? How do I reply? Did I only love her in the wing of God? I stayed up late that night and listened to Herb Alpert records while flipping through the Michelangelo book. I liked her, but love was a powerful word. Maybe I should be coy, removed, suave. My reply described my emotions perfectly. I simply wrote:

"Joanna: I like you 50/50."

I gave her the note the next morning. She read it immediately and burst into tears. She yelled at me: "50/50? 50/50? What the heck does that mean?" She ran away into a gaggle of her supportive friends. They comforted her then glared at me. My head felt hot and steamy. I thought I was being perfectly clear. What part of my note did she not understand? Then for years her family called me "Mr. 50/50." That was not charitable, I thought...

I hiked higher and approached the shores of Precipice Lake. I knew this lake well from Ansel Adam's photo pictorial, Yosemite and the Range of Light. The lake was hewn in rock and bordered by a precipitous cliff on one side and a meadow on the other:

As I walked through the meadow, I noted the subtle mood changes in the cliff as light and shadows danced over the crevasses of its granite face. Ahh, the mood changes. I recollected them in rapid succession as I pushed toward Kaweah Gap. There was Mable Jackson, the girl I first kissed. I went to T.G. &Y. (the local 5 and dime) to buy her a Christmas present. I purchased a two dollar purple ceramic bird. Mable dropped it after she unwrapped it, and it shattered. When I picked up the pieces I cut my finger. She said, "I knew that would happen! You shouldn't have picked up the pieces." I tried to glue the bird together with Elmer's School Glue. When it dried it appeared to be some sort of stegosaurus.

Then came Joan Betty Court. At the Christmas dance in 7th grade she asked me to dance. I said yes. However, when someone held mistletoe over our heads, Joan Betty tried to shove her tongue down my throat. She then proposed to me (she seemed perfectly serious!) and told me she had always loved me. "Hold me in your big, strong arms," she pleaded. I responded by running from the auditorium and hiding in the instrument cabinet in the band room. As I crouched in the darkness I flexed my arms and felt my biceps. They felt really small.

Clarice Filson entered my life a year later. She was younger, a 7th grader. I avoided her my entire 8th grade year, because whenever I saw her a feeling not unlike botulism overwhelmed me. Her auburn air outlined her pallorous, porcelain face, and her nose sloped up like a ski jump. I never spoke to her, yet I knew she owned several pairs of white painter pants and a pink hoodie. She lived on a farm outside Santa Cruz and wrote a poem for the school literary publication entitled Death for my Llama. As the poem recounted, her llama had died when its head got stuck in a fence. I read that poem a million times. I memorized it and recited it as I walked to school each day. It was epic and powerful.

I used to sing that song Sometimes when we touch, the honesty's too much as I daydreamed about Clarice. At those moments, I knew that if we did happen to touch, it would be honest. And I would console her about the dead llama. And that's what sustained me, and us...

I reached Kaweah Gap and drank deeply from my water bottle. I caught my breath. I stared down the Kern Canyon and across the Nine Lakes Basin to the Kaweah Ridge: Red Kaweah, Black Kaweah, Mt. Kaweah, Kaweah Queen. Place Names of the High Sierras notes that Kaweah is a Piute Indian word which means I squat here. And as I squatted there, at Kaweah Gap, a strange and brilliant happiness washed over me. I was the sum of my silly parts, yet my wife-to-be accepted me and loved me nonetheless. There would be no more second guessing.

I breathed a sigh of relief, ate a handful of M&M's and let the view fill me and saturate my every sense.