The Journey of a Single Step...

Sky Blue Lake

11,552 feet

Sequoia National Park

(View Toward Arc Pass on the Flanks of Mt. McAdie)

For bonus points, and if you might be mired in the gentle ennui which a quiet Saturday night affords, find the blue tent in the picture (you will need to click on the picture and use your zoom function).

I can reassure you, devoted readers, all three and a half of you, that in my life, I have spent no fewer than 72 total hours pacing across some gravelly rock in my own glorious nakedness, absorbing sunlight, staring into the yawning blueness of some high Sierran lake which threatens to envelop me in its icy grasp, if only I step from the brink. One step. One step Jerome, one step.

I find a million excuses why I should not step into the water. It's windy, now, at this moment. I should wait for the wind to be still. The water's surface is rough. It needs to be smooth as glass. There's a cloud over there, a big, inflating cumuloid which might cover the sun like a thumb over my eye. A nearby marmot is staring at me. He seems to be laughing. The moment is not right.

I walk from one end of my rock to the other like a cat stuck on a branch. I will count to ten. I do so but then find myself counting past 10 to 300. I do rock, paper scissors with myself and lose every time. I check my pulse. I note the goosebumps on my outer arms and rub them away. I spit and blow all sorts of things out of my nose. I sit on the ground but promptly stand, not relishing the sharp sensation of the prickly grass along my oh-so-delicate hiney. I note my filthy, bronzed legs and how they contrast with my white butt, the whiteness which is criss-crossed with the red pressure marks from the weightiness of my pack. I examine the blisters on my toes. I sing Happy Birthday. I say a quick Hail Mary while glaring at the marmot. I stare at the sun for a second just to see what it's like.

I dip one toe in the water and withdraw it immediately. "There is no freaking way," I mutter. My toe has gone pale and numb. I remember that story in C.S. Lewis' The Voyage of the Dawn Treader where the lost lord jumps into the water, and he turns to gold, dies, and sinks to the bottom. Such a fate would be untimely.

I stare into the sky and lose myself in its endlessness. It envelops me and, along with the hovering sun, waits patiently, like a conductor holding up his baton while a violinist in the orchestra's back row quickly fixes his broken string, or like St. Monica waiting and praying for her son, the saint-to-be, Augustine.

One step. One yes. Not a soul to push me in. I run forward and leap at the brink. "Heeeeee-yahhhhhhhh!" For a moment I'm suspended above the water, sandwiched in mid-air between the blueness of the sky and the lake. The marmot runs for cover. The wind holds its breath. The rest is effortless...