After just a few days in Chico, seeing old friends, watching Barbara Streisand movies with my mom, and eating dirty burritos, I prepared for a road trip with, gasp, my parents. I know most people may not choose to go on a five-day hiking trip with their parents, but you just haven't met mine. Yes, they tell the same jokes, buy terrible touristy shirts and like Subway too much, but they are pretty awesome. As a matter of fact, we are kind of a unit now, after years of it being us three (my sister at college or in CO), we just know how to function. I just sort of bop between my parents, hiking and talking geography/history/politics etc with my dad, while I gush about life, love and books with my mom (this also includes watching really embarrassing to admit movies, such as Flicka 3-as though two weren't enough!).
After a five hour drive we finally arrived at Yosemite. Our first day I coerced my mom into hiking with us a little bit, which she did until it got hot and steep, and my father and I trekked on. At the end of our hike we saw a lovely waterfall that surged into Hatch Hechy, which I learned later is San Francisco's drinking water, so lucky you, city folk. An interesting thing about this hike was that we ran across a group of-I could spot immediately-middle-school kids. Immediately, I thought of my kiddos. Where are they? Is someone watching them? Are they READING? And we found out they were from the city. I wondered how many of my students had ever gone somewhere where nature prevailed in that indomitable way. I also wondered how you could ever really know how big life is if it has never revealed it's vastness to you. Yes, a building can put you in awe from it's grand shadow, but a canyon, a waterfall, a mountain-those are the edifices that make everything in you still until your soul finally can creep out of slumber and into grace.
Day two was a bit more eventful. After driving an endlessly winding road to get up to Yosemite from our hotel (apparently only the wealthy can stay in lodges near the park-I mean we're talking 400 bucks a night at some of these places) we arrived at the highest point of the park: Glacier Point. My dad had vigorously highlighted dream routes for us to take and finally had settled on this "Rated 10, that rarely happens" hike that was listed as 'Moderate' and just over 10 miles. OK, I thought, we had done more than that before, and my dad told me it would be all down hill-Easy as pie, right?
After my mom snapped some photos (excuse my Facebook uploads, please) of us in our clean hiking outfits, we left her with the car and a free afternoon reading in the valley as we began our hike with plenty of water but NO lunch. All was whimsical at first, with accents from foreign hikers humming around us like little birds, but with more awkward khaki accessories, and we had found a lovely waterfall about two miles in. There was little uphill as we kept walking, reminiscing on past travels abroad and strange interactions with locals. We even came across a pair of Czech guys who I nearly bat my sweaty eyelashes and clucked at as they hiked by us, old jumbled Slavic phrases sticking to my tongue. And then......the uphill......and the downhill. The sun was beating down on my perpetually pale skin, we had not packed lunch and it was past one, we still had thousands of feet down to the valley (our destination) and here we were going UP all of those miles we had gone DOWN! Well, my adorable hiking euphoria had worn off and I was, to be fragile, a bit 'testy'. I was getting shaky and my legs were tired. My poor dad had sweated through his shirt and I wondered why we are so disturbed as to torture ourselves like we were. And then, the steepness flattened, I could taste my own salty sweat (probably could pluck the salt crystals off and put them in a shaker) and there was an incredible waterfall. You would think, after all those waterfalls, you'd become indifferent, but each one is so uniquely beautiful that you forget the others instantly. OK, to make a long story short, the hike took over five hours, my fathers toes bled through his socks, we were limping and I ate a huge salmon burger at the end. And in retrospect, I can almost think "oh that was a nice hike, not too tough...."
Oh yes, the trees, oh how I get sidetracked! OK, so moving on to Sequoia National Park-Day 4. So, my dad and I are nearly incapacitated from all the downhill. So much so, that my dad, hiking OBSESSED table for one, missed out on a panorama hike with the best views of Yosemite yet (again, see Facebook for said photos and ignore my disgrace at being a Facebook slut this past week). He sat in the hotel on Day 3while my mom and I had this great bonding experience where she hated/loved me as I forced her on a hike that she totally rocked (literally).
So.....picture these trees, not dense like most conifers, but instead they are sprinkled around completely dominating whatever patch they're in. The giant sequoia. If you want to feel insignificant, try and wrap your arms around the rustic red trunk of one of those trees. They are millions of years old, some of them, and they are resilient to both fire and insects. If we want to talk evolutionary lottery, we might as well cue up the DING DING right now. Nothing can kill these, as we saw on our 'Stump Hike' where a chainsaw made a poor attempt at slicing through one. it carved what looked like a smile (I tried not to think of the Joker but it was tough) into the trunk, and it looked like one of the healthiest trees there. Even if you did have the machinery to destroy one of these ancient beauties because, well, maybe you don't have a soul and like beating grandmothers or something, you can't even use the wood because it splinters instantly. HAH! And the funniest part of the day? When my mom says, "I don't really like trees that much" when we are THERE in the most MAGICAL tree forest in the WORLD and she just smiles out the window, mildly unimpressed. I would wonder how we were related, except for she had already begun daydreaming at that point, and then it was undeniably confirmed that my love of nature from my dad is in me as equally as the dreamer inside of my mom, and while they aren't compatible in two separate people all the time, they are forced to play nicely when they live inside of me :) Perhaps someone just like me made up fairies, too....seems about right.
So if I could be a tree, I would be YOU Sequoia. You are incredible, wise and can not be torn down by earthly powers. It is only when you wish, when you tire, that you fall. And oh, how the forest laments you when you do.
And then, there is other beauty too, that makes you feel small. My dad, notoriously unromantic, tells me (after definite prodding, for sure) that he knows mom 'is the one' and he has always known. To hear that, after spending a bit too much time in tiny, 'the smell lingers', quarters with them, I felt small. I'm not talking about the bad small, just the small that reminds me I know so little of love. These two, going on 30+ years, are still best friends. They know each other in a way I know no one has ever known me. And in some ways they are that rare Sequoia, so rare in a forest of easily broken and destroyed trees that barely make it through the winter, where as they simply keep growing, more incredible and majestic with each season. There are so few like them, but perhaps that is what makes people stop with their cameras and IPhone Instagram to celebrate them. I know I like to.
Gracias for your patience with that tree analogy, I just couldn't NOT do it, ya know? Anyhow, still in Chico and still riding the same purple cruiser from high school. More later, from my little hometown summer stint :) And, a teaser for weeks to follow, picture H and I sweating through Guatemala....pretty tantalizing image right??!
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