No Expectations

Its true. I drove through Yosemite without stopping. Some might call it sacrilege, but I think, given how parked cars spilled out of every trailhead lot, and how drivers headed into the valley stopped suddenly or swerved to the margin to snap a photograph, that John Muir himself might well have applauded my decision. Don’t get me wrong; the Tioga Pass Road was well worth the price of admission and the views I had of El Capitan and Half Dome made me laugh in disbelief. But as Cricket and I wound up the road from Fresno to Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, I knew my choice had been a good one. The village at Grant’s Grove was still too busy for my taste, so I headed in the thirty miles through Sequoia National Forest to the Canyon itself, deep in the Sierras, along the South Fork of the King’s River, and settled in for the night.

I was determined to do a full day hike, ten or fifteen miles at least, during my one full day in the canyon. So I left my campsite as the sky was just beginning to pale, and headed to the Copper Creek trailhead. I switchbacked up and up gaining over two thousand feet in the first few miles. I paused to greet manzanita and ceanothus, two familiar shrubs of the California hills, and a deer that watched from the trail above. At 7000 feet the chaparral gave way to conifers: sequoia and pines whose needles softened my walking. The sun had reached me, and in the growing heat, their shade was welcome.

A couple passed me, headed down, the first people I’d seen in the three hours I’d been hiking. My destination, the saddle, they told me, was buggy, and the basin beyond, which I’d hoped to explore if time allowed, held some of the worst mosquitoes they had ever experienced.

I was surprised to find the news relaxed me. Now I had no expectations. I would climb as high as I could, take my time, watch birds, and let go of the self-imposed pressures of time and mileage. I delighted in the vertical unfolding of spring. Flowers already past their prime in lower elevations were in full bloom here, paintbrush, penstemon and mariposa poppy. Hearing chirping in a knot of shrubs above a small drainage, I waited until a MacGillivray’s warbler hopped up. It hid quickly, and I waited for a second look. In Upper Tent Meadow I looked out to see the first cumulous clouds passing from the far peaks. I knew that I would not reach the saddle before needing to turn back. But somehow, perhaps it was the mosquitoes, it was OK.

I climbed up through the meadow turning often to look out over Avalanche Pass and the Sphinx Crest. The peaks still held snow in the cirques and north-facing slopes. Here I could feel, in the “untrammeled wilderness”, the spirit of the man who strode through these mountains with a crust of bread in his pocket and a plant press in his backpack. Here was the high sierra. And then, as the cumulus clouds towered into thunderheads, I turned and strode down along the path I had come. I watched the pageant of the summer storm unfold without disappointment.