“He who binds himself to a joy
Does the winged life destroy.
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sunrise.”
— William Blake
The summer of 1982 was a perfect time for a manly backpacking trip. No more snot-nosed Boy Scout stuff. Everyone I knew had graduated from high school, and most of them were not the type to go off to college. Those of us who remained while others sought a “higher education” were united in our disdain for the frivolity of youth and the vanity of ambition. We slouched disinterestedly around the Parkade in Fairfax, overtly swaggering and covertly drinking, for although we were all old enough to die for our country, we were not yet old enough to have a beer in the state of California.
When we got tired of evading the cops, or watching them pour out our beers, or sitting around boasting about what we would do to prove our erstwhile manliness, we planned our next trip to Bear Lake. The players in this game of make-believe expedition came and went, until only a core of real men remained. We quoted Tolkien and Hemingway, drank our warm beers recklessly, spat on the hot oily asphalt, and boldly plotted our strategy to conquer the Bear Lake trail once again. This time, my robust friends Chris and Greg would be joined by their equally vigorous cohorts, Al and Joe. A more masculine quintet of mountaineers was assuredly never assembled. We were all at our physical peaks; fine specimens of young and restless Homo sapiens, seeking to battle the untamed wild with all the percolating testosterone in our bloodstreams.
We took so long boasting and planning, and coordinating time off from work schedules, that our backpacking adventure would have to occur later in the year than ever before. August and September sand trickled through the hourglass, and it wasn’t until October when we actually found a week where we would all be available. Getting older has a way of limiting opportunities for getting away from it all, because there’s usually more from which to get away. I knew that the Trinity Alps could often have weather issues in October – including early snows in some years – but the pattern of this year was hot and dry, with a long Indian summer that hung around hopefully like a stray dog.
I had been rebuilding the strength in my left knee after a bad sprain over the winter. This was a longstanding problem (no pun intended, but duly noted). You see, I couldn’t wait to arrive in the world, and was born 6 weeks premature, with underdeveloped legs and pronated feet as my reward. My first 8 months of life were spent with casts on both legs. Of course, I had no idea that that was not how one was supposed to begin one’s life, so I made the best of it and was an active young boy despite the challenges. As I grew, I became more painfully aware of my shortcomings, and grudgingly scuffed the many pairs of clod-hopping orthopedic shoes I was forced to wear in grade school. I was bound and determined to do all the things the other kids could do, including wearing cool sneakers! Surprisingly, by middle school I was the fastest kid in the neighborhood, but that distinction wasn’t particularly useful, until the time I could play high school football. I had no real leg problems as an older boy, but remained unusually short and slight. Sadly, my mercurial athletic career was prematurely cut short when everyone outgrew me by leaps and bounds.
As a teenager I had many minor knee sprains and mishaps, but this year was when my major knee problems began. I was already in a leg splint and using crutches, when the Flood of the Century ravaged Marin County over the winter. We lived in a narrow canyon below a dam in Lagunitas, where the creek backed up and boiled over its banks even in normal rainfall years. The torrential rains, combined with a mudslide downstream, caused the waters to reach unprecedented levels above the ground floors of most of the homes along Papermill Creek. Fortunately, our little house had been built on a high foundation, but when the water reached our floor level and the firemen started yelling at us, it was finally time to go… but how? The creek that normally ran 10 feet from my window was now surging 3-4 feet deep around both sides of the house, which bravely stood as a defiant island of red shingles in the midst of the coffee-colored torrent. Hissing propane tanks, huge logs, and tumbling chunks of homes and decks hurtled past, riding the main current. We had no hope inside the house. Miraculously, as I hobbled out to the porch to take my chances, sink or swim, our diminutive picnic table chose that moment to float by on the side leading to the driveway, and all we had to do was step on it to hold it down, where it immediately became an invisible bridge hidden under a few inches of raging brown foam. I hopped and scrambled across, slipped and hurt my leg some more, and gave up trying to use the crutches, but we all got to high ground and the emergency shelter at the school gym. As it turned out, the water went down quickly after that, and our house was mostly okay, but my knee was never the same after having to press it into slippery service.
Now, after months of hiking and exercise to get back in shape, my left leg was still weak and atrophied, and I flexed the knee muscles unconsciously whenever the discussion turned to challenging the 3,500 vertical feet of the Bear Lake trail with 50 pounds strapped to my back. It seemed like a good way to rehabilitate my “wheels” and get me back into tree climbing, rock hopping shape. This type of delusionary bravado was another symptom of being almost 21 and indestructible.
Chris, Greg, and I, being seasoned Bear Lake veterans by that time, magnanimously shared all our keen wilderness experience with Al and Joe, who were Greg’s age and fresh out of High School.
- “Watch the ounces, and the pounds will take care of themselves.”
- “Wear light boots so you can outrun the bears or climb a tree.”
- “Leave the beer at home – there are lighter, more potent substances to abuse.”
- “Bring your own tent. Dehydrated food makes you fart like a bull.”
- “Do not bring your girlfriend or we will kill you.”
The young woodsmen-to-be spat disdainfully on the sidewalk and scratched; unimpressed by tales of wonder and glory. They had just been released from teenage jail, and were ready to take on the world. What could be so hard about carrying some camping stuff up a trail?
After the usual arguing, over-planning, and preparation, we crammed into the Battlestar and launched into a northern trajectory on Highway 5. That epic relic was a singularly unattractive and indestructible 1979 Chevy Impala that could carry a marching band and all its instruments (including the mascot), so there was ample room for a bevy of broad-shouldered adventurers and their bulky backpacks. We were nearly dragging bottom when we got everything loaded, but the car only cost $350, so who cared? It barely got better gas mileage than a tank, but gas was cheap when split five ways. We made our usual stop at Maggie’s Drive-In in Williams, a delectable greasy spoon joint that served cheeseburgers as big as air filters and French fries soaked with enough crude oil to satisfy even the Battlestar’s insatiable thirst. It was a suitably messy and masculine feast that entertained hundreds of flies and decimated half the steers in the local slaughterhouse. Like confident gunslingers that just cleaned up a rowdy town, we swaggered back to the car through waves of heat rising up from the crumbling parking lot. In the summer, Williams – and all of Highway 5 – was as blistering hot as driving through a kiln in a wagon, and all we had was 4-60 air conditioning. (That’s four windows down, and 60 miles per hour.) Our soft-boiled eyeballs steamed in their sockets, and our shorts stuck to the seats like melted bubble gum.
The searing ball of death grudgingly dipped below the Alps as we approached our base camp to rest before making an all-out assault on the unsuspecting trail the next day. “I’ll be back,” our nearest star sneered disdainfully, as its last sliver of light sliced through the sagging pine needles. The feeble night lurked ineffectively around the narrow Trinity River valley. It remained stifling hot all night, and was still uncomfortably warm in the dusty, gray tones of dawn. The first day of October was going to be another brutally hot day… until we could climb above it.
Deploying well before the menace of the sunrise, we hit the trail like army ants on a mindless march. Determined grunts and guttural growls emanated from up and down our driven line, as we applied our lean muscle machines to the physics problem of leveraging over 250 pounds of gear up 3,200 feet. All too soon, clear shafts of sunlight blazed through openings in the canopy of the forest like laser beams focused through a sadistic child’s magnifying glass. We blew right past the old Forest Service bridge over Bear Creek without a hint of a rest, and the heat grew intense. Before we knew it, we had topped the dry southern arm of the ridge and were scraping through the grating manzanita bushes with our heads steaming as though they were soaked in burning napalm. It felt as if it was over a hundred degrees already, but it wasn’t even noon! Water seemed to have no effect on us at all – it was absorbed by the parched, cracked mud basins of our throats, and never made it to the stomach. We had to refill our bottles twice before we got to any remaining trickles of snow melt higher up the trail, which involved side treks of a hundred yards down to the blissfully chilled creek, and scrabbling back up the ridge to the trail. By the time we reached the second forest that was usually a cool respite, it too had heated up to an unusually high temperature. It felt as if our light boots were melting right off our feet, and all the water we had drunk was hotly squishing in our socks. Still, we sloshed and plodded on.
On the airless trail Al and Greg amused themselves with a long, drawn-out, and exceedingly cruel joke on Joe, a mild-mannered athlete with a careless grin. He made the rookie tenderfoot mistake of leaning on his pack during rest stops – never once taking it off – and not inspecting or adjusting his load. So, at every opportunity along the trail, one or another trickster would slip a fist-sized stone into the pockets and folds of his backpack as he trudged up the trail ahead of them. This had a decidedly cumulative effect on Joe’s ability to cope with gravity. By the time he found out, he was too weak to hurl the contraband rocks at the mocking perpetrators, who laughed hysterically (but safely out of range). He piled them sheepishly in a sad cairn by the side of the trail as a warning to others who might follow in his ignorance. Together, they must have weighed over twenty pounds.
By the time we had passed the 4,000-foot level, where the forest breaks up into intermittent flash mobs of overgrown ferns, the sun had reached a diabolically hostile angle. Now I was certain it was easily over 100 degrees in the sun. The glare forced our brave but foolish squadron of army ants to seek the deepest shaded pockets of forest where the big trees grew. There, beneath prickling pines and cedars croaking with the heat, we bivouacked in a most unsatisfying manner, and gnawed on beef jerky in exasperation. No words were exchanged – only bewildered glares from red-rimmed eyelids. Soon, our youthful impatience overcame our sensible precautions, and we nodded grimly and stepped back into the furnace. Al vomited on our resting spot, so there was no going back anyway.
The next stage of the trail involved brief but ineffectual slowdowns in the shady parts of the trail, followed by frantic forays through the stifling, sunburned meadows and blazing hearths of white-hot granite. And drinking water. Lots of water. Mass quantities of liquid were consumed by all; to no effect of noticeable hydration. As we closed in on 5,000 feet, shade was getting more and more scarce, but high clouds had rallied to partially veil the sun’s rays. We couldn’t say it was getting cloudy, but the sun was diminished somewhat – as though gleaming through frosted glass. This was fortuitous timing, because the next 1,200 feet would be gained only by crossing the exposed, crusted moonscape of white granite ledges that stepped sharply all the way up to Little Bear Lake. In full sun, it would have been as if our ant march had crossed a frying pan! We stopped at Big Bear Lake briefly for a drink, and lowered the water level by three inches before moving on up jumbled rock ledges too hot to grasp with bare hands, making our ascent all the more strenuous. The crimson, tormented muscle fibers in our calves stood out like knotted bandanas with every torturous step.
The moment our ragged band of desperados finally glimpsed Wee Bear, the agony of the trail gave way to the bliss of reward, and the jealous sun grudgingly conceded defeat. A cool breeze magically caressed our cracked faces and soothed the scarlet, spongy skin of our necks inflamed with heat rash, and the glory and magnitude of the landscape washed over us, as a plunge into a cold wave on a hot beach. Greg actually partook of that metaphor, continuing his marching steps like a deranged automaton right into the shallow end of Wee Bear, until he lost his balance and fell face first; pack and all. It was a dramatic but unnecessary display of relief. Al and Joe blinked delightedly at the sparkling water and shining granite walls in the manner of two children awakened to a gleaming pile of presents before the first Christmas light. The sensible ones in our party pried the clinging packs off their backs, peeled away their steaming trail clothes, and waded gingerly into the cool, emerald water. One could imagine hearing hisses and pops as our red and white fried-bacon skins hit the crystal-clear liquid. A salty slick of rainbow hues collected and swirled all over the surface, and baby trout nibbled curiously at our raw and peeling toes.
This is how the vigorous human adventurer communes with the wilderness: by spreading hunks of skin and sweat all over the scenery, marking his territory, and contributing fragrant molecules to the gumbo of organic matter. If there had been any unfortunate bears in the vicinity of the Bear Lakes that day, they would have retreated hastily in panicked revulsion from our malodorous man-stench. Even the baby trout were repulsed, and swam back into the safety of the cooler depths.
We humans like to call ourselves “the master of all animals,” but who is really superior? All animals except humans share the ability to live their entire lives without any additional “stuff.” We scoff at “simple” creatures like a dog or chipmunk, arrogantly hunt larger animals like birds and deer, and domesticate “livestock” as commodities to be used for our own purposes. But from the moment wild animals leave their parents, they live or die solely on their ability to wrest a livelihood from the natural world, and generally have all the equipment they need. Despite the many challenges of the wild, most animals manage to live very effectively. Man is so far removed from the natural world that he has created layers upon layers of artificial barriers and false support systems to compensate for it. Survival in the natural world is rarely a problem for our species due to our unique abilities to make things and bring them with us. We use them as a convenience to insulate us from the harsh outside world, but ironically, the very things we have made for better living are killing us instead.
As a result of reacting to and merging with their environment, animals have evolved complex apparatus that are so much a part of their bodies that their physical existence becomes a part of their surroundings. What has humankind evolved as an instrument to contribute to the great orchestra? We have opposable thumbs and oversized brains with which to manipulate our surroundings. As a result, we wind up thinking too much to be able to use our tools properly. The pinnacle of our evolution has become the ability to use those thumbs send text messages about how lost we are: “Where r u now?” Strip a man of everything that is not part of his body, set him down anywhere in the wilderness without tools or implements of any kind, and most would perish ignobly in a week or two. In marked contrast, nearly every other living thing on this planet is able to exist in its niche – in astonishing variety and vigor – without having to make anything artificial to sustain its existence. Humans are the only living things that must unravel themselves from the organic tapestry in order to survive. Our niche has become the local Starbucks, where we try vainly to connect to an artificial web.
Of course, most life consumes other life to sustain its own, and in this way all of us share a common provenance. Yet only man, with his insatiable desire to own and control, has deigned to separate himself from the unified matrix of life in an effort to “make a living.” From the lowliest microbe to the mightiest Sequoia, the majority of superior organisms on Earth don’t need to make a living; they are a living! So where does that leave us in the hierarchy of useful beings in the universe? Are we on the outside looking in? Do we have a material manifest destiny or a spiritual one? Or are we just the butt of some grand cosmic joke; the harlequins pompously over-acting on stage, foolishly unaware that the audience is laughing at us?
All man’s problems stem from his unnatural desire to separate himself from the sustaining natural world; to “master” his surroundings and hold dominion over all creation. The increasing trend of separation from the natural world is man’s fall from the Garden of Eden. All other animals can find a home there, but not us. We arrogantly declare, “We can do better than that!” and in some ways we have. In consequence for our audacity, however, we have banished ourselves from paradise, and disconnected from the only life support system available to us. We find ourselves having to build our own artificial “Tree of Knowledge” to replace the one from which we have turned away, and in so doing we are greedily consuming all the resources and spoiling the party like an inconsiderate guest.
~
As the sun passed its blazing apex and diminished in hostility, we wearily collected our sweaty belongings and dragged them the few hundred remaining yards up the trail from Wee Bear to Little Bear Lake. Greg’s soggy pack must have weighed over a hundred pounds, and he wound up carrying the pieces in several floppy loads like dirty laundry. Fortunately, in consideration of the potential social faux pas our unkempt arrival would have presented, we had the lake to ourselves. Surely, any tidy campers in their well-manicured campsites would have been appalled to see our ragtag band of filthy Neanderthals staggering half-naked and redolent into their postcard scenery. Birds fell silent, snakes slithered away in terror, and mother chipmunks hastened to bring their children back inside the safety of their dens. The ragged party crashers loitered stupidly around the edges of the best campsite, dazed and swaying with fatigue.
Food was needed first, so the compressed contents of five backpacks were rapidly extracted and dumped into a huge pile in the center of the camp. Eventually, by some ancient alchemy of self-preservation, a semblance of larder and domicile came out of that pile, and we ate out fill. With youthful energy restored, we crudely staked our claims on the crisp carpet of pine needles. Owing to our extreme contempt for the concepts of “comfort” and “shelter,” nobody had bothered to bring a tent… seeking instead to somehow merge with the wilderness. (The mosquitoes were the only ones who appreciated our sacrifice.) As the days wore on, our grungy “bedrooms” became rutted and foul with the ravages of habitation that only humans can inflict. One sleeping bag got so bad we had to weight it down with rocks to keep it from crawling away during the day when we weren’t looking! Eventually we all took a bath, and the wilderness was safe from contamination – for the time being.
“Observe a tree, how it first tends downwards, that it may then shoot forth upwards. It fastens its root low to the ground, that it may send forth its top toward heaven. Is it not from humility that it endeavors to rise? But without humility it will not attain to higher things. You are wanting to grow up into the air without a root. Such is not growth, but a collapse.”
— St. Augustine of Hippo