2017 (3) – Focus on the Little Things

Once I laid down, there was no way my legs would allow me to leave the tent.  I was too tired, and social time would have to wait.  I slept okay, but had to raise myself up on my knees three different times to go pee in the sturdy plastic latrine bag I brought.  In the dull light of morning, I unzipped my tent and checked the sky to see if the smoke had all blown away, but it was still dead gray to the east and fuzzy to the west.  Nuts.  This seriously compromised the three top attractions at the Bear Lakes: scenery, fresh air, and stargazing.  I briefly considered going back down the trail to join the masses headed north to watch the total eclipse.  Still, I remained convinced that the roads would be jammed, and had no desire to spend any part of my vacation sitting in traffic!  So, I’d need to find a way to have a good time right where I was; under any circumstances.  I decided to explore a wider range of territory than last year, since my knees felt surprisingly good.  Go small… it was a great opportunity to notice the little things: close-up details of all the vegetation, insects, and wee creatures.  If I couldn’t see the outer scenery, I could focus on the inner landscape.

First, I courteously ambled over and met my new neighbors.  They seemed like really nice folks, and their most endearing attribute was that they would be leaving tomorrow!  Most of them were from the Bay Area, and one guy actually worked in Novato.  They said they belonged to an Internet group on meetup.com called “Bay Area Boomer Backpackers.”  They get together online to go on trips to various lakes, mostly in the Trinity Alps.  With them leaving the next day, I had a good chance of being all alone to watch an eclipse of the sun from the Altar!  The smoke couldn’t block that out!  By 9:00 am – the scheduled time of the eclipse – I deduced that the sun would be well above the forested pyramid of Cheops and the pharaohs of Sphinx Rock.  I wondered: how many times have those noble kings have witnessed an eclipse over the millennia?

Before exploring, I had to fix my only water bottle.  Its cheap plastic tip had broken off on a rock, and the entire cap was useless.  I needed a cork… I searched around my campsite until I found a short plug from a branch that was exactly the diameter I needed.  I stuck it in the top of the bottle, and the water made it swell up until it sealed almost perfectly!  I had found the perfect stopper, just lying on the ground, courtesy of Mother Nature.  It’s amazing how one gets a thrill from the smallest successes in the wilderness.  Back home it takes a miracle achievement or sports championship to gain any attention, but here I was, feeling proud about a stick.

I checked the cave at Baggins End, and it was undisturbed since Dave, Jen, and I had left it over a year ago.  That supernatural rock formation is timeless, as if it has existed in its improbable state of interior decoration since prehistoric times.  The memory of it stays with me all year, and sometimes appears in my dreams.  I wondered if early prospectors might have used it for shelter, as this was gold country, too.  Then I rambled over yonder into the still, bowl-shaped forest of Lothlórien, and explored the steep upper slopes of the rim to try and discover things I hadn’t seen before.  The new vistas I came upon would have made for some spectacular photos, but the smoke obscured most of the background and sucked the depth out of the images.  I had to see the essence of it all with my mind’s eye, in a mental process similar to an Impressionist painter.  My new trekking poles were proving to be especially helpful on the slippery pine needles, and gave me access to many places my knees would not have been able to visit on their own.

By the time I wrote this in my notebook, I was lounging in the Elf Throne over at Bumblebee Springs.  I could hear the other group of people swimming and talking across the lake, and it spoiled the peak auditory experience of being at a silent mountain lake.  I munched on a cup of granola for my lunch, and tried to enjoy the micro-scenery that thrived amidst this magical seepage.  The seep from the great rock above nourished the life below, in an opulence of moss, ferns, and assorted plants.  Even if the mountains weren’t visible on the distant horizons, I could still take close-up pictures of what was right in front of me!  It was late for blossoms, but there remained many flowers at the springs.  I rose to stretch my legs and decided to ascend to the upper springs, but first I fluffed up the plants and ferns where I had been sitting to make it appear as if no one had been there.  With my poles, it was easy to navigate around the springs on just the rocks and logs, to avoid stepping on the fragile mosses.  The upper springs were larger, and offered more shade from the bulk of what I called “Keystone Rock” due to its distinctive shape.  Down at the base of its sheer face, a flash mob of ferns and blossoms had broken out.  I took more close-ups, and reveled in the delight of a universe that had the absurdity to create flowers.  God laughs in blooming things.  Everywhere I looked, the blossoms winked their colors and beckoned alluringly, and the bumbling bees obliged in devotional duty.  The ferns, grasses, and flowering plants were clustered in the cracks from which the snowmelt seeped, the way an old man’s whiskers invade his ears.  The marshmallow boulders all around me were toasting in the hot, smoky sunlight, but it was cool and delicious in the deep shade of the Elf Throne.  Even with the filtering effect of the haze it was still an exceedingly hot day.  Every smoke particle was a death trap for photons, and not all the light made it through.  But the heat penetrated, and the thick smoke held it down like a lid.  The walls around the lake appeared singed around the edges, and faded like an old sepia photograph, while Sawtooth was barely visible behind the top of Dis Butte.

I was out of water, but didn’t bring my water filter.  Giardia was increasingly a problem in the wilderness – due to the frequency with which it is visited by animals that produce a lot of shit, like bears and humans.  I tried to imagine the acrobatic positions a bruin would have to accomplish in order to defecate upstream from where I now sat at the base of a cliff.  It was time to head back to camp and make coffee, then do a little housekeeping and pump some more hydration.  Stepping out of the shade felt like walking into a smoke-filled bar with no air conditioning.  I found I was sweating by the time I traversed the two hundred yards of shoreline back to camp, and had to seek shade deep in the woods.  As I clackity-clacked another gallon of water, I calculated that I drank more than a gallon a day up here, while at home I got by with barely a quart or two.  But I peed hardly at all during the day, which was annoying because it all came out at night, when I was already in my sleeping bag.  There’s an adrenaline reaction to having one’s skin exposed to harsh conditions that triggers the body to conserve fluids.  Once protected in the comfort of a sleeping bag, the kidneys resume normal function.