1973 (2) – By the Will of G.O.D.

The trailhead began off the Bear Creek Loop a few miles north of our campground, where Bear Creek flows into the Trinity River.  So it was get up, wash up, pack up, keep your chin up – jostle and rattle up the jarring dusty road, blast up the highway a few miles, and then crawl along another rocky dirt road to the trailhead.  It looked like we were in the middle of a deep forest, but we could still hear the logging trucks droning down the highway through the canyon.  Right next to where we parked, Bear Creek jumped and twisted between jumbled and rounded boulders of all shapes and colors, falling over itself in its haste to get to the river.  As it turned out, this was the same creek that flowed from the lake, and its rock tumbling energy was surely a sign of a steep trail ahead, but I was too inexperienced to make the connection then.  I learned later that the trail starts at 3,000 feet, and gains over 2,800 feet of altitude in less than 4 miles.

With that spurt of energy that always comes at the start of a new adventure, our carefully packed gear was surgically extracted from the top and rear of the bus.  We kids were so excited to get started!  Little did we realize what physical and mental torments laid ahead.  Mom fussily arranged Debbie’s trail clothes as if it was her first day of school.  Judy already had her pack on, and was exploring the nearby trees with Heidi on a leash.  I nervously tried to remember the proper way to stow my superfluous camping gear in the back of the bus.  G.O.D. projected a stern, judgmental authority while waiting impatiently, arms akimbo, as if he had second thoughts about creating us in his own image.

I was very innocent for my age, spending most of my time in reveries of imagination to avoid the critical Eye of my father.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was desperately yearning for affection from him.  My mom was so upset with him most of the time that she had little energy left for nurturing or sympathy, so I was left on my own to work things out most of the time.  I developed a distinct ability to be in two worlds at once: the dutiful son acting his role in the family theater, and playing the fool in fantastic realms of fancy that compensated for an undernourished reality.  There was little affection of any kind in our family.  We rarely touched each other, let alone embraced, and navigated our separate ways through a charade of domestic life as if we were embarrassed to be seen together.  Children need to feel like they matter, and we felt exactly the opposite.  I, for one, dreamed that I could just disappear one day, and my absence wouldn’t be noticed for weeks.  I had read the book and seen the movie My Side of the Mountain, and was ready to give it a try.

Without further ceremony, we started up the trail with Good Ol’ Dad striding in the lead (naturally), sporting all the smartest rip-stop nylon backpacking paraphernalia that he had spent weeks researching and accumulating.  He was followed in sullen procession by Judy, with her pseudo-hippie clothing matching her strangely orange Girl Scout backpack.  Next was I, with my hopelessly outdated canvas Boy Scout pack that must have been a relic of the First World War.  The cheap fiberglass fishing pole and reel for which I had saved my allowance was lashed to my pack with bungee cords.  I couldn’t wait to try them on something more substantial than the skinny trout minnows that darted in the shadows of the creeks near our house.  I was suitably adorned with an assortment of clanking boy stuff clipped to my pack, or hanging from a surplus army belt doubled up on my skinny hips.  Mom calmly packed a pretty red borrowed pack and brought up the rear protectively with Debbie, who was already sniffling at having to carry a stringy little school knapsack.  What, exactly, all this equipment was intended for on a one-day trip I have no idea today – it must have been a formal dress rehearsal for a real backpacking trip, just as new Army recruits are browbeaten into all-day marches with ridiculously heavy packs to prepare for a possible battle.

G.O.D. enforced a brisk, challenging pace at first, while the rest of us struggled to acclimate ourselves to the unfamiliar burdens, altitude, and terrain.  The trail began as just a scar through the hillsides where spring runoff flowed, exposing every round, tumbling rock in the Trinity Alps.  After a hundred yards or so, I got used to the lurching, stumbling routine, and began to notice the passing scenery.

The first half mile of the trail scrambled up through scrub oak and pine – steep, rocky & hot.  Horseflies and other annoying bugs dive-bombed our formerly spirited procession, and our pace and attitudes began to flag.  G.O.D. had to stop and exhort us onward more and more often, until he got that edge in his voice that demanded obedience.  It was tough going for a suburban family that was used to washing the patio windows or cleaning the pool.  The trail often skirted a fallen log, or broke into crumbling rock underfoot, which would have made progress difficult for a squadron of brave soldiers, much less this disappointing, ragamuffin outfit of underachieving progeny.  Thick, heat-burnished Jeffrey pines loomed here and there at this stage, with Sugar and Ponderosa pine stationed at regular intervals.  “Watch out for rattlesnakes” were just about the only four words I remembered from the many hundreds of admonitions and field orders issued that day.  I fingered the new, red rubber snake bite kit in my hanging pocket for security, and wondered luridly who would have to suck out the poison if one of us were bitten.

After a brisk and brutal incline, I found Good Ol’ Dad and grumpy Judy waiting at a decrepit old Forest Service bridge across a clamoring stretch of Bear Creek.  From now on, we would be steadily ascending a shoulder of the ridge on the north side of this creek, making our westward foray into the northeastern corner of the Trinity Wilderness.  We had carelessly stretched out our file, so that it took Mom and Debbie a good 10 or 15 minutes to catch up.  As soon as they arrived the break was declared over, and G.O.D. abruptly ascended the intimidating switchbacks that scaled the toes of the mountains.  Mom angrily watched him zigzag back and forth, abandoning us to our own devices, while we kids waited for her to decide what to do.  March onward; ever upward with the mad general?  Or turn and go back to river and play all day?  To our profound disappointment at the time, but to my lifetime benefit, she chose to stick with this new experience, and see what it had to offer.  If I had never seen Big Bear Lake, my life would surely not have been the same.

So we reloaded our unfamiliar burdens on the chilled backs of our soaked t-shirts, and soldiered up one of the hardest parts of the trail.  At first it was muddy from the springs flowing into the creek.  Then it abruptly changed to a steep, parched, and dusty charcoal landscape of toasted black oaks and switchbacks, with no relief in the shade, and stinging needles of heat slanting through the sparse, brittle leaves.  This arid scrub forest was strangely attractive despite its inhospitable climate, with clumps of parched manzanita scattered among rounded boulders adorned with musty, mismatched moss that looked like bad toupees.  The gnarled trunks of the oak trees staked out an upward slalom course against gravity, with the trail seeming to drag itself reluctantly through the rocky ground.  As we approached the crest of the ridge and saw blue sky, we became hopeful of a quick end to the march, but there was G.O.D. himself, waiting derisively with his arms folded, as if he’d already been to the lake three times and had come back just to mock our ineptitude. “Let’s go, it’s still a long way,” was not what any of us wanted to hear.

Now we were marching closer together, and beginning to display a noticeable loss of enthusiasm.  The trail thankfully became more level, rolling up and over ridges, around boulders, and disappearing beneath scratchy manzanita bushes under the blazing sun, so that we couldn’t see where our feet were falling.  This stumbling, scrabbling parade of gaily colored nylon and sweaty, grumbling siblings continued in a strung-out line like the marching dwarves in Snow White, but without the happy whistling.  Here and there through openings in the surrounding trees came the rushing sounds of the small but persistent creek, sounding farther away with each turn of the trail.  The merciless manzanita claws tore at socks and gouged exposed shins, and the resigned whimpering from the back of the line turned into piteous protest.  Just when I’d begun to think the worst was over, there would be another ragged stretch of trail clambering up a dry stream bed.  We became mindless with primal resolve like desperate, dusty salmon struggling upward, ever upward against a current of stone to spawn and die.  Surprisingly, Good Ol’ Dad was more receptive to the needs of the troops than usual.  We rested often at this stage, and drank cold stream water (suitably disinfected with acrid chlorine tablets) from our brand new aluminum canteens.

Gradually, I began to notice the scenery unfolding around me.  Like a photograph developing in its chemical bath, the trail began to take on a captivating beauty.  We were toiling hard, like worker bees serving the hive of the mountain, and it began to show us some of the honey our labors had purchased.  The scrubby bushes gave way to gentler foliage, which still choked the trail but parted gently at our passing.  The trail lost its look of a grimy, dusty, burnt-out moonscape, and the rocks and soil felt firm underfoot for a change.  A welcome breeze danced among the multi-green boughs of larger pines, and the trail became flat, wide, and inviting.  My research had found a description of this trail making its way through one of the most diverse coniferous forests in the temperate zones of North America, which was a scientifically annoying way to say it was very pretty.

There was a lot more water up here.  In many places, uncertain little threads of snow melt crossed the trail, weaving their way down to Bear Creek.  From the unseen cracks and crevices in these craggy mountains, discreet trickles of water filtered down the mountainside, gathering into rivulets, streams, and rivers on their way to evaporation; or perhaps the ocean.  It was somehow comforting to know that there was water, and life, and beauty up here, after the punishing desolation of the first part of the trail.  Sometimes the snow-melt washes would be modest and dry, and other times they showed signs of turbulent violence, with wide breaches in the trail and tangled sticks and boulders, and just a bit of water still chuckling somewhere beneath the stunned debris.  In these damp but sunny areas we were treated to wild iris, tiger lilies, pitcher plants, and a host of other wildflowers jostling for the choice spots in the sun near water.  Bumblebees as big as hummingbirds would land ponderously on a blossom and cling tightly as their weight bowed the stem, and we prudently waited for them to buzz off and let the flower spring back into place before passing.

We were only about 4,000 feet up, but I was working harder than I ever had at sea level, where the most strenuous chore was digging weeds.  I walked up and down hills to and from school nearly every day, but this was by far the greatest elevation change I had ever hiked.  During a rest stop, I gazed in a childlike, worn-out stupor at a perfect tiger lily in the sun.  Gradually, she pulled me in to her world of beauty, where attraction was the force that bound the universe together.  The numbness of fatigue enveloping my body lent a novel agility to my mind.  As my brain began to recover from oxygen starvation, my exhaustion turned to enchantment and my legs were invigorated.   “I bid thee farewell, fairest Lady of the Meadow,” I bowed mentally as we resumed our ascent, “Thy beauty has inspired me to greater heights.”  Under the critical eye of G.O.D., I made a great show of shouldering my pack and lifting my knees smartly in mock salute.

Here and there we started to see alpine ferns unfurling their fiddle heads in the shaded places, and the trees and undergrowth took on a wilder, cleaner character, as if we were strolling through the garden of the mountain gods.  Always there would be another stretch of tortuous rocks, switchbacks, and rapid scrambling, after which we felt the wasting effects of dwindling oxygen.  We had probably gained 1,500 feet in altitude by now, and Debbie, being the youngest, was the most adversely affected.  At times it seemed Mom was carrying her or lifting her up, step by step through the rough spots and letting her lean on the back of her pack in the easier stretches.  “We need to rest!” became the plaintive, more frequent cry.  “Can we stop now?” we whined at the silent, taunting nylon backpack and knotted calves leading us onward, ever onward against our wills.  Steeper and steeper, the trail scaled up the side of the ridge parallel to Bear Creek, seeking the level spots whenever possible, but always, always going up.  Southward, across the creek far below, we could now see the parallel ridge, which seemed to our jealous eyes to be an easier route up the valley.  Sharp, chunky rocks and crags now crested the tops of the ridges to the north.  When we glimpsed them through the trees, the perspective made them seem to tilt crazily, inaccessibly high, like skyscrapers.

At this point, higher up the mountain where more snow accumulated in winter, the washes that crossed the trail were explosively dramatic.  Full sized tree trunks were flung carelessly like pickup sticks among stark icebergs of white boulders that had tumbled before the titanic force of the water.  Sometimes the boulders were as big as appliances or cars, and it must have taken quite a wash or avalanche to scatter them about so!  As if to compensate for this chaos, the gentle parts of the trail that passed through forest glades became achingly beautiful, with perfectly straight tree trunks, landscaped boulders and moss, and cool green leaves of the undergrowth shimmering daintily; floating on thin stems a foot or two above the forest floor.  At times, the trail meandered magically in moss- and fern-lined furrows of deep, rich-looking soil on a lush carpet of pine needles.  These lovely dells were separated here and there by riotously overgrown alpine meadows, with ferns and willows towering over our packs.  Here, our ascent was serenaded by the incessant drone of bumblebees (who, as it turned out, didn’t mind our passing), and decorated by bright confetti butterflies, along with more of the jostling, glamorous flowers that primped and preened in the sunny spots with the vanity of Hollywood starlets.

All around were staggering, dramatic views.  The gaps between the trees revealed the sharpest, highest, most impossibly tilted saw tooth crags yet.  Smooth, green swaths of brush swept up the low spots and thinned out near the tops of the crags, which were approaching timberline in height.  The blades of the peaks knifed the deep azure sky, their edges angling sharply downward and dissolving in a jumble of massive granite escarpments, broken ridges, and here and there the borders of the green brush.  It was a magnificent eruption of grandeur, and the peaks looked so cool and distant, but were less than a mile away by the flight of a bird.  The surrounding landscape became more open, the trees farther apart, and the boulders around the trail larger.  G.O.D. and Judy forged ahead, leaving the rest of us behind, feeling like insignificant specks in what seemed for the first time to be a vast wilderness.  The threadlike trail was our only connection to civilization, and it seemed so tenuous and delicate, like it might break at any time, leaving us drifting off into the void like untethered astronauts.

At this point we picked our way through a wide avalanche wash.  It was so big that it swallowed the insignificant trail, which meandered meekly through the huge boulders and massive tree trunks, trying in vain to keep its hard-earned elevation.  At the opposite side of the convoluted wash, the dugout banks and hanging undergrowth presented a daunting challenge to the oxygen-starved troops.  With leaden legs that responded reluctantly to our will, we half climbed, half wriggled up and across to rest.  Like a vision from a postcard, a huge Jeffrey pine stood as a lone witness to the destruction that had sideswiped its bluff, and extended a friendly, thick root that resembled a park bench for tired hikers.  The view had completely opened up now, with Mt. Shasta visible for the first time to the east, distant and brooding with a ponderous crown of introspective clouds.  All around were beginnings and endings of gray and white stone, blue sky, and green foliage.  At the head of this broad valley and up another steep part of the stupid trail, the cirque containing Big Bear Lake was still not visible!  Are you kidding me?!  A palpable sense of disappointment and resignation overwhelmed Mom, Debbie, and I, as we wondered where G.O.D. and Judy had gone.  This seemed like such a natural waiting spot – perhaps they had already grown impatient and moved on.

I was torn between staying protectively with my Mom and little sister, and moving on to catch up with the others.  I didn’t want to miss out on the reward for all this work!  At this point I would have settled for a long-distance view of the lake, which had now taken on mythic proportions in my head.  Mom had a grim, stubborn root-hog-or-die look on her face, and poor Debbie appeared crumpled and empty like a heap of laundry in a hamper.  We waited maybe 15 minutes, and Mom kept saying, “I’m not going one step further.”  Things didn’t look good.  Just then, Judy came back lightly to our spot like a hovering fairy; seemingly weightless from having shed her pack somewhere up ahead.

“Did you find the lake?” I asked hopefully.

“No, Dad sent me back to see where you guys were.”  I could tell from the tone of her voice that she wasn’t happy about having to backtrack on the trail.  She often sounded unhappy, as though speaking to other members of her family was a form of punishment.  “Come on, it looks close,” she said without conviction, peering down uncertainly at the desolate, hostile looks on our upturned faces.

“We’re staying right here,” Mom said resolutely, her eyes sparking with challenge.  “Tell your father he can find us on the way back.”  She looked at me, and sensing my ambivalence, added kindly, “You can go if you want.  We’ll be fine here.”

Before she could change her mind, I shouldered my abominable pack and followed Judy as she disappeared between the boulders and brush.  I got one last look back before being swallowed by more bushes.  Mom was settling Debbie more comfortably for a long wait in the shade, and they looked helpless and out of place, like colored mites trapped inside a magnificent landscape painting.  Forever after, in the annals of the dubious adventures of our family, that lone Jeffrey Pine with the accommodating roots would be known unfairly as “the Quitting Tree.”