Foot of Pride
We stumbled into the forest at sunset the night before, terribly exhausted, and desperate for a couple hours of sleep. We needed sleep, we’d been awake for close to 32 hours - but who's counting? And, as is always the case on our big hiking trips, we had a big climb the next day, 6,000ft of elevation to gain in the first 8 miles, to be exact - but again, who’s counting?
Contrary to what you may think, a place to sleep that is both flat and in accordance with Leave No Trace principles is not always easy to find in the wilderness; especially in the eastern Sierra. The last thing anyone wants is to wake up rolling down a mountainside. Eventually though, after a tireless search, we found a small slab of granite to call home for a couple of hours. The sharp edged flat piece of granite must have fallen long ago from the rocky mountain top that towered above us. Erosion and time must have popped it off like a tin can, sending this mammoth piece of rock sailing like a rocket through the to open air, before it hammered down through the tree line below it; clearing a hole in the thick green canopy before smacking into the forest floor, wedging itself into the deep brown dirt, becoming the single flat spot for miles on an otherwise step forested slope.
I’ve heard and seen many rockfalls over the years, I know exactly what kind of horrifying and mystifying feats these mountains are capable of.
We slipped off our heavy packs and let the weight of them hit the ground, another kind of heft falling to the earth; then we crawled onto our giant size granite mattress and like the two zombies we were, we sealed our eyes shut, and let our consciousness drift off into another realm, to the far off place it goes when it is too tired to be bothered with dreams.
My eyelids tickle and twitch before they part and open into narrow slits. The view of the world pours into me like water into a cupped palm. It’s dark, almost black. My eyes move in and out of focus. The circle of shadowy tree tops around me, morph from dark green blobs to crisp limbs of redwood trees, arms akimbo, reaching out, holding hands, embracing each other. I open my eyes a little wider, letting the blackness of sleep give way to the midnight blue sky above me. I look up through the clearing in the trees and watch the colors of the brightest stars, blue, red, green, and yellow, look down like a million blinking eyes; winking through eternity.
I am awake.
This is not a dream.
I remind myself, as I’ve done the first morning of every single trip in the eastern Sierra.
Beyond the lace like branches I find the milky way streaking through the silky night sky. Milky pinks and purples lingering in plain sight. It looks like magic, like soft billowy strokes of a paintbrush that somehow don’t need a canvas. I remain utterly still and quiet, frozen in time, and marvel at the breathtaking beauty of nature. The darkened shadowy world around me, the vibrant milky streaks of color, the blinking brightness echoing through the star filled universe; the sight of it unleashes the dark, shadowy, bright and star filled universe within me.
How lucky I am to be even a fraction of a piece of such beauty.
All the acceptance and understanding we seek and need is right here, above our head and below our feet; in the stars and in the soil. We need only notice it to feel it. Without a single request, without a single word, we are accepted, known, understood, and trusted.
I hear a faint noise. It sounds both distant and very close. I shift my body and realize the sound is coming from beneath me, and instantly realize the sound is my alarm. My right forearm is wedged under my bundled up down jacket, which together work as my makeshift pillow. I pull my arm free, and the alarm rings into an otherwise silent night. It’s 3:30am.The early bird gets the worm as they say; or in our case, the early riser crushes the most miles. He would be happy we were up this early, Geoff I mean, he would be happy.
I turn off the alarm, restoring nature to her peacefulness. I take a long deep breath, slowly letting the warm mountain air fill my lungs; then I pucker my lips like a kiss and exhale the breath out in a slow smooth stream.
Here we go, I think to myself.
I whisper to Zack it’s time to get up, and he grabs our headlamps from beside his sleeping bag, then tosses me mine in one smooth movement. We slip them over our heads, and soon pools of red light are streaming from our foreheads into the shadowy pockets of the night. In silence, with the stillness of the night sky as our witness, we begin the process of packing up, a morning ritual that feels as second natured as walking or breathing. We each pull free the valve of our sleeping pads, and the air rushes out in a long hissing exhale. It’s sweltering hot, unnaturally hot, even in this pre dawn morning air. We change into our hiking clothes, and make short work of rolling our deflated sleeping pads small and tight. We each stuff our respective sleeping bags back into their compression sacks.
We move in a silent rhythm.
I French braid my hair into two long braids as I wait for water to boil in our jetboil. Zack sprinkles two packets of instant coffee crystals into the water once it’s hot.
Then we each return to packing our backpacks; which, for the first couple days of a trip, always feels a like little playing with a Rubik’s cube. It’s possible for it all to fit, you know it’s possible; but it takes brainpower and trickery and magic and willpower to do it.
And a little elbow grease while you’re at it.
10 days of food, a set of base layers, a rain jacket, two pairs of socks, two pairs of underwear, camp shoes, puffy jacket, sleeping bag, sleeping pad, jet boil, extra fuel, sleeping tarp, a Leatherman, toilet paper and trowel, maps and beta, two one liter water bottles, a gravity water filter, an extra camera battery, an extra camera lens, and sunscreen - lots and lots of sunscreen.
I put all of my weight into stuffing the last piece of gear into the top of my pack. As I cinch the top closed, a bead of sweat drips down from the elastic band of my headlamp and streams into my right eye.
We pass the jetboil back and forth between us, drinking the coffee down sip for sip until it’s empty. It tastes like it should; mild in flavor, a little watered down, and 100% instant.
I look at my watch once again. It’s 4:30am. The sky is still dark, and the trees remain a mess of shadows, save for the light of our red luminous headlamps. I pull out my trekking poles and run my hands along the cold metal, carefully adjusting them to my height. These poles have been my faithful and trusted companion across at least a thousand mountain miles, probably more. The metal tips are bent from countless granite passes, the cork handles are disintegrating, and the upper section of the poles are covered in scratches and dings. They look like I’ve been using them for sword fighting rather than walking. Before every trip Zack tries to convince me to trade them in for a new pair; but it's a fruitless labor on his part, and he knows it. I’ll walk these poles into the ground. I’ll walk with them in my hands until they shatter into a million pieces and disintegrate into the wind. After the years of support and care they’ve provided me with, in good times and bad, holding them through to the end of their inanimate lifespan seems the least I can do for them in return.
Not a bad start time, Zack says after he glances at his watch. And it’s only the second time either of us has spoken a word.
The only thing left is to put on our backs.
He throws his on easily enough, but I know it’s crushingly heavy.
With a big inhalation I firmly grip the armbands of my pack, and on the exhalation I let out a feral sounding grunt as I lift my heavy pack off the ground. I quickly pull it to my bent right knee, and balance it there for leverage; then I take another big inhalation and with the power of another grunting exhalation I pull it up to my torso and swing it haphazardly onto my back.
There we are, our backpacks like two overstuffed tortoise shells, clutching a trekking pole in each one of our hands.
We silently gaze at each other; then we look back to the big granite slab. And for the whisper of a moment I feel as though I am straddling two worlds; the world of who I am and the world of who I’m going to be; the world of beginning and world of ending; the real and the dream; life and death. There seems to be some great wisdom or life lesson hanging in the air, protected by the profusion of redwoods, billowing in milking pinks and purples, waiting to be found and learned and held and known. I feel the urge to say a small silent prayer, a whisper of a blessing to the present, to the past, to the world, to myself; for Geoff.
Then we turn forward, towards the mountains; and we step into the dark valley that stands between us and the top.
