Our house is directly behind a large Baptist church, the kind that eventually spawn food courts and become more like God malls than houses of worship, and evidently Monday is "Hour-long Splitting Howl Practice" for infants. The experience of sitting in my backyard with a cup of tea and a New Yorker, trying to be all urbane and up on politics, was so thoroughly hijacked just now that I felt like I had no choice but to come in and waste some bandwith on it. I mean, I recognize that they're babies and lack perspective, but what could possibly be so awful that you have to scream continually about it for-- and I'm not exaggerating-- one hour? And as a baby's caretaker, what level of catatonia have you reached that you can stand that? Is something wrong? Or is this just further proof that I am in no way ready to be a parent and won't be for at least another decade?
OK, done. On to the real thing.
This weekend, Pants and I went to Yosemite and it was every bit the living-in-a-screensaver experience I had imagined.
This was the view directly outside of a huge, amber-lit tunnel that plows through a mountain side as you head down into Yosemite Valley. As soon as the tunnel ends, people regularly slam on their brakes and yell expletives in their respective languages at the shock of the view, so there is a nice big parking lot to veer into while you do this.
We met a nice lady there with a golden retreiver. Both she and the dog wore big poofy pantaloons-- hers were Patagonia, the dog's natural-- and we took this as a good sign that dog-friendly fun would ensue. Sadly, this was not the case. Yosemite hates dogs, and for Pants and I, whose devotion to Abby I suspect is the source of many jokes behind our backs, the weekend brought on a moral crisis.
"Aren't dogs allowed on any of the trails?" I asked of one leather-tanned, blissed out female rangers. Wide-eyed and semi-offended, she answered, "Certainly not. They're predators!" "Even if they're on a leash? The website seemed to say they were..." "Forget it. We do have kennels though, if you walk to the horse stables."
I took our leashed predator (who gives high-fives and plays dead) to the kennels only to learn that they didn't open for another two weeks. After much grim-faced charging through crowded parking lots we finally realized our options were to either go back home or leave Abby in the camper part of the truck bed. We felt like the world's biggest assholes and Abby seconded that notion by barking forlornly at our retreating backs.
The first day, we did a 7-mile hike in to see the grove of giant sequoias. The trees themselves were humbling and hard to imagine. When you look at something 800 years old and think back to what the state of Western medicine was at the time this tree was young ("we'll just have to bleeeeed you a little!"), you really start to feel like just another fruit fly whining in the margins.
My favorite things about the sequoias were their bases. They have a way of splitting up the sides, whether from the heat of forest fires or just some condition of growth like the tree version of stretch marks, and the effect is of a small darkened stage flanked by scrolling wooden curtains.
We started out in late afternoon and saw very few people on the hike, which made the view from the top that much more religious for its solitude.
On the second day we hiked to the top of Nevada Falls, which was like having someone take an acid-soaked sledgehammer to my quads and calves but at the same time showing me views so beautiful that I was grateful for the pain. The trail to Nevada Falls stops off first at Vernal Falls, and is called the Mist Trail because you get soaked in rainbow-making waterfall spray almost the whole way up. It's a popular trail and whole Indian families, even the grumbling ancient matriarchs in saris and Keds make the trip.
After Vernal Falls, the crowd thins significantly and the percentage of brand name outdoor gear peaks sharply. Clearly, these are the Serious Hikers, the chosen few who will feast lustily on the far more exclusive views, made all the more impressive by the lasting tendon damage incurred to get there. At least, that's the vibe I picked up on as I wheezed and grunted my way to the top. At one particularly hairy switchback we encountered an older couple, the wife crumpled off the side of the rocky trail, her head on her crossed arms, her braced knee askew, panting in a state of near-total surrender. Her ropy husband stood above her, higher in the switchback with his hands planted on his hips, saying tightly, "Just a little bit longer, Nora." Maybe it was just me reading way too much into snippets of strangers' lives once again, but I felt like kneeing the guy in the nuts.
At the top of Nevada Falls, we soaked our feet in the clear green water and then laid out on a flat, moon-like expanse of granite for a short nap that got longer in ten-minute increments each time Pants' watch alarm beeped. There was no discussion about this, and after three extensions we both sat up refreshed. Getting to the top of a mountain is a great thing, but napping for the perfect amount of time once you're there is on a separate, higher plane.
And can I just rhapsodize about descents for a moment? There's nothing like the semi-controlled spastic ragdoll gait of a descent whose ascent nearly made you doubt your faith in God. It's almost a dance, a giddy, knee-destroying dance, that takes about of quarter of the time of the ascent, and for this one it was not uncommon to see people flat out running it in the safer places, their arms flapping in all directions and their feet slapping the rocky trail. Occasionally some mom would bark at her kid to slow down so he wouldn't hit a gravel patch and roll like a bowling ball all the way down, but then another adult would crash by doing exactly that and apparently loving it.
The whole trip was a much needed break from real life, and Pants took on his traditional role of fire wizard and camp gourmet, conjuring impossible luxuries from the bare earth and a few handily packed, collapsible gadgets from REI. Easily the best combination was our Saturday night meal, which came on the heels of the grueling falls hike: jambalaya with spicy sausage, Jack Daniels and coke, and then later, s'mores. I slept like a rock, like the dead, like a log, like a baby: a dead baby fashioned from petrified wood. I slept under a blazing blanket of stars next to a glass-clear river, and woke up feeling that even though I'd been rolled through a pasta press, I was clean and new and totally relaxed. . .
which is handy, since we've agreed that the home coffers are dangerously low and I need to find work. So much for my experimental hausfrau stage. Subsequent blog posts are likely to be heavy on the resume-related angst. Be forewarned.
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