Summer Hike - Part 1

At the end of the paved road, we stop the car and notice the sound of everything else in the world that the car's roar was drowning out.  And some unseen part of the hot part of the engine is ticking.  It feels like molecules are settling into a different order when you stop driving.

We shuffle around inside the car, prepare to stand up on our stiff legs and take stock of the area.

We've been driving for hours, stopping to use rest stops and stretch, find water to drink.  It's been a long haul, but we're there -- here now -- at long last.

Moving across pavement in a car doing 80 is no way to know a landscape really; it's the way to get through it, to the other side of it, without it touching you.  Now that we're standing on dry ground in the open air with no one around, our senses are awakening.  Nose is telling us about dry grass, hot pitch on pine bark, melting tar patches on the road.  Eyes are telling us about midday sun bleaching color out of everything, asking for dark glasses.  Ears are telling us about Stellar jays, cicadas and grasshoppers whose dry legs' rubbing is rhythmic, a strange harsh soothing zshinn, zshinn, zshinnn.

The trunk is opened up and we grunt into our backpacks, lace our boots on and check for other gear.  Not much needs to be said.  It's a transition time when bodies and minds are preparing for the next task:  Hiking, living outdoors, relying on our wits instead of electronic gadgetry and manufactured sounds.  We find ourselves taking deep breaths and checking internal sensations for readiness.  Then we both feel the little adrenaline buzz of excitement, happy to be embarking on a journey, literally leaving the usual road behind.  We lock up the car and give it a grateful pat on the hood as we walk past it.

"Let's go!"

It's hot and dry in the Sierra pines.  We walk through a small gate with our backpacks clanking and rattling until we adjust them, cinching down straps and rearranging gear.  Dust puffs up around our ankles with each step, a soft mouse gray, fine as a lady's face powder.  Our boots, socks and legs are like chameleons, turning the same color as the dust and trailside plants and we blend in as if invisible from the knees down.

I have a bandanna around my neck that I've soaked in water, and it's feeling like a cool kiss on my neck; I like it very much.  My legs are settling into the natural movement of walking.  Energy is flowing in them and my whole body is up and running.  I imagine an inner hum.

We are bound for a river, setting out into wilderness, loose in the world of nature where our hearts can be light and life is lived simply.  I am not much for hiking up high with legs that more enjoy long flat stretches, but I appreciate the rewards of a long effort of climbing if I must do it.  A ridgetop will have to be crossed before we can begin our descent to the river valley where we can camp.  In my fresh optimism and good mood, it all seems easy and satisfying.

Five miles to the ridgetop.  Five miles through sun-dappled glens, winding stretches of old fire road, out into open meadows rustling with breeze-blown oat grass and foxtails.  Like much of California, the area has been ranched and fenced for 150 years or more.  We see old faded signs posted on tree trunks, dry termite-riddled posts undermined through the years by flash floods and erosion; they look more like exclamation points than fenceposts with barbed wire nailed to them in three places - top, midway and bottom.  They are coated in the same mouse brown dust we are.

It's very dry this year, the third year of drought.  This trail is mostly shaded and relatively cool, but it's evident plants are stressed by the lack of water.