Summer Hike - Part 3

With Vivie taking the trail by storm up ahead, even in the wilting heat, Bonnie and I have our bar set high.  We both push ourselves harder because Vivie does that to us.  For her, moving is something you do quickly and without hesitation.  She checks back on us with quick glances, eyes that assess and gauge our pace and movements.  She's like having a trail dog with us but one with a quick mind and wit.

Vivie reaches the crest of the ridge and whoops down to us, gives a big window-washer wave with both hands above her head.  She's five feet tall and carries a 30 lb pack that seems just as big as she is.  We're both taller and also carry about 30 lb.  I'm already looking forward to taking it off at the crest, letting my back dry off again.  I sweat heroically under any hint of strain or even modest heat.  Today, midday at the height of summer, the sweat is beading up on body parts I had no idea could sweat.  Bonnie's looking comfortable still, with her Mona Lisa smile.  

Bonnie grew up wrestling with five brothers who jostled and fought for everything, even things that didn't need fighting over.  She learned how to throw a ball hard overhand and spit with deadly accuracy.  She was the youngest, kind of an afterthought, and an oddity in a home where girls were an unknown element in the universe. That is, until later when girls became fascinating to her brothers.  Until their hormones began to color their vision, Bonnie was both teased mercilessly and shielded from harm with an intensity only five older brothers can muster.  If anyone at school even looked at her sideways, they were dead meat.  Then, they'd shove her around at home, call her a sissy and mock her dolls, put frogs in her shoes to make her scream.

Bonnie learned to roll with the male energy because she has a natural patience to her.  She learned that if she waited long enough at the bottom of the scrum of brothers, eventually they'd let her up and she could get away and find a quiet place to be still and calm, sing to herself, dream of beautiful things.

One day when Bonnie was six and she's being stuffed in an old fridge whether she wants to be there or not she says, "Betcha two bucks you can't climb that tree," to her brother Samuel to get him distracted so he'll stop cramming her into the tight space.  She says it out of habit as if it were the first words she could speak as a baby.  He takes the bait and disappears up the tree and screams from the top of it, "Pay up, Toobie!"  But, she's gone.

Nicknames are all she and her brothers go by.  She's Two Bucks or Toobie.  Samuel is Whammy.  She made up my name Charm, and Vivianne is Vivie.

The three of us formed a bond a long time ago in grade school when we were free and young and happy, before we knew about trouble in the world and how men could break your heart so bad.  Something in each of us made us tough and soft at the same time, the toughness a shield for the softness at our core.  I worried about Bonnie's core when the toughness had to be so thick, but she knew how to hang onto it.  It was a cool spring within her.  She was very patient, had a quizzical way of looking at a situation and figuring out what was safe and when to get the heck out of a tight squeeze.

"Charm, this is the exact thing I need to be doing at this very minute, right now.  I could hike forever," Toobie says, "Look at Vivie up there.  Aw, look, she's waving at us.  I think that girl needs a full moon, don't you?"

We whip around, yank our shorts down and shine two moons at her.

"You girls are blinding me with your pale asses down there," Vivie yells.  We laugh and scream just for the sake of screaming, blowing off a few months of pent-up energy.  "What a sight to see." She moons us back.  

Twobie and I finally reach Vivie and we take a look at the valley below us, which stretches to the northeast.  It's about 1:30 and we figure we've got about six hours to get to our camp and get set up before dark really settles in.

Vivie takes off again, striding downhill, her boots stirring up little explosions of soft dirt.  On this side of the ridge, we feel a small breeze coming from the north, and far off to the east clouds are gathering in the cornflower blue sky.

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.