Campsite at mile 709 to campsite below Olancha Peak (mile 725)
Hiking today seems relatively pointless. After six weeks of hiking through the desert, six weeks of the Sierra looming on the horizon, six weeks of looking forward to something and then deciding not to hike in those astonishing mountains for another six weeks. It feels like accomplishing a goal only to find that someone has moved the finish line, except that someone is you. So the frustration you feel is pointed inwards, clashing with the knowledge that you made the right choice. Frick.
We’re slow to get on the trail this morning, slow to hike, and then take a slow leisurely break along the Kern river, where it cuts a lazy path through a green meadow that gives way to rolling hills of pine forests which climb up and up into snow covered granite beasts errupting into the sky. The beauty of the area seems to taunt me, as though it’s saying “look at everything you don’t get right now.” I wish I could throw a stone at those peaks and knock them down out of the sky so I wouldn’t have to look at them. I didn’t even know how much I missed the mountains until we made the choice to flip around them. It feels childish and true. The reality that we can feel multiple things at once.
I flop onto the grass like a disconsolate child and lose myself in my book, in another person’s life, in another time. When I pull myself back to the present Keith is ready to hike again and so we trundle up the trail. As we hike Keith lists the names of places where we could hitch to, or we could take a bus/train/bus combo, or maybe rent a car, or maybe a ride with a friend, or maybe it’s better to go to this different city. He lists things he wants to research once we’re in town; snow levels, which national parks to call. I want to scream.
This level of assessment, planning, and reassessment is a trait of Keith’s that is both incredibly valuable and totally maddening. He is an engineer through and through. Not only calculating and comparing our options for getting to northern California to each other, but also to the plan we just decided not to do. Why? I’ll probably never know. Once a choice is made I much prefer to fling myself forward and scramble to figure out details on the way. I have no inclination for slow, methodical precision, making it almost painful for me to listen to Keith work through this. Luckily the scenery is outstanding, and without the internet any planning is quickly stymied allowing us to fall into a comfortable silence as we make our way towards the saddle below Olancha Peak.
The lengthening days are giving way to the endless golden hours that seem to color everything about summer with yellowed nostalgia. Everything is extra beautiful, imbued with a radiant glow. Away and away the mountains roll down below us until they are nothing but hills and then less. Fading from green into the blue of distance, valleys shot through with grassy meadows.
I’ll come back, I think. It’s only for a little while, and then I’ll come back to you, my special mountains.
