I ventured off on my 50th birthday to try my healing foot on the Soberanes Canyon trail. The spring flowers and butterflies were out in force. I hiked up along the stream and then down the trail. One of the highlights of the trip was seeing a Lorain’s admiral butterfly perched on some similarly reddish poison oak.
Cycling, El Capitan
Mike and I visited the very pleasant and well-equipped Evergreen Lodge for our Spring Break 2015 outing. I was in the midst of a month off between stints at eBay and Yahoo. Mike and I were fortunate to get a modest, affordable cabin right next to the camp zip line, and even better, we were blessed with a dusting of snow. We had a great time bicycling around the area, witnessing the devastation from the previous summer’s Rim Fire, and we had an even better time bicycling around Yosemite Valley.
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| Big Sur RIver at Barlow Flat (Dan Jensen, 2014) |
I hiked up the Pine Ridge Trail to Barlow Flat on Saturday and spent about 2.5 hours bushwhacking up what I will henceforth call “Hidden Creek,” because it is so privately notched into the mountainside that I lost it completely. I did eventually find it under a pile of charred and fallen redwoods.
They breathe only what can be inhaled
from others. That is their way.
When you had no more air for them,
their memory of you was a bible.
They buried the book and mourned it
as you lay breathless, solitary,
according to their law.
They encircled their book,
emitting weeping sounds,
embalming it with rose water
and saline solution.
I stepped up secretly, discretely
pushed each one into the hole,
back after back, there not being faces.
The tomb was spacious
(The book was large).
The earth weighed heavily on the spade,
but it rested well upon them.
They have come to no harm, do not cry.
They lie there today,
sipping each other’s air.
Michael pauses for the view above Ten Lakes
We returned to Twin Lakes in late August to see if the weather would permit us a pleasant high country outing, and what do you know, it did. We found a wonderful, large, flat, wooded site with a large fire pit and some well-laid logs for the night, a short walk from one of the larger lakes.
Here’s some coverage of a pair of hikers who got lost while hiking to Ten Lakes the year before.
A fool question, but a safe one,
he figures.
Wouldn’t want to give her
the wrong idea—or worse yet,
the right one.
“San Paulo,” she answers,
as if he were there, not lost
somewhere between the
eyes and mouth,
where it can be hard
to hear anything.
”That somewhere near
Ipanema?,” he wonders—aloud,
and she laughs, of course, and the heat
rushes to his face, and the colors
drain from the world,
and she smiles and the stars
draw arcs in the lunch-hour sky
‘round her hair, the breeze
blowing all the patio umbrellas
tumbling and laughing
to the sea, o mundo
sorrindo.
Yosemite Creek Downpour
This summer’s first backcountry adventure was an attempted overnighter to Yosemite’s Ten Lakes, north of Tioga Pass Road and above the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne River. Unfortunately, heavy rain, thunder, and lightning sent us scurrying back to the trailhead. Fortunately, we’d already got a night in at a pleasant walk-in campsite at White Wolf.
Went on a pleasant day-hike with the daughter, this once from the west entrance of Pinnacles, up to the High Peaks. Had a wonderful time.
Had a great time hiking with the family, up Soberanes Canyon and out to Soberanes Point. A place for no story and for many stories.
This last Saturday, I celebrated the arrival of spring with a day hike up Ventana Creek and Doolins Hole Creek.
I hadn’t got a very early start, so I didn’t have much time. I was also hiking solo, so I wasn’t about to try anything particularly adventurous. I wasn’t able to find the Doolins Hole albino redwood. Perhaps it didn’t survive the 2008 fire, or maybe I just didn’t go far enough up the creek. More likely I simply overlooked it. Ventana Creek was as bad as its reputation: deadfall upon deadfall. I was ultimately turned backed by a pile of several redwood logs. I didn’t have time to go much farther. I’ll have to find another fool to try this with me for an overnighter some time.
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Photos by Dan Jensen, 2014.