I get to eat some fish

 

In the morning I left at dawn, before Keith came out of his tent. The full complement of the previous night’s mosquitoes had been waiting for me when I’d emerged from mine.

The trail climbed out of the creek bottom, onto an open slope of tan boulders, a scattering of pines and cedars…. But soon I left all the trees behind, as I made my way up towards Donohue Pass…. For a stretch I followed a tiny streamlet that wandered among the rocks and turf, but then the trail veered off and climbed up on one side of the broad and stony ramp, rising towards the pass and a saddle between pale gray peaks…. The low morning sun lit the highlands with a fresh and attractive aura, and my heart swelled, not just from the strenuous climb but with a full and giddy joy. I paused often to look all about me, close up the rock and wildflowers and the short, dense grass, all about at the vast field of boulders, high up at the snow-patched peaks along the horizon, and back down to the south at the far mountains I’d come through in recent days….

At the pass, where the trail crosses into Yosemite National Park, I pulled off the trail and found a stony perch from where I could see down both sides. I screwed the big lid off my bear canister and took out the breakfast fixings…. I stayed atop the pass a long time, stayed and stayed, and thought about staying the whole day…. In part because I had only thirteen more miles to Tuolumne Meadows, where there’s a small store and post office and where I would pick up a re-supply box.  But the post office closes at five, and I didn’t know if I’d make it, and I figured Tuolumne would be unpleasantly crowded on a Friday evening, and I wasn’t sure I could get a place to camp, or if I wanted stay at a busy campground….. But if  I stopped too soon, I’d have a long walk in the morning, and it was a Saturday and the post office closed at noon and it wouldn’t open again until Monday….Periodically over the last couple days I had been fretting about the Tuolumne dilemma, and now, or at least soon, I had to make a decision….

I tried not to fret on the hike, but it wasn’t all a blithe and care-free wander among the sublime mountains. I had to make decisions about the re-supply schedule, about where to camp, about how far to go each day, maybe how to time my walk so I wasn’t doing the hardest climbs in the afternoon heat. I might have a creek or lake in mind for camping, but then I’d worry that someone would get there before me. At least for the first week this last was an unnecessary concern; there were always unoccupied campsites at least near where I wanted to stop, though there was some competition with other hikers…..

I eventually did leave the pass and start down the northern side. I figured leaving thirteen miles for the morning would be cutting it too close. I decided that I wouldn’t decide just yet what I was going to do, but I would keep an eye out for campsites on the way down….

I soon passed a California Conservation Corps crew (CCC), a dozen young people in dirty brown and tan uniforms doing mason’s work on a portion of the trail. In Yosemite, and really all along the JMT/PCT, decades of work has been done on the trail, on steep bits or tricky spots where the trail might tend to wash out or slide down a slope. The stonework is of a sort that is meant for the ages; it’s careful and thorough and very well done. I have no doubt that hundreds of years from now remnants of the trail will still be discernible, even in good repair….

Part way down I stopped at a small lake, fed by a snowfield above, and I lay down on the turf in the sun…. The next section was a steep descent on switchbacks, and then I came back to the stream (descended from the lakelet) and I had to take off my boots and wade. There were campsites here, and I hung about and ate an energy bar and thought about stopping…. In the mean time I watched a family cross going south, including a young boy and I thought about Winston and Jacky and wondered how they would like such a hike….

Eventually I continued on, down into forest now, down and down, wondering why I was going down and why I hadn’t stayed above treeline…. Finally I told myself, the next good place to camp I’m stopping, I’m not going any further today…. And soon after I found an attractive spot by a tiny, falling stream, Lyell Fork, and I did indeed stop, at about 9000’ and after ten miles of walking, and it turned out I’d chosen just right, and I had a lovely afternoon and evening.

I put the tent up, which I always did first, and then I sat down on a small rock in the shade next to the noisy, glittering stream and put my feet in the water—for short periods; it was cold—and read and ate snacks….

A man appeared with a fly fishing pole, on his way working up the stream. I asked if he had caught anything, and his eyes lit up and he showed me a small brook trout, about six inches long. “Perfect eating size,” he said. Later, he passed again, and he asked me, “Do you like fish? Might you want to join me later for one or two? That way I can keep fishing.”

I said yes, and he told me where he was camped downstream and that I should come at 5:30 and bring a willow stick for cooking my fish over a fire.

I didn’t know how much of a meal the small fish would make, so I had my dinner first, mashed potatoes with a packet of salmon, before I went in search of his campsite, which I found without trouble, up on a bench in the forest away from the stream. He had a fire going.

We hadn’t done so before, so we exchanged names and shook hands, and then Greg showed me how to impale my fish on the willow stick, length-ways, starting through the mouth. “It’s ready when the eye turns white, or when the dorsal fin pulls off easy, either one.”

We sat across the fire from each other and cooked our fish above the flames. When they were ready Greg showed how to peel off the skin to get at the pale meat. “Have at it just like corn on the cob,” he said. Very nice.

The company too. I’d talked to a number of people over the previous five days, but the exchanges were mostly brief, mostly only mildly interesting (except with Frederik the Belgian guy). Greg and I sat down together, over a fire and fish, and had a conversation. We both talked, we both listened….

He was in his mid-fifties, with a full head of salt and pepper hair matted down from his hat, slim and tan, jokey and friendly and easy-going. We soon discovered we had academia in common, at least sort of. He was a professor of civil engineering (and the head of his department) at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. Some of the faculty aren’t actually in the Air Force, but most are, and he is. He’s been to Iraq and Afghanistan, though it seemed only on short forays. He’s an Academy graduate himself; he was in his freshman year when the Vietnam War ended. Ten years after he graduated the Air Force sent him off to the University of California to get his PhD. He said something about spending three years as a P.O.W, and at first I thought he was serious but then realized he was referring to Berkeley. I tried to keep up, but often Greg told his jokes with a straight face, only breaking into a smile or laugh after I had some time to consider the gag.

This summer he had managed to get thirty days off—not easy to do, he said—and he was spending twenty-three of them hiking the John Muir Trail. “My wife thinks I’m crazy,” he said, his colleagues too. I’d heard this more than once on the trail. It seems a lot of people have no idea about the JMT or PCT, and when they learn about it they can’t understand why anyone would want to go walking up and down mountains carrying a heavy pack. It is rather odd behavior, but with notable rewards….

We talked about our daughters too. Greg has two as well, both college-aged; one’s a student, one just graduated with a degree in construction management from Northern Colorado University.

But mostly we talked about our work, about our classes and our students, the substantial differences between our schools. The Air Force Academy has only 4400 students, and, he told me, “Congress has mandated that we reduce that number to 4000.” We talked about how discipline is a tad bit different at the AFA compared to the U…. On the other hand, much is done to keep failing students in school at the Academy; but once they’re out, he said, that’s it, no second chances…. We talked about how it’s easy for him to hire engineering faculty, but the English department has a tough time attracting people (in part because there are few if any English PhDs in the military)….We talked about my technology class, and bonded over the fact that we were both late adopters of the cellphone. “You know what I have the door of my office, up on the wall?” he asked. I did not. “It’s a slide rule, the slide rule I used when I was an undergraduate.” The point, low tech is good tech too.

Greg excused himself to step away from the fire to pee. When he came back he said, “This may be too much information, but I urinated twelve times today before noon.” I aid that twelve was an impressive number.  “I drank three gallons of water today,” he said, “most of it in the morning.” He told me how this past spring he’d done a training hike in Rocky Mountain National Park, and the first day was quite strenuous. He had neglected to drink enough water, and he fell ill and had a struggle to get back out on his own; he’d had to go to the park clinic and get an i.v. and fluids. This episode explains in part his wife’s concern about his current trip. And it explains the amount of water he had knocked down this day, way more than enough.

I sat by the fire with Greg for two hours, talking. I wished we were hiking in the same direction. His was just the sort of companionship I wanted for my hike, someone I liked and could talk to in the evenings….

But you have to hike your own hike, as the trail cliché goes…. When he went down to the stream to wash up and collect some water, I went off to my camp and got in my tent.