Spirit Journal – April 2018

Clearly, as the many cars in the lot indicated, this is a popular spot. Popular is not what I came for though and I’m glad to hike away from this viewpoint. I want to get as far away from people and cars and machinery as I can. As the din of people diminishes, my ears turn to the sound of bird and breeze, my breath syncs with my steps, my senses tune to this less-tainted world, leaving my old one behind.

The soft, lightly pebbled ground crunches under my feet, the clear, pine-scented air cleans my nostrils, the sun kisses my now-bare arms and face. I skirt the edge of the lake and enter the forest. There are fewer people here and I see a sign shaped like a huge arrowhead. Its aged warm wood seems both welcoming and foreboding — “Hoover Wilderness-Toiyabe National Forest,” it reads.  Though I’m technically in the Toiyabe part of this Forest, a Shoshone word meaning “mountain,” Hoover — the white man’s name and a specific area further from here — is listed first on the sign.  This sign, an old symbol, entrance to a new place for me, seems the appropriate place for a simple ritual. I kneel, facing the sign, with the sacredness of silence, signifying the unspoken, both ancient and modern. In prayer I pledge this trip –and all its lessons and life skills, the coming beauty and pain, and even the unlikely but acknowledged risk of life — to those I love back home. May this journey make me a better man for them, may they know my connection to them. The sound of footsteps coming tells me it is time to rise and walk on. This is too sacred a moment to shatter with another shallow greeting of “Hi, nice day isn’t it?” Beginning the steady pace I can keep all day, I leave roads and civilization.

This is the adventure I wished for. Immediately, the beauty surpasses my expectations. Lattice-barked pine trees of a species I have never seen before — a single tree capable of holding my attention for an hour, or a day, if I let it. But I want to put in some miles before I rest. These trees and shrubs mix with Ponderosa pine, lodge-poles, and eventually mighty Sequoias.  Some thriving, some rotting, all belonging. The terrain changes from ragged mountain to small smooth grass meadows and lakes. In my life I’ve spent months camping, even in wilderness areas, but I’ve seen nothing just like this.

Even the trail is different. Relatively close to the trailhead still, seeing occasional day hikers, the trail is sometimes very clear, sometimes worn and wide, but sometimes hard to make out.  The difference between deerpath and actual trail is hard to distinguish. I am “sort of lost” one moment as I text home in an honest answer to their question of how it is starting. This is one of the last moments my cell service works. Daniel Boone liked to say he was never lost, though he was “mighty confused for a few days at times”. My own “confusion” lasted only about ten minutes here, and I learned that I had to pay more attention to the trail each moment.

Another feature of these Sierra trails which I had never seen before is the many stream crossings. Rarely had I needed to cross streams of any size in the Rockies, Pacific Northwest or Midwest. It seems that at least once an hour here I cross one. The crossing is usually made by playing hop-scotch across half submerged stones, sometimes the streams required wet-footing it though, in the chilly water. Further on I will cross up to my knees or walk above water on whatever tree had fallen in. At first, when the path came to these riverlets (and thinking that paths don’t cross streams without bridges) I instinctively took the inevitable deer-path on the side I was on. Soon, after a couple of additional short “confusions”, I would look across to see if a trail continued immediately on the other side, and I would take that route.

I pass day-hikers, regular nature lovers and a glamorous couple from the nearby resort — he’s having a hard time but the older woman with him seems like she’s a natural at it. Another couple with two dogs somehow grab my attention. Usually I ignore dogs, but these are different. They have the narrow shoulders, wide feet, drooped tails and size of wolves. I’ve run across such animals, wolf-dogs or wolves, at important times in my life. The first one here is the very color of a grey wolf, the second one is white. Heavy leashes are used to walk them. I ask in admiration about their breed. He is a bit cryptic in his answer, “Maybe a husky mix,” but they are not huskies. After my suggestion about wolves she implies “they may have wolf in them”. Then the lead creature glances at me, the amber eyes of a wolf, spooky, from another place. It gives a sideways glance which locks onto my eyes just long enough, as if to say “Yes, I am who you think I am… and I know you fully too.” This disarms me, I don’t like to speak with animals, what’s more I don’t even know who I am.

Moving on, I pass another alpine lake, then another, each a different beautiful panorama: valley, meadow; one looks like a floating lake or infinity pool poised over a mountain valley. I stop to examine an old miner’s cabin. A hiking couple, Jan and Layne, tell me of the miner that Jan’s father met, 70 years ago, in walks as a child with Jan’s grandfather. Apparently, the hermit miner lived here year-round, with a dog who allowed safe passage for anyone on-trail, but the dog would threaten attack if one step was taken off the path. In the cabin remains the frame of a bed, a small table, old empty food cans and an empty old flour sack. Though the cabin tilts to one side, Layne quips how welcome it would be to find this in bad weather. I cannot imagine anyone who would risk sleeping in such a shaky shack. Yet oh, how I would long to reach this shelter two weeks later.

The trail rises much more steeply now, with more frequent switchbacks, it is more difficult. I have been ascending all day and have reached the mileage that I wanted to achieve on this first day of acclimation.  But it’s too rocky to set up camp, and the map promises more beautiful lakes and woods ahead, with flat land for camping. The woman from the “glamour couple” walks beside me for a while, then moves ahead, she left her husband behind a mile ago, to get to the peak. My pack and the altitude slow me. I see her in half an hour, she’s returning without summiting. As a flatlander, I’m not used to the 11,000-foot altitude, and my oxygen-reduced blood affects me through a reduction in my energy. It becomes hard, very hard, but that’s OK, I push through. I’d already stopped for a nice lunch, but I’m more fueled by the adrenalin of the new experience and the beauty of what I’m in.

I am within sight of Summit Pass when I see a string of empty saddlehorses led by a cowboy, heading toward me. Then I see that it’s actually a young cowgirl as she gets close, and some of the horses are mules. The passing is slow, the trail too narrow. I pause to avoid frightening the animals and to admire them, moving to the downhill side which the cowgirl says will not scare them. They ignore me until the third horse, chestnut in color, surprises me with another glance, just like the wolf-dog, “I know you.” This is strange, again I don’t talk to animals. I’m just truthful to what I felt: I’ve received a blessing to launch my journey.

The Trail is even steeper now, the going gets even slower as Summit Pass seems to keep moving further away with each step. Yet with the added difficulty comes the promise of reaching the high point, with the reward of vision and an easier way as I will go downhill for a while. I finally reach the top, admire the view briefly and begin the descent toward Summit Lake. It starts to drizzle, and I ignore it at first; this is a very dry mountain range — on average, one day of precipitation in all of September. Soon though, it is real rain, I don my poncho and sit below a boulder, trying to avoid possible lightening up here.  I enjoy a snack of an orange, trail mix and water. This could be nice if I get the one day of rain out of the way so early. I have a Centering Prayer session. The simple joy of a needed and earned refreshment and rest. Soon the rain stops and I take the easier walk down-hill. The downhill view allows me to choose spots ahead to camp.  My permit allows me to sleep anywhere I like as long as it is 100 feet from water.  I see a hundred yards below what could be a gorgeous flat spot with a commanding view of a lake, maybe of two lakes. It surpasses my expectation for a view.  There is no water here, but I am still carrying enough to get me till the next morning when I will pass Summit Lake. I go off trail to that spot.

I make camp, setting up my small tarp first, in case the rain returns, then I cook a simple dinner. The view is gorgeous, I am living in an Ansel Adams photograph, and in color! I am perched on a high, small bluff, overlooking Hoover Lake to the north in a valley a few hundred feet below, with two mountains gracefully sloping from either side toward the far outlet of the lake. Birds slowly circle the blue sky, cawing. The faintest breeze in a perfect temperature adds to the feeling I am in Eden. I have no desire to read, to reflect, to do anything but look. This is true Contemplation, by the definition of the Trappist Monks I love, like Father William Menninger. I formally practice Centering Prayer here again, but my eyes lead my body and soul to simply look; just being here is the state to which mediation is only a doorway. I’ve been in this state most of the time since my Centering in the rain earlier.

From the other side of my campsite, ten yards up a small slope to the west, I can see Summit Lake, where I’ll head tomorrow, nestled near the pine trees. Night settles and a full moon comes out, so bright I can still clearly see the far-away lakes. Still up near 11,000 feet, the clear air allows me to stargaze as well. I don’t like sleeping under anything that blocks my view out here, so I pull my sleeping pad and quilt away from my tarp and lie back on the earth, totally in the open, watching the stars, recognizing the obvious constellations; the Big Dipper, Cassiopeia, and Orion. Mostly I just gaze with wonder but with little thought, being part of the sky, as in truth we are, rather than imagining its distinctions from us.

The day has been surprisingly hard. I do not for a moment wish I weren’t doing this, though. Happiness scholar Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi speaks of experiencing difficulty — as long as it’s manageable — as part of being in Flow, in true Happiness[1] .   We feel this urge for manageable challenge as a physical urge during a Health Club visit or at a yoga class, and this formula for happiness is true emotionally or spiritually too: the right amount of difficulty enables growth, while ignoring that life is hard leads to neuroses, as M. Scott Peck famously pointed out.  Recognizing that life is hard is simply the humility of recognizing what is true.  I recall that this is also the first lesson we were given in Men’s Right of Passage training by Richard Rohr: “Life is Hard.” To this Truth Rohr later adds an addendum by none other than Jesus: “my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Right now, the physical difficulty is somehow an easy tradeoff for this heavenly place, this contentment, this exhausted joy.  After the tiring day, away from all people, all pressure, I sleep. I’m sure if someone saw me they would see a smile on my sleeping face.

At 2:30 in the morning I wake imagining the sound of a four-legged creature running by me. I’m not sure if it’s dream or reality so I turn on my headlamp and use it to sweep the ground as far as I can see. Nothing. It is a chance to look at the view and stars again, they’ve clearly completed a good part of their rotation around the North Star for the night. So peaceful, no sounds at all. But just as I am about to drift to sleep again, I hear the four-legged creature running again, it is real after all. My light circles the area, but I see it outside the light beam, in the moonlight. A coyote, standing calmly, with its head facing me. It stands in front of and becomes part of the wonderful view, where I’d eaten before. The coyote is on the bluff with Hoover Lake and the mountain valley clearly visible behind it in the moonlight, stars abounding above. The wild animal completes the picture, adding fauna to the flora and landscape. Did this wild creature come to see the view also? To examine me? To hunt? Coyotes are carnivores. Native Americans call them tricksters — a lone coyote will encourage their kill to chase it, luring it to the pack where it turns, and the prey devours its predator.  The noble creature just looks at me. I gaze back from my bed, “Hello brother coyote.” Like a Sacred Word while Centering, attachments to misplaced thoughts and emotions go away, over-identification with needs for safety or control fade. I just gaze at the scene, becoming part of it.

I sleep till sunup.

[1] Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) Paperback – July 1, 2008

© Philip Jackson 2018