This Time, Years Ago

This time, one year ago, I was biking through Golden Gate Park at 2am, when everything is still. I'm riding home from Karyn's place. My heart aches a little, and I'm smiling on the inside. The lighting from the street lamps makes everything look flat, almost black and white. The air is cool and I feel prickly as I start to sweat. I stand on my cranks and pedal hard to get a running start at the last bit of hill. I have to wake up at 7am for work tomorrow.

This time, two years ago, I was eating a pile of breaded, deep-fried something with a scoop of mac salad on the side. The diversity of Honolulu makes me feel at ease. I like that people wear Hawaiian shirts without any irony. After having malasadas for breakfast, I feel a bit disgusted with myself.

This time, three years ago, I was having tea. The teahouse is tucked into the mountains above Lake Louise in the Canadian Rockies. Everybody's a tourist and the squirrels sneak off with bits of scone when no one is looking.

This time, four years ago, I was looking at the stars. I'm shivering in the cold at 12,000 feet, but that doesn't matter because I can see the Milky Way. Everywhere it is dark except for the light of distant stars. Laying down on my bed of granite, I feel like I am made of stone. My legs are stiff from hiking, and I'm too excited/uncomfortable to fall asleep. I will wake up at dawn tomorrow and hike to the top of Mount Whitney.

Point Reyes National Seashore

I spent the last three days out in Point Reyes with my co-worker Hazel. She'd never been backpacking before, and I was glad to introduce her to my favorite pasttime. She's a bit older than me, and enlightened me a good deal on things like work, writing, good books, and the foster care system. Otherwise, we spent a lot of time in our own mental spaces.

I guess when you only go backpacking with one other person, the experience is much more personal than communal. I feel like we're trained to fear silence in a conversation, that it's the end of the world when we run out of sensible things say. But in some settings, living to that standard only distracts from fully absorbing the surrounding beauty. Sometimes, the sensory, rather than the social experience is more important. It's nice to have someone there to share that with, but ultimately, the thoughts we have in reaction to that beauty are a deeply personal experience.

So here are some images of things that left me in rapture, the experience of which I can't ever fully share.


Morning dew.


Succulents.


Sea cliffs.

Crispbread

There's almost nothing I enjoy more than a good crispbread.

There are a multitude of factors that contribute to the ideal crispbread experience:
1) Brand -- I've tried only a handful of brands, but I must say that I'm a loyal consumer of Wasa Light Rye. If the mood strikes me, Ak Mak will do as well.
2) Topping -- Arguably more important than the crispbread itself is what goes on top. One of the wonderful things about crispbreads is that the delicious serving suggestion picture on the box is often very much obtainable in reality. Reach for the stars! Buy smoked salmon and alfalfa sprouts and hothouse tomatoes and avacados! Stack them on your crispbread with wild abandon! Feel like you're a rich person who's socializing with other rich people by eating rich-people foods at a rich-people social event. Or, if the mood strikes you, a can of sardines will do just fine.
3) Ambience -- Arguably more important than both the crispbread and its toppings is where you are. Because let's be honest here, you know that crispbread tastes like cardboard and that you can only afford a can of bottomshelf sardines for a dollar. What's much more important than any of those things is the environment you're in and the company you're with. A golden, summer day at the beach or crisp, mountaintop air in the Sierras are probably going to be the greatest factors contributing to your overall enjoyment of a crispbread. And always remember to share the joy! Bring a bestfriend, or two, or three!

I think I can vaguely recollect a time when eating tasteless, fiber-rich crispbreads was a chore, something like eating pipe cleaners and foam packaging peanuts rolled into a single package. My friend Gus introduced them to me on a backpacking trip. I was unimpressed. Since then, I've come to associate the eating of crispbreads with some of my fondest outdoor/travel memories. It's a beautiful thing when something that seems bland and unappealing to so many people can bring me instantaneous joy.

Day 92

First a story: We were hiking back to the trailhead, where our car was parked, when we met him. We slowly came to a stop as we approached each other.

"Is the journey far?" he asked in a slight German accent. His translation had taken a rather metaphysical quality.

"No," I said with an embarrassed grin. We had camped at a spot just out of sight of our parked car in the wide desert valley. We had gorged ourselves on sleep and food.

He wore sneakers and drank from reused plastic water bottles. According to the dust that permeated his bandana he had been out for a few days, but his beard said that he had been out longer. His sun spectacles seemed as if they were a permanent fixture his face.

He wished us well and continued on his way.

For the duration of the trip, and the drive back home, the mythos surrounding The German grew only larger. In a flight of fancy, we ascertained that he was composed not of matter, but was rather a light emanation generated by string resonance, and that he thought in harmonics rather than words. Conclusions: 1. The German was a manifestation of the vibrating life force imbued in all living creatures. 2. We had completed our vision quest. 3. The German had been our spirit guide.

Now another story: Today I received the first two of a total of five hours of training. Tomorrow morning I receive the rest as I am hastily pressed into service. It makes me feel very Red Army.

After that, I get my license to kill... invasive, non-native plant species, as a part of the Strawberry Creek Restoration Program, under the auspices of our illustrious leader, Tim Pine (I wish I were named after a conifer). Our trainings had no shortage of war metaphors, the most colorful of which drew on the fact that our poorly-funded program relies on networks of independent cells (of which I will soon be a leader), leading to a comparison with al-Qaeda. That got some laughs. And then he continued to plow on.

As long as I'm planting seeds and not bombs.

Day 76

Confession: When I was 13, I took a rock from the top of Half Dome in Yosemite. I wanted a reminder of what had been the best day of my young life. I've since lost the rock (given it away, actually), but I still have my memories of the afternoon that I stood on top of the world.

Days 58-59

What a beauty...


I got back from my work-related backpacking adventure today. That's right, I get paid to go backpacking. I went with 2 co-workers and 35 kids: we were at a severe numerical disadvantage. At several points throughout the trip, there were children dangling about from my arms and legs. Giving piggyback rides is a pretty good cardio workout; it definitely made me feel like my heart was on the brink of exploding.

These are some of the kids I took backpacking. As for insight into each of their personalities, I think each photo speaks for itself.







Some other cool things of note:

We caught (and released) a baby rattlesnake!


We saw a blacksmithing demo (and I made stuff)!

Day 50

Today I decided that I want to thru-hike the JMT Sobo (translation: I want to walk from Yosemite Valley to Mount Whitney, non-stop).

It's something I've wanted to do since I was 13; I promised myself that I'd hike the whole John Muir Trail as I stood on Half Dome, looking over the Yosemite Valley. I think it only hit me today that I've finally accumulated the skills, equipment, and independence to do so in the six and a half years that have since elapsed.

The Out-of-Doors

I'm pretty happy that I've been getting to go outside more these days. There were times earlier in the semester when I was worried that I might start to suffer from nature deficit disorder if I spent one more glorious afternoon in the library.

But luckily, I just got back from my first ever Christmas tree cut with the Cal Forestry Club. The experience was a very new (and fun) one. We left Friday afternoon and spent the night at Blodgett, one of UC Berkeley's four research forests in the Sierras. Anyway, there were cabins for us (about 20) to spend the night in. Highlights: eating homemade pizza (and vegan carrot soup), winning at Apples to Apples, and singing the Cal drinking song (among others) with a room full of foresters.

The next day (today), I got to be a lumberjack (or the closest I'll ever get). I got up at dawn, put on my longjohns and flannel, and ate some flapjacks before heading out to the timeberlot to cut down some white fir. I'm surprised that the whole process didn't make a beard spontaneously sprout out of my face. I'm rubbing my chin right now just to make sure. All told, we filled a U-Haul with 214 trees, anywhere from 3-20 feet tall.

It was some good fun.

Unrelated (except perhaps tangentially), two weeks before the tree cut, I had another outdoor adventure, except it was through my work. I never thought I'd ever get paid to go backpacking, but sometimes you find yourself living the dream (which is a bit of a shame, since reality doesn't quite always measure up to one's fantasies).

I got this opportunity because I was lucky enough to work with the Junior Rangers (JRs) in the month of November. The way it works at my job as an Interpretive Student Aide in Tilden Park is that we get our work assignments on a monthly basis, so our work schedules have a good deal of flexibility (and unpredictability). The JR program is for kids aged 9-13, with additional spots for high schoolers, who bear the auspicious title of "JR Aide."

Most months, the JRs go on an overnight camping/backpacking trip. To be honest, it was the lure of backpacking that drew me in; kids be damned. In comparison to JRs, my Boy Scout troop was a well-oiled military machine. Maybe it was the saluting.

But I digress. There's a point I want to get to. The most surreal moment of the trip came at night, as the campfire was still going strong in the large structure we were all staying inside of, and everyone was asleep in their bags. It was only 11pm, but it had been dark since 5. Surveying the room, I got to see a cross section of childhood, from age 9 to 16. By the light of the fire, I could barely make out the lumps scattered across the cement floor, so mostly I stared at the fire, thinking.

I thought about the day, how it had gone, all the JRs I had met, the impressions I had of them. Collin never stop talking about liopleuridons, these badass aquatic reptiles from the Jurassic. I thought about the teenagers flirting with each other off in the corner, their heads clumped, their sleeping bags radiating out.

As I looked around the room, I had the feeling as if I could put myself into each person's head. There were the two best buddies, side by side, who earlier were talking about the relative merits of their favorite computer games. There was the boy who admitted to the nighttime anxiety he often felt as he fell asleep. There were the awkward teens with braces whose sleeping bags rustled together in the hush of the fire. I felt like I was experiencing, for the first time, that moment from the point of view of everyone in the room simultaneously. Maybe it's just that I'm getting older. The next morning, they guessed that I was 20.