I start climbing one of the mountains that look like a cathedral. The world keeps changing, changing in front of me. It's open and blue-skied. It's woodsy and pine-scented. There's a white mountain to my side. No, wait, that's a snowbank!

My range of focus keeps changing, too: a tiny yellow wildflower with a butterfly the exact same color sitting on top; vistas that make something inside me stretch out the way it does when I see the ocean.

My legs are stronger than they were yesterday or the day before.

In what seems like no time I am nearing my first crest, the meadow way below me. I am gently thinking about Mark Grossi's father who is ill and a dear friend of mine in Three Rivers who is battling a brain tumor.

When I do get to the top and look down at yet another meadow, this time with a deep blue lake and snow-glazed mountains behind it, I have a morbid thought. Or maybe it's not morbid at all.

I think that this day, when the time comes, will make it easier for me to die. Because on this day I got such a good look at the world. On this day I got such a good long draught of life.

I mistakenly think I'm making great time. There's the meadow right down there. (Wrong meadow. I'll find I still have 5.8 miles to go.) But near the top, I'm still feeling cocky.

"I'm going to pause and look at that snowbank just because I want to and not because I'm tired," I crow to myself.

Same thing with taking off my pack and putting on some more sunscreen: because I want to, not because I'm tired. I'm stronger, see?

I see a flat rock up a little hill and head there so I can rest my pack while I get out of it. And that's when I slip and fall face down on the rock.

I stop my face's downward motion just as my nose and glasses come in contact with the rock. Nothing breaks, not the nose, not the prescription sunglasses. But I'm still face down on a rock and I have 36 pounds on my back. It's tricky turning over. When I do finally get upright, I start laughing. How can the words "Pride goeth before a fall," not come to mind, after all?

I'm on my butt looking at the tallest, pointiest mountain.

"I'm sorry!" I scream to her. "I promise. Never again. No more cocky."

I forgot to pack a mirror, so I gingerly pat my face. No blood. And I'm pretty sure that bump on my nose is the one that's always there. The mountain let me off easy this time.

I walk up and down and up and over and on and on. A Japanese family passes me and asks me how far it is to Cathedral Lakes. I can't tell them. I saw it. I passed it. But I've lost all sense of time and distance.

It's getting lavender. The alpine glow before evening. I'm worried Darrell will worry. I'm worried he'll call The Bee. (He does.) But oddly, to me, I'm not scared at all. Maybe it's the obliviousness of a spanking new novice, but the environment seems so welcoming. As if it was put together for my very delight.

Just as the evening really deepens, I hear a wail. I can't think at first whether it's a bird or an animal. Then I realize it's a saxaphone. It's jazz. I'm walking by another High Sierra camp. Just as it gets really dark, I see a sign that says Tuolumne Meadows Campground. I ask the first campers I see, Dave and Christine, where the backpackers camp is. They tell me I'm still 20 minutes away. It's a big meadow.

Christine says, "Jump in the car."

She is a travel photographer. She knows the writer Tom Cahill and some big-time magazine editors and an interesting writer's conference coming up. We have lots to talk about.

I feel no shame. I'm glad I met Christine. I have her card in my pocket. And quite frankly, I liked riding in the car for all of a mile or so.

This was written while on the trail, but published after returning to Fresno.