A late start and the language of exuberance
I'm in trouble. Jim, whom I've now nicknamed Dudley Doright, and Emily are long gone.
Dudley is officious, but I have to admit he is capable. He doctored Emily''s torn feet with duct tape, whipped up oatmeal, broke camp and set off hiking before I finished reading blogs into the satellite phone, the one time it worked for me.
It makes Darrell nervous to be too far away from them, so he started hiking and I'm supposed to be right behind him.
But I can't get my pack packed.
It's been a problem every day of the trip.
My backpack is the latest and greatest in lightweight gear, which means no pockets and very little room.
Everything I carry first goes into compression sacks to be squeezed and deflated into small lumps. It's an exhausting ordeal every morning to shrinkwrap every item and even then things don't fit.
I first tried to pack my pack with my gear and my Yosemite National Park-issued bear cannister in my Yosemite hotel room. I tried over and over and couldn't get it to work. In a panic, I went to the mountain sport store and got help from Bill and McCray.
Bill and McCray threw out all my "real" food and almost all my first aid supplies. They told me to only take butterfly bandages because once you're out there you don't bother with any little scrapes or bruises. You don't bother with anything less than having to stick your skin back together. I'd find out they were right.
But, even after dumping stuff, the two of them still had trouble packing my pack.
And, today, on my own, it's a no-go. I pack and unpack , push and pull to no avail.
Everyone else is long gone. I'm alone on a rock with a pack I can't pack.
Then a man comes walking over to the rock and says, "Hey, are you that reporter?"
Peter Geissert, 30, is hiking the John Muir Trail with his girlfriend. His folks live in Fresno, so they showed him the story before he left.
He's lived with his girlfriend for 2 1/2 years in Oakland. He says sometimes they feel trapped in a concrete box. Plus, he sometimes gets caught up in what he calls the drama of the city, helping with needle exchange programs and other things that are worthy but draining. He says that he wants the trail to restore his faith in people. I ask him if he's lost his faith.
"No, my faith is always there wobbling along, but I'm hoping this will make it more robust."
"We wanted to do something really big because it's easier than making little changes," he says.
He asks if I've read any John Muir. I have. I wonder if he will then quote one of the same four John Muir quotes that everyone quotes. But he doesn't.
He says that John Muir created a whole new language. That before Muir, wilderness was only described as forbidding. Muir wrote about the beauty.
"He created the language of exuberance," Peter says.
Then he helps me pack my pack and I set off hours late. It will be dark by the time I get to Tuolumne Meadows.
This was written while on the trail, but published after returning to Fresno.