Merced River (Part One)
BIRTHED OUT OF THE MOST RECENT ICE AGE along the 11,000 foot crest of the Sierra Nevada, El Rio de Nuestra Señora de la Merced was named in 1806 by grateful army officer Gabriel Moraga at the end of a forty-mile march through dry brush. Its waters run wild and unharnessed from Yosemite west to Lake McClure and out into California’s San Joaquin Valley.
In 1996 my friend Jim drives us in his silver pickup east from San Francisco for my first camping and photography trip in Yosemite amid the sheer granite walls, massive domes, and waterfalls. We cross the river on Route 99 south of Turlock, then meet up with it again on Route 140 north of Mariposa, my anticipation mounting of the wondrous landscape about to unfold before us. But because the late October afternoon is waning and Jim hates setting up camp in the dark, not to mention battling crowds in national parks, he decides we’ll camp for a few days of solitude along the Merced at Indian Flat, a campground five miles west of the park entrance. We rumble around hairpin curves and switchbacks past boarded-up roadside businesses down to the river and a campground deserted but for rocks, incense cedar, and the two of us. The bathhouse is padlocked for the season, but Jim says not to worry, we’re fine. He’s camped here before. We’re fine.
In 1996 my friend Jim drives us in his silver pickup east from San Francisco for my first camping and photography trip in Yosemite amid the sheer granite walls, massive domes, and waterfalls. We cross the river on Route 99 south of Turlock, then meet up with it again on Route 140 north of Mariposa, my anticipation mounting of the wondrous landscape about to unfold before us. But because the late October afternoon is waning and Jim hates setting up camp in the dark, not to mention battling crowds in national parks, he decides we’ll camp for a few days of solitude along the Merced at Indian Flat, a campground five miles west of the park entrance. We rumble around hairpin curves and switchbacks past boarded-up roadside businesses down to the river and a campground deserted but for rocks, incense cedar, and the two of us. The bathhouse is padlocked for the season, but Jim says not to worry, we’re fine. He’s camped here before. We’re fine.
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