Merced River
(Part Three)
Downriver to the west, the sun sinks behind a canyon wall. Across the rapids to the north, cottonwoods rain autumn gold on the scant remains of the Yosemite Valley Railroad, a railroad defunct since 1945 when the sugar pine groves that once lined both sides of the Merced were completely logged. Jim hollers from the campground that we’ll have near-freezing temperatures tonight; it’s time to pitch my tent. He announces he’ll sleep inside his truck tonight instead of pitching a tent, ostensibly to save time when we decide to pack up, but I know he’s determined to help me learn how to feel comfortable camping solo: his agenda, not mine. This is not his first attempt. He tried it in 1993 when we backpacked in Washington’s Olympic Peninsula after Labor Day. Both my knees swelled so that I couldn’t bend them after a treacherous descent down from Grand Pass into Cameron Basin. No choice for me but to recuperate in a mountain meadow while he disappeared on day hikes into the distant peaks, heading for Deception Creek and the trails we couldn’t experience together. Not another hiker within view, not one ranger station still open. I didn’t talk to him for six months after that adventure.
I pitch my feather-weight blue Sierra Design tent all by its lonesome out in the middle of the deserted camp ring with Jim’s truck a good thirty yards away, plenty of room for carnivore or homo sapien mischief in the gathering darkness. I can’t ignore the gut feeling that I’m the one who should be sleeping in the truck and Jim in the tent, a throw-back to the not-so-distant past of my childhood when chivalrous men were expected to protect their women at all cost. But he’s not my man and I’m not his woman and El Rio de Nuestra Señora de la Merced splashes along past us on its own journey.
Showing posts with label California. Show all posts
Showing posts with label California. Show all posts
Friday, September 25, 2009
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Merced River
(Part Two)
Along the northern edge of our campground, the Merced rushes through a series of rapids known as Chip Tooth, Nightmare, and Stark Reality. I investigate the sparkling clear water from a boulder high above Stark Reality and rename the rapids as if I, a life-long Midwesterner completely unversed in whitewater, were running the river: Body Cast, Swan Song, and Final Solution.
I once sang a Swan Song while pirouetting down a talus slope after losing my purchase, down toward what I believed was my Final Solution, memorizing my last glimpse of the astonishing beauty of a cobalt sky and yellow brittlebush, the heartache of Bill’s outstretched arms and horror-stricken face. We were camped on BLM land just outside of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in southern Arizona that spring of 1995 with Jim who, while I sang, was miles away back at our campsite. A passing adventurer hoisted me on his back out of that cactus-infested desert canyon, my arms and legs covered with abrasions, my left ankle screaming, my ego bruised. Once on flatter terrain, Bill and I hobbled back to camp on three good legs. After we returned to Illinois ten days later, Bill dragged me to an orthopedic doctor, and I spent the next month sporting a plaster cast on my left leg.
I suspect these whitewater rapids below me wouldn’t let me off that easily. Body Cast.
(Part Two)
Along the northern edge of our campground, the Merced rushes through a series of rapids known as Chip Tooth, Nightmare, and Stark Reality. I investigate the sparkling clear water from a boulder high above Stark Reality and rename the rapids as if I, a life-long Midwesterner completely unversed in whitewater, were running the river: Body Cast, Swan Song, and Final Solution.
I once sang a Swan Song while pirouetting down a talus slope after losing my purchase, down toward what I believed was my Final Solution, memorizing my last glimpse of the astonishing beauty of a cobalt sky and yellow brittlebush, the heartache of Bill’s outstretched arms and horror-stricken face. We were camped on BLM land just outside of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in southern Arizona that spring of 1995 with Jim who, while I sang, was miles away back at our campsite. A passing adventurer hoisted me on his back out of that cactus-infested desert canyon, my arms and legs covered with abrasions, my left ankle screaming, my ego bruised. Once on flatter terrain, Bill and I hobbled back to camp on three good legs. After we returned to Illinois ten days later, Bill dragged me to an orthopedic doctor, and I spent the next month sporting a plaster cast on my left leg.
I suspect these whitewater rapids below me wouldn’t let me off that easily. Body Cast.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
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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