SIERRA TIME

SIERRA

IwokeinmysleepingbagandsawmyfriendTerrysittingupinhis.Itwasstilldark,buttheskywasbluein theeast,beyondthegreatgulfofOwensValley.Ihad sleptpoorly,alittlehighonDiamox,altitude,andthe knowledge I was back in the Sierra. Around us stood tentsandpicnictablesandgrills:thecarcampground atHorseshoeMeadows.Agirlinanearbytenthadputustosleepthe night before by reading aloud to her friends, her musical voice like a lullaby. Now tall pines soared over us, black in the dawn.

All the people around us were still asleep. Where else do you find so many people sleeping outdoors together? It’s a thing from an earlier time. We packed as quietly as we could and took our stuff to the nearby parking lot. Sitting on the asphalt by my old station wagon, webrewedupsomecoffeeandfinishedloadingourpacks.Itwascold but not too cold. With a final check we were off. Destination: Mt. Langley, the tallest peak at the south end of the Sierra.

Wehaddoneitagain:anotherSierratrip.We’vemadewellover50 of them at this point, Terry and I, almost half of those just the two of us. Rambling the Sierra with my moody friend: at various times he would be gloomy, exuberant, calm, remote. It didn’t matter. Both of us were there for the Sierra. In that sense we were a good match. We were used to each other. Now we flowed upthetrail,hikingfastthroughshadows—a long, gentle, uphill walk through narrow meadows, threading an open forest. Everything was cool and still, the shadows horizontal, the light yellow.

TOP Terry Baier on Mt. Langley RIGHT Backpackers trek to Cottonwood Lakes on the trail toward Mt. Langley.

LEFT Kim and friend Darryl DeVinney approach a drop-off in the high Sierra. RIGHT Two bighorn sheep look on from above.

I felt the energy of the trip’s first hour, and yet things were still a little dreamy too. Sometimes hiking involves a lot of looking down to be sure of your footing, but other timesit’slikestrollingupasidewalk.Minute follows minute, they unspool with nothing in particular to mark their passing. You’re just walking, and you’re only going to be walking for the rest of that day. And so you begin to shift into hiking’s altered state of consciousness.

Sierra time.

Inthatmorninglight,atthestartofatrip, I sometimes laugh out loud. That feeling is one of the things I want to write about here. Crazy love. Some kind of joy. There are people who go up to California’s Sierra Nevada, fall in love with the place, and then livetherestoftheirlivesinwaysthatwillget them back up there as often as possible. I’m one of those, and I want to explore various aspects of that feeling, thinking about how it happens, and why.

Analyzing love: Is this wise? Possibly not, but I notice we do it all the time. So I’ll give it a try.

I’ll do this by dividing the paradigmatic day into parts. WHEN I’M IN THE SIERRA, I FEEL PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL. THAT SENSE OF ELEVATION, OF BEING RAISED UP (A PHRASE THAT ASSUMES HEIGHT EQUALS GOODNESS), GIVES ME AN UNDERLYING CALM, HUMMING LIKE A CONTINUO BENEATH MY THOUGHTS.

1. MORNINGINCAMP

When the sky gets light in the east, I often wake. Pleased that day has almost arrived, I sometimes snuggle back into my sleeping bag for a last snooze; other times, I put my glasses on and lie on my back and watch the stars wink out.

Sleep out. Don’t sleep in a tent unless it’s raining. I advise this most sincerely. It’s not that cold in the Sierra; you don’t need the slight extra warmth of the tent. Your sleepingbagitselfisatent,andaquieterone.And sleeping out, you are out there. Night in the Sierras is a magical time.

Thedawnskyisgraybeforeittakesonthe blue color. Sometimes peaks to the west of camp have a dawn alpenglow, more yellow than pink. It’s cold, but often I’m done with sleeping, and things are visible, and very likely I have to pee. Once up and about, I seldomclimbbackintomysleepingbagand lie down. Easier to sit on my scrap of eggcrate foam that serves as butt pad, hip belt, and pillow, pull my sleeping bag across my legs,brewupmycoffee,andsitwatchingthe morning happen. If the sky is clear, the first

blast of sun over the mountains to the east will immediately warm things up. Between coffee and my warmies, and the bag draped overme,it’susuallywarmenough.Although I am also waiting for the sun.

This can be mesmerizing. Very often there are ridges above the camp to the east, which means that almost every camp is in a little bit of a hollow. There are those rare camps that overlook the Owens Valley, and the sun cracks the distant horizon before it even comes level with you: You are higher thansunrise.Butnomatterthetopography, abovethisshadowlineit’sbrightandsunny, and obviously warmer than where you are; and you are down in the shadows below, waiting for the sun. And the line moves, down and down and down. If you watch a boulder near the sun, but still in shadow, and keep watching it, then the sunlight will hit the top of the boulder, then move down the boulder—also the whole slope—slowly, slowly,butnotimperceptibly,notquitesunrise. This is the speed of the planet rolling under your feet. At the pace of time itself. You can see time.

2. THEROCKYMOUNTAINHIGH

Couldithavesomethingtodowithaltitude? I mean, you’re high. Less than 6 percent of theEarth’ssurfacesticksupmorethan3,300 feet above sea level, and far less than that breaks10,000feet.Highmountainsarerare, and hardly anyone lives year-round above 15,000 feet, even in the Himalayas and the Andes.TheSierraarearemarkablyhighand narrow range.

Is it different up there? Is that part of the mountain high? It’s hard to say. The air is thinner, and thus clearer, and cooler. Warm inthesun,coolintheshade.Theskyisoften a darker shade of blue. The clouds tend to be lower in the sky; some float right at your level, or you’re even in them, in a fog or a mist.Evencirruscloudslooklower,because they are. Or rather, you are higher.

WhenI’mintheSierra,Ifeelphysicaland spiritual. That sense of elevation, of being raised up (a phrase that assumes height equals goodness), gives me an underlying calm, humming like a continuo beneath my thoughts.Bynowit’ssomewhatassociational,I’msure;Ifeelgoodinthemountainsbecause of all the previous times I’ve felt good inthemountains.Contentment,happiness, bliss. Being high is more than physiological. It has to do with wildness, with beauty. You couldn’ttakeanelevatortothetopofahigh tower and feel it, and you don’t feel it in an airplane, where the air pressure is set to the equivalent of 8,000 feet above sea level. It’s

Terry Baier walks across a river.

an effect of history and a manifestation of the sublime; the reduction of oxygen may not have anything to do with it.

3. INPRAISEOFRAMBLING

Most Sierra days, after packing up and taking a last look around the campsite, we take offandhikecross-country,offtrail,because that’s what we’re up there to do.

Anyone who can walk without pain could enjoy hiking cross-country in the Sierra. It’s not a skill sport, or to put it more precisely, it’s not a specific sports skill having to do with eye-hand coordination. Eye-foot coordination, maybe. Balance and the like. But, we evolved as a species by walking; we evolved in order to walk better. We’re good at it. This is central to the joy of backpacking, making this discovery: We’re born to walk!

Not that it doesn’t help to be in shape. Now that so many of us sit all day, and get around in cars, we’re not as tough as people used to be. The poets Samuel Taylor ColeridgeandWilliamWordsworthusedto walk 10 miles to visit each other, and then walk home that same night. They were not athletes; they were just humans in the 18th century. These days, those of us who do physicalworkforalivingarestillstrong,but backthenevenwriterswerestrong,because it was walk or get nowhere. So they walked.

With some preparatory getting in shape, anyone can still do that. If you’re young, you’re already strong enough for the Sierra, nomatterhowmuchyousitaroundathome. Youth itself is a kind of strength.

What I advocate for here is not mountain climbing. Sierra scrambling is nothing like any of the extreme sports, it doesn’t share theirmentalityorpartakeinthebrutalteststo-destruction that appear to dominate contemporary culture’s idea of what people are supposed to do in mountains. Hang off cliffs, fall and die; get caught in storms and die;climbEverestanddie.Thisismountaineering in our time.

Rambling and scrambling are not like that.Wetrynottogetontoanyslopesteeper than a staircase. This means the hardest stuff we hike over is rated class 2, using a classification system that was developed in the Sierra by early Sierra Club climbers. In

THIS IS THE SPEED OF THE PLANET

this system the scale goes from 1 to 5, where 1 means walking, and 2 means getting on slopes where you might use your hands for balance, or as an aid up, and if you fell, you could only sprain an ankle or the like. Class 3,whichwetrytoavoid,ishands-onforsure, partly to help yourself up or down, partly to hold on to the slope, because a fall, though unlikely, could in theory kill you. Classes 4 and 5, even more so. For both 4 and 5, ropes are advised for protection in case of a fall, and 5 gets divided into decimals, though it no longer stops at 5.10. It goes up to 5.15 now,toindicatelevelsoftechnicalclimbing difficulty. Class 5.5 and above is really gecko land but all the terrain in classes 4 and 5 is steeper than you want to fall from, a result that could be fatal.

Thesedistinctionsareeasytomakeinthe field. In fact we find it impossible to avoid noticing the border between class 2 and class 3, because it’s quite vivid. On class 2 you’re having fun, on class 3 you’re scared. This is an easy distinction to make! And in fact, I’ve crawled on my hands and knees over a good percentage of the class 3 terrain I’ve crossed. The Sierra Nevada of California is the great class 2 playground of the world. The game we play up there—mainly agame,butwithanaesthetic,philosophical, or spiritual aspect—is partly like walking through a great art museum, partly like orienteering, and partly like fooling around on a jungle gym when you were five years old. Mostly we ramble, sometimes we scramble. Scrambling is very simple monkey fun, and rambling over such a landscape is beautiful.

However you think of it, backpacking won’t save the world. It isn’t virtuous, although it’s true that the carbon burn involved once you start walking is extremely low. Backpacking is not dangerous, and often it isn’t dramatic. Still, there is something deeply attractive to it. Central to the attraction is the simple act of walking. If you go backpacking mainly to enjoy your time in camp and only endure the time you spend walking from camp to camp, then backpacking ultimately will not appeal to you. Because it’s mostly about walking.

That’s what cross-country hiking is like. You’re surfing a wave that is stuck and motionless (or moving extremely slowly compared to you!), so that you have to provide the locomotion yourself; but the principle of where to go is the same. When you look up a complicated slope above you, or across one, or down at one, it’s always rumpled, and often there are parts of it that are out of your view. Can you deduce or intuit a line that looks good? I’m always lookingforsomegive-and-takewiththeopportunities and blockages. If you pay attention, there often appears a sort of staircase inlaid into the granite, revealing itself for your convenience as you find it. That’s the clean line on that slope. Reinhold Messner once remarked that his climbing lines are his true sentences. I like to find a clean hiking line in just the same way I like to write a clear sentence.

4. SUNSETANDTWILIGHT

Intheeveningcomesanhourofpeace.From a good campsite you can see a long way, and often a lake floors the basin below you. Dinnereaten,campset,legstired,youpourtwo ounces of single malt into a yellow plastic cup bought at a dollar store in 2005, which weighs nothing, or maybe even less than nothing, and sit on a rock and just watch the sunset. Again the speed of the world comes clear. It’s slow, but it goes too fast. If there are clouds, they turn orange and pink, bronze and gold, mauve and magenta; or stay gray; or do all these things at once. Naturedoesn’tbelieveanycolorsclash;anything can happen. If there are clouds in the west, the sun sends god rays in a spray that makesnosense,astronomicallyspeaking.It doesn’tmatter,theretheyare,spanglingthe sky. Glories, the English called these bursts of light through the clouds. Distant peaks may still stand in the light of day when you havebeenlonginshadow.Amomentcomes when the lake under you seems to be lighter than the sky above. This must be an illusion of contrast, the rocks being dark now. Silhouetted trees are black on the bluing sky.

As the light leaks out of the air, and dusk comes fully on, the blue shrinks to nothing more than a narrow ribbon between black earth and black sky. Then it’s black velvet below;astripofglowinglapislazuli,darkeningabovetoindigo,butatthehorizonitself, still glowing the bluest blue ever seen. The pulsing of it is maybe in your optic nerve, or perhaps it’s your own pulse, your body quivering as it soaks it in. The blue inside of blue, electrically crackling from its own oversaturation.

When that last band of lapis slips away, the day is done. The beauty has not gone away, but shifted. It’s beating inside you. You’re in the dark, and have to wonder if you remembered to put your headlamp in your pocket, or if you’re going to have to dig for it. It doesn’t matter; you can see in the dark. Finish your Scotch, and start getting ready for bed.

It’s been a good day.

5. TRAIL’SEND

Allthesethoughtsarepartoftheperipatetic musingsofsomeonewithlotsoftrailtimeto ponder such questions. I’m quite sure that thoughts about wilderness are clarified by actually spending some time in wilderness, and maybe the more time the better. Practicehelps.Forme,backpackingintheSierra Nevada has been an immersion in a particular wilderness. It’s been a deep joy, impossible to express in full, but nevertheless real. I can bear witness to the experience of wildernessasaspaceofhumanjoy.Wewere gamboling up there like kids in a meadow. Seeing young bighorn sheep fooling around one day in 2008 gave me the clearest image I’veeverhadofthefeelingofbeingupthere. Irecognizedwhattheyweredoing,andthat mademelaugh.Runincircles,popsuddenly into the air, collapse in a tangle, then get up and do it again! It’s not virtuous; it’s not useful. But I’ve enjoyed it. And it taught me things. I’m grateful it struck me so young and so hard.

I hope to keep going up into the Sierra for as long as I live. I partly organize my life at home around trying to extend my Sierra years. But what you plan and what happens aren’t the same, as I know very well.

What remains for me up there?

I have a list in my head of places I still want to see. I don’t write this list down, although I do write down lots of lists. But this one is easy to remember. It’s a kind of utopian imaginary which I often visit to fill my

TOP A friend and Kim hike down upper Dumbbell Basin. ABOVE Kim writes on the back of a map in Dumbbell Basin. OPPOSITE Lake Ediza in the High Sierra insomniac hours, or just in idle daydreams. ThelistislongerthanIwillgettocomplete. Which is fine.

If any readers of this are young Sierra hikers, recall this admonition: Don’t waste yourpreciousyouth!Itonlycomesonce,and it can be a zone of freedom. Be a pinball in your pinball years. It’s a big range.

Go up often and wander.

As for me, I’ll take it one trip at a time. For me, this is joy. This is what the Sierras cangiveyou:Hoursstolenfromthegods.