O, Yosemite
We had a strange situation with our Yosemite campsite. Well, more like I had a stupid blunder with it. When organizing the trip I had created a tentative calendar of events and, knowing how tough it can be to find a site, I became impatient and booked one. Then we had to move some stuff around. Then the Yosemite date fell right in the middle of our planned trip to San Fran. We couldn’t move it, so we stuck with it and decided to make the best of an idiotic situation.
We spent a night in Petaluma, a small California town perhaps best known for the Lagunitas brewery. We went there for dinner (pretty good) and beer (damn good) then took an Uber to their outlets and frivolously bought new pairs of Vans. That’s all I’ve really got to say about that.
The following morning we jumped up and set out for our next mystical destination: Yosemite National Park. It was about a four hour drive to the place with the last hour or so being in remote mountains with unfathomable winding roads. I’ve become good at navigating those suckers at this point, but it was still quite a ride.
Now, I’m going to have to start this thing by stating that we really weren’t able to have quite as much of a life-altering experience here than we did at Yellowstone. Time constraints, crappy weather, general confusion about the park’s layout, and perhaps a little astonishment fatigue all worked against us here. Regardless of all of that, though, this place was still phenomenal.
We didn’t see nearly as much wildlife…
…but some of the views we came across were absolutely mind-melting:
Another cool aspect of this place that sort of differentiates it from Yellowstone are the simple little hikes they offer. Of course, there’s hiking all over any national park, that’s almost the whole point really, but Yellowstone sort of separates into drives and long hikes, whereas Yosemite has a lot of quick, fun hikes up to its many glorious views.
You’re surrounded by massive ponderosas and bald rock faces that almost glow.
The mists we encountered made the whole scene look like something from a high fantasy novel.
The sunset we saw, although impossible for a rookie hack of a photographer like myself to capture, was unspeakably gorgeous.
I kept thinking to myself, my god it all looks like a perfect painting, a genius’s masterpiece. Then I had the realization that it was the other way around, that countless brilliant artists have lived and died trying to create something even half as moving as the sights at Yosemite National Park.
The finest scene we came across had to have been the tunnel view. It’s this absolutely flawless vantage point where every great monument in the Yosemite Valley can be viewed at once. We rolled up just before sunset and joined the large crowd snapping photos and contemplating life. The sun broke the clouds for a fleeting moment to touch the misty mountains with a stroke of brilliant gold and everyone ooh’d and ahh’d as some sort of benevolent God’s existence was briefly confirmed. Then the gloom returned and everyone probably remembered all the bills that were due, and all the grey hairs that keep on coming, and finally that they had to work on Monday.
That night at the campsite, Gabby and I started up a fire and then threw together a strange dinner with whatever we had in the fridge. Omelets and veggie burgers and ramen noodles. As we sat around letting the last of the logs burn out Gabby called for my attention. I looked up from my laptop at her and she was grinning.
“Look up.”
There it was. My Milky Way. The one thing I’d been searching for the whole trip and the one thing that had been eluding me. It was a lesson in patience come to fruition. Up through the towering pines I could see millions of twinkling flecks of light. The longer I focused the more came into view. In places where there was normally inky darkness and lonely sky there were incredible clusters of white and yellow and orange. It raised within me a primal sense of wonder. I imagined what man before science thought of the very same sight. The struggle to explain it all must be the origin of storytelling itself.
Pretend this is me.
I felt so lucky, not only that I had seen the night sky unimpeded by city lights but that Gabby had been clever enough to take a look through the trees in the first place. I may have missed it.
I wish I could have watched for far longer than I did, but it was growing late and San Francisco was on the morning horizon. I bid the Universe farewell and hopped into Fishtank at the end of yet another wonderful night.
