Waking with Ghosts in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks
Ghosts follow me after living in the parks for roughly 45 years
I wake up in the bluing dawn with the ghost of Burnette G. Haskell bent over one side of my cot and the ghost of James J. Martin leaning over the other. It wasn’t either of them who woke me, not when they came through the flap of my tent, nor when they stood silently in the clothing and facial hair straight out of the 1800s.
I am up because of the light filtering through my white canvas walls; somewhere in my deep animal unconscious I know the sounds of early-morning birds and mammals even though I’ve lived in the city most of my life. The three of us stare at each other for a moment.
Then I shift and blink, and they are gone.
I move as slowly and quietly as I can, but despite my best efforts, Annie stirs. She would have in a moment anyway. We are alive to the sounds of the mountains now, and she could no more sleep through them than she could through an alarm clock.
Only, this isn’t a single screaming noise terrifying her into a state of fearful consciousness. This is the world coming alive all at once, and for the summer, she and I are of this world, a part of it rather than visiting it. She is just another part of the biosphere…
