focus and scan

I leave the house at 7:30am and drive to the Looney Bean, where I order a breakfast burrito, a large coffee, and a raspberry oatmeal muffin to go. I eat the burrito on the drive up to North Lake, trying — mostly successfully — not to drip eggy onion juice all over my lap. The burrito is gone, I eat the orange slice garnish, I finish my coffee, and then I’m at the trailhead.

The fall colors are going off.

I still can’t quite believe this is real life.

I hike fast, passing people. I think about putting my headphones in but don’t, because the breeze is blowing and the aspens are making their magical aspen-leaf sounds. My brain runs through a few random thought loops and then peters out, lulled by soft puffs of trail dust. I count steps, one through twelve and then down and around again.

An older man with a big pack pulls off the trail to let me by. “Where are you from?” he asks.

“I live down in Bishop,” I reply. I had to pause and think for a moment, but the man doesn’t notice.

“Lucky you,” he says.

I am flying. I will go ten miles, I think — then, I will go fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. I find the trail to Desolation Lake, and even though I know it will add at least two miles, I follow it. It’s unsigned, faint, maintained only by hiker feet. Sometimes I can only see it if I look right down at my toes; sometimes I have to look a quarter mile ahead. I focus and scan, focus and scan. There’s some kind of important metaphor for life here, I think, but my brain is absorbed in the rhythm of my steps and has no time for metaphors right now.

The lake is aquamarine at one end, deep midnight blue at the other. It sparkles in the sun. I follow the little inlet stream cross-country, picking my way among tussocky grass and boulders. Now there’s no trail at all, but still I focus and scan, seeking out an imaginary line through the landscape.

I haul myself over a saddle and down to the lake on the other side. There’s no trail here, either, but I know I just need to go south and down until I find it again. South and down, says my brain, sketching a path over the rocks.

Muffin, says my stomach.

When we find the trail, says my brain.

No muffin NOW, says my stomach.

In the end, my brain wins, but barely. I scarf my muffin leaning against a rock on the side of the trail, a few hundred feet below the pass.

Sit, say my legs.

No walk, says my brain, and my brain wins again, because even my legs want to see the view.