A Southerner in Yosemite Valley — Part 3: Dead Poets, Strange Accents, and Curry Village
“Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.”
-Henry David Thoreau, Walden
In 1989, I was watching Dead Poets Society at the Prytania Theater in New Orleans along with a sparse, three o’clock matinee crowd. On the flickering movie screen, the character of the painfully shy Todd Anderson, played by a young Ethan Hawke, begins a journey of self-discovery.
“ Truth is like a blanket that always leaves your feet cold. You push at it, stretch it, it will never be enough. You kick at it, beat at it, it will never cover any of us. From the moment we enter crying to the moment you leave dying. “
Todd Anderson has just spoken these lines with a panicked stutter. Anxious and exposed, he stands in front of his prep school English class, wondering where the words came from.
The new English instructor, Mr. John Keatings, played by the great Robin Williams, pulls poetry from the young student like a preacher ministering to the possessed, while the 19th-century American Romantic poet, Walt Whitman, watches the scene with a devil’s grin from an old photograph hanging over the classroom.
Though I by no means attended anything like the Vermont prep school where the movie takes place, I was a freshman English major, and this film had its hooks in me from scene one. And after two hours, as the film approached its powerful finale, I could feel an emotional wave swelling in the theater. As we watched Todd and his classmates take their stand on top of their wooden desks in the final scene, we moviegoers couldn’t help but join them in solidarity, precariously balancing on top of our filthy red movie theater seats. Impassioned and teary eyed, we threw our popcorn buckets to the sticky floor and exclaimed in unison, “Oh Captain! My Captain!”
For me, this movie was like a gateway drug that got me hooked on the heavier stuff of American Literature. Not only did it make me want to become an English teacher like Mr. Keatings, but it introduced me to Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau, which in turn led to Ralph Waldo Emerson and Transcendentalism. In Walden, Thoreau wrote that he wanted to “live deliberately” and “suck out all the marrow of life”. Those words were like a challenge to me, a call to arms. I took them seriously.
So much so, that in the summer of 1990, with my dad’s old duffle bag slung over my shoulder, I found myself stepping off an airport shuttle in Yosemite Valley, because I too wished to live deliberately.
I watched the YARTS shuttle make a U-turn and begin its journey back to Fresno without me. Before I had a chance to really question my sanity, I was directed to a small administration building where I found a line of what looked like other new park employees. The first order of business we all had to deal with was checking in and getting a housing assignment and a meal plan. Hungry and tired from the long trip, I parked myself at the end of the line and sat down on my duffle bag.
I was anxious to see exactly what kind of roof I would end up living under, and I imagined myself unpacking in a quiet, college dorm-like building hidden somewhere among the sequoias where employees spent peaceful evenings after work, gazing at the stars and reading John Muir’s Wilderness Essays while black bear cubs purred at their feet.
Since the guy standing in front of me looked just as lost as I was, I asked him if we were in the right place. He responded in clear, Californian dialect, in which all statements seem to resolve into a question. “I think so(?). This is my first time working here(?)”, he said. His name was James, a California native from Modesto and a first time seasonal employee as well. As soon as I spoke, my southern origins were revealed, and as far as he was concerned, I may as well have been from the moon. He had great fun parroting my “y’all”, and I made many friends simply by being an oddity, “You know, that guy from Louisiana(?)”
James had gotten his work application in much earlier than I, and was assigned to what sounded like an enjoyable job in the horse stables. I, on the other hand, discovered that the job description of “to be decided” was Yosemite Park & Curry Company code for dishwasher / busperson. I was more than a little jealous since part of the reason I came to Yosemite was to avoid spending the summer washing dishes. I chalked it up to fate and took the key to my assigned housing which was located in a place called Curry Village.
Needless to say, I did not find any dorm rooms or obviously peaceful retreat in Curry Village. What I did find was a white canvas tent village, reminiscent of an early American settlement or mining camp. If I had seen a Forty-Niner with a pan and pickaxe, I would not have been at all surprised. I would have probably asked him for directions to the elusive dorms.
Initially, I was overwhelmed by the degree of primitive living that I had gotten myself into, and I could hardly believe that this was going to be my home for the next three months. But being 2,000 miles from home, with no nearby friends or family, I was suddenly hit with the realization that I was all in. There was no going home on the weekend for a quick dinner, which, by the way, even Thoreau did on more than one occasion.
I unlocked the padlock that secured the door and surveyed the tent from left to right:
- A green wooden padlocked chest containing one green blanket
- A metal frame bed with a thin mattress covered in a white sheet
- A screen tent window in the middle of the side wall with a drop-down canvas shade (window closed) that could be tied back (window open)
- A single electrical outlet in the middle of the back wall
- Another bed, chest (containing one green blanket), and window on the opposite side of the tent, all identical to the first
As I looked around the small tent, I remembered those long humdrum weekends at the commuter college. They now appeared in stark contrast to the simplicity and purity of my new sparse living quarters in the mountains. I sat on the squeaky iron bed with the thin mattress and delighted in the escape I had found. I felt like I was waking up from a dangerous dream that could have easily gone on and on had I not come across that flier in the campus post office advertising seasonal employment at this place called Yosemite. I was even beginning to feel a sense of pride that, yes, I was going to be living in a tent in the middle of the Sierra’s for three months. Thoreau, I thought, would have been proud.
“Howdy y’all!” said James mockingly, appearing in the tent doorway.
“Hey you guys(?)” I replied, in my best California statement-question.
James confirmed that he too had not found the dorms. He also mentioned that he was starting work the next morning. I, on the other hand, was not scheduled to report to work for another week. I had nowhere to be for five days, and I had received at least five days worth of meal vouchers when I checked in earlier that morning.
I’m not sure why fate had seen it fit to give me a week to explore this wilderness, but I decided to express my gratitude by sweeping my tent floor, making the bed with the sheet and one green blanket, and keeping the tent as orderly as a military barracks. During that summer I became familiar with its unique characteristics: its squeaky wooden door, its smell, the changes in light throughout the day as the sun moved over the white canvas ceiling, and the large pine tree right up against its front wall. It was so close that some previous occupant had thought to put a nail in the tree in just the right place so that one could tie the door to it by the handle to keep it open. I used it often when I was there, finding no reason to shut the world out.
That night the temperature dropped to around 40 degrees. I put on my long underwear, jeans, fleece coat, and whatever else I could dig out my duffel bag. If this was living deliberately, I was completely unprepared. I pulled the one green blanket up to my chin. It was not enough, and it left my feet cold.
Originally published at https://yosemitesentinel.com on May 11, 2024.
