A Southerner in Yosemite Valley
… and not till we are completely lost, or turned around — for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost — do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of Nature.
- Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Stay on the trail and resist the temptation to cut switchbacks.
Cutting switchbacks is illegal, and there are many drop-offs and ledges hidden by brush.
- Yosemite Trail Guide
This is a story about getting lost, about disappearing in plain sight.
The first time it happened to me was in the summer of Nineteen eighty-three. I disappeared inside a southern live oak tree.
This tree had been fed by centuries of seasonal flooding, brackish sediment, and the dark voodoo waters from nearby Lake Pontchartrain. It was guarded by privet shrubs, scraggly pines, and thorny vines. It was a touchstone of all of our childhood adventures.
It was our Yggdrasil, our Bodhi tree. Gris-gris.
We prayed for enlightenment while sitting in its gnarled roots. We ate snowballs under its shade of Spanish moss.
Hidden among its roots was an interesting little tunnel, certainly too small for any human to enter.
One day while I was alone in the woods, I laid on my belly in the dirt and began to inch and wiggle myself between the roots and into the little tunnel, arms first, then head, into the tree itself.
I exhaled all of the air out of my lungs, sucked in my stomach, and clawed my way forward through the dark opening. Once my shoulders were through there was no going back. I willed myself even smaller still.
Like the mythic Daphne, who was turned into a laurel tree to escape Apollo, I was in the dreaded predicament of suffering a fate worthy of Greek mythology.
I stood nervously within the live oak, occupying the crushing space where the inner trunk had eroded. It was dead-silent and dark, and the old tree was so thick and the rotting wood so soft that it absorbed all sound, all light.
And what was I to this sentinel of slow southern time? Of what significance were my thirteen boy years? This tree had listened to Choctaw footsteps, and whispers among Confederate soldiers. It had danced in the winds of Hurricane Betsy and Camille.
As I frantically wiggled, squeezed, and tried to get back out of the small hole feet first, its embrace grew tighter.
I made myself smaller than humanly possible.
Scrapes! Bruises! Blood!
I reappeared beneath our Bodhi tree like a wandering esthetic.
I said, “Ancient oak, thank you. Bodhi tree, thank you. I am young, and my journey in this life has just begun.”
It replied, “When you go off on crazy adventures, always let someone know where you’re going.”
The second time I disappeared was in the summer of Nineteen ninety. I was hiking Four Mile Trail.
It was a chilly morning when I stepped off the valley shuttle with my college book bag from home packed with retail trail mix and a canteen.
It was my first blessed week in the park, and as I headed up Four Mile Trail with a belly full of pancakes and eggs from the Curry Village cafeteria, I said a little prayer of gratitude to whatever force was at play that allowed me these five leisurely days of freedom, and five days of meal vouchers, before I had to report to work.
I couldn’t wait to see the high points of Four Mile Trail, like its stunning views of Yosemite Falls and Yosemite Valley and to eat lunch at Glacier Point while gazing upon the mighty Half Dome.
I wasn’t on the trail for very long before I was introduced to a series of zigzag switchbacks, and with the lungs and cardio of a true sea-level flatlander, my pace slowed to a snapping turtle crawl. I looked at my watch and realized I had only been hiking for 20 minutes. I was completely unfamiliar with the trail and assumed that several more dreaded switchbacks were waiting for me up the steep mountain.
If I had only known how close I was to being above the tree line, I would not have committed one of the cardinal sins of hiking:
I cut the trail.
It was a bad decision, and I am ashamed. It is bad for the trails, bad for the environment that parks are trying to preserve, and bad for the hiker because of the danger it could lead to. So yes, that day, I played the part of the uninformed, insensitive tourist, and I never did it again.
Theoretically, I thought at the time, it would be much faster if I went straight up the mountain. The aggravating switchbacks were getting me nowhere fast.
In my mind, I saw myself powering up through the woods like a black bear cub directly to the last switchback where I would instinctively pick up the trail.
But how does one know which switchback is the last? There’s the rub.
I headed straight up the mountain, went through some brush, and crossed the next switchback as planned. Assuming that the trail would switch back again, I continued cutting straight up the mountain. I dodged trees and went through more and more brush, expecting to cross the trail again.
“It must be coming up soon. It must be coming up soon.” was the mantra I kept repeating to myself. But of course, the trail never materialized.
“Dumb mistake, but easily fixable,” I thought, “I’ll just backtrack down to the last trail I crossed.” I turned around and shuffled down the mountain, still somehow not managing to cross the trail.
I stopped and walked to my right. Nothing.
I turned around and backtracked to my left. Nothing.
I rambled up and down through the woods like an armadillo scrounging for grub. Nothing.
I flopped down on a rock, drank some water, and ate a handful of freeze dried bananas and raisins from my bag of trail mix. I listened intently for the voices or footsteps of other hikers that would lead me in the right direction. But for a trail advertised as popular, I couldn’t hear any other hikers, nor could I see or hear the valley.
I felt the embrace of live oak silence from seven years ago, an embrace that was not comforting, but indifferent. I had disappeared in plain sight of the valley, for the forest absorbed all sound, and left no clear view of the familiar landmarks below.
It was frustrating to know that the trail was probably hiding within 100 meters of where I was sitting, but I didn’t want to continue going in circles.
I finally gave up on finding the trail or finishing the hike, and I decided that my only option was to scramble down the rocky hill toward the valley. At least the valley was not a missable target. I knew it was downhill, and even if I didn’t know where the trail was, I knew where down was. The only question now was whether or not I had managed to get myself into a situation in which I would be forced to navigate a ledge or cliff to get back to the valley.
By now, the cool morning air had evaporated. I took another sip of water, took off my flannel shirt, shoved it in my pack, and began a sloppy descent through the pine needles and loose rocks straight down the mountain. Without a maintained trail, the terrain was steep and the pine needles and leaves that covered the forest floor provided little traction.
Ironically, as I skidded swiftly down through the trees, I wished for a trail with some nice switchbacks.
I stopped just short of a 10-foot drop, and unless I wanted to plod back up the mountain and start this desperate search all over again, there was no way to avoid this obstacle.
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” I berated myself for being so stupid as to go off the trail.
Not only was the ground at the bottom of the cliff at an incline as well, it was peppered with large boulders and I could see no place for a soft landing if I jumped. What if I don’t have the grace of a young fawn and break my ankle or my arm? To make matters worse, since I had not reported to work yet, I had not made any friends other than Alberto. Only a single soul had any idea who I was, and not one soul knew where I was.
So much for Bodhi tree enlightenment.
After half an hour of carefully surveying the dropoff, I found what appeared to be the best spot to make the jump. I chose a place that would allow me to make a crude landing on a relatively flat boulder, and if I started sliding downhill, some small pine trees and brush further down would hopefully stop me from rolling too far down the mountain.
I inched to the edge and, just to see what would happen, dropped my backpack down to the bolder below.
I watched it roll and flop a good 20 feet down the hill, then I jumped.
At the beginning of my journey to Yosemite, I met another seasonal employee whose name also happened to be Bryan. He was a student from Tulane in New Orleans, and we first bumped into each other at employee check-in. We obviously had a lot in common and, if I had seen him again in the park, we would have more than likely been friends.
We only spoke briefly during check-in, but as the days in the park went by, I remember thinking it was strange that I never ran into the other Bryan from Louisiana who was in Yosemite.
Oddly enough, the reason I never saw him again became clear in a letter I received from my parents. They had sent me an article from the Times-Picayune, the local paper from back home, about a lost hiker from Louisiana.
It turns out that the other Bryan from Louisiana had also gone hiking up Four Mile Trail early in his stay. He told the Times-Picayune that, while looking through his camera’s viewfinder to take a picture, he stepped back and fell over the edge of the trail. The fall was far enough that he sustained a compound fracture to his leg; far enough that none of the other hikers on the popular trail could hear his cries for help.
It took five days for rescuers to find him, during which time he subsisted on ants and urine. My parents didn’t know I had crossed paths with this lost hiker, but they had thought to send me the article, albeit too late, as a cautionary tale.
I crashed on the rock below harder than I anticipated and began to roll head over heels down the mountain. But before I could pick up too much speed, I ran face-first into a pine tree and came to a painful stop. Covered in forest floor debris, I checked myself for injuries and broken bones, but aside from a few scrapes, I was fine.
“Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you.” John Muir had written. Today, luckily, he was right.
As I retrieved my backpack from a little further down the hill, I said a silent prayer of thanks that I had not seriously injured myself and been forced to return home, tail between my legs, after only a few days into my summer adventure.
I emerged from the woods somewhere along Southside Drive, and eventually found myself walking along the familiar Merced River. The water was high with early summer snow melt. It was almost noon, and the clear river shimmered invitingly like a vein of glass in the warm sunlight. I laid my backpack on the rocky river bank, took off everything except for my shorts, and put my feet in the water. It was shockingly cold, but I was determined to make my second mistake in Yosemite and get into the river.
It is easy to underestimate the river’s current when you are mesmerized by its emerald waters. It’s also easy to be swept over the falls, or swept down the river, with nothing but slippery rocks to stop you from taking an unpleasant voyage down the Merced. It is a faux pas that is as dangerous as trying to pet an antlered buck or get a selfie with an adorable mother bear.
Over the next 10 minutes, I slowly immersed myself in the cold river, breathing deep and fast with each step. Every cell in my body was wide awake and reveling in the conflicting sensations of bright, warm sun and frigid water. I anchored my feet against some larger rocks on the river bottom and as the water ran over my shoulders, the feeling of biting cold became less and less painful. I relaxed and leaned into the water that only minutes ago had come rushing over Nevada and Vernal Falls.
It was a teeth-chattering baptism, and I asked the Merced, our Lady of Mercy, to wash away my sins of the morning.
Scraped, bruised, and bloodied, I finally found my way back to Curry Village, where I found Alberto entertaining himself by shooing away some domesticated squirrels on the steps outside my tent. “I’m on break.” he said, “Want to check out the pizza … eh … why do you look like you’ve had a rough morning?”
Music: “ Lost! “ by Coldplay
Originally published at https://yosemitesentinel.com on May 25, 2024.
