Mono

Mono

Lost.  Alone.  Two words that don’t go so well together.  But that’s the deal, somewhere above 10,000 feet in the high Sierras of Yosemite, miles from anyone.  Panic has zero utility, and there’s no need for it, anyway.  Not to worry.  Plenty of sunlight left and geared-up for a below freezing, two mile high night in any event.

 

So goes the descent from Mammoth Peak.  My fault, for picking a mountain to climb, mostly by name.  Have you climbed Everest, I imagine some unsuspecting straight-man asking.  No, but I have climbed (insert James Earl Jones voice here) MAMMOTH PEAK.  Sounds like a real mountain, and it is, with no trail leading to the summit and covered in snow even at the end of summer.  It’s also more vertical and peaked than Mount Dana or Mount Gibbs, two other taller, but rounded-over knobs that most people leaving from the Mono Pass trailhead climb instead.

 

Will my life end in a joke that only amuses me?  Not the worst way to go, I suppose, but this weekend’s not the one.  Next weekend is Amanda’s wedding and there’s no force of nature that could keep me from that.  Some dead-reckoning, along with a map and compass, have me heading in the right direction, even as the sun starts to set.  There’s a road north of here, and once I hit that, I just need to guess correctly on east or west back to the trailhead parking lot.

 

The mountain as metaphor occupies alpinists, mostly when they’re not climbing.  It’s fairly immersive when you’re actually doing it, what with gravity, and all.  So this one started out a bit of a joke and got a little more serious.  Is that the metaphor of the climb?  Or is it that the climb up tends to be easier, in part because you can see the target, while the climb down just becomes a mass of trees and confusion?  Is it trust in the compass, and keeping your head while alone and lost?  Is it there’s no single right path, or answer to metaphors?

 

Here’s a bit of good news.  The road.  Let’s go east, and leave the metaphors in the woods.

 

The trusty Jeep’s a little more than an hour away, which isn’t all that lost, in the grand scheme of things.  The rules were I couldn’t camp overnight on Mammoth Peak, so I head into Inyo National Forest and bivvy at Ellery Lake.  Dawn arrives as it does, and there’s Mono Lake to inspect.  It’s an old volcano, now a high Sierra lake, with “tula” along its shoreline.  Tula are calcium carbonate spires, formed by hot springs meeting the alkaline water of the lake.  It’s an other-worldly sight, and one I want to see up close.

 

I later learn there’s a boardwalk to a touristy viewing area.  Later learn, being the operative phrase.  Alone and / or lost in the general sense, I take the less obvious, but more direct path.  Park on a dirt road and take another compass-heading to the water’s edge.  It’s protected by hundreds of yards of dense, prickly, five foot (good thing I’m center-fielder height) to seven foot (but not basketball center height) tall vegetation, which I’ve never seen before.  Here’s the part where either the good sense or determination kicks in.  They’re mutually exclusive, don’t cha know.  Have I mentioned the yellow pollen of the plants covering me, head to foot?

 

So I get to the water’s edge and it’s weird and it’s mucky and I’m glad enough I ambled this way, because I’ve never seen anything quite like this and gosh I wish the sky was more dramatic for picture-taking and gee I wonder if there are snakes.

 

Head back to the Jeep, strip to my skivvies, pack the pollen-covered clothes in plastic bags, head back to the FOS for a few days before heading back for a most wondrous Iowa family weekend.      

 

Alone.  Lost in determination, wonder and wishes.

 

Maybe that’s the metaphor.