1995 (2) – Part of the Landscape

The next morning dawned crystal clear, with the promise of another hot day already rustling my eyebrows above the edge of my sleeping bag.  The dawn might have been nice, but we missed it.  The sun glared impatiently at us above the trees to the east, and an angry buzzing noise jarred the still air like a 50-foot rattlesnake.  Slowly, the flotsam and jetsam from the shipwreck the night before came back to life.  I had somehow unrolled my sleeping bag and gotten inside, and now was part of a nylon heap that lay strewn in the bushes next to camp like flood debris.  Apparently, I had tried to forego the niceties of tent or groundcover, and my bag was punctured with small rips in several places.  I struggled to my knees and surveyed the wreckage.

The buzzing noise was Greg in sawmill mode.  He had a frightful talent for snoring loud enough to loosen the fillings from his teeth.  He lay sprawled in the dirt with only one leg thrust in the bottom of his sleeping bag, and the zipper was stuck about a third of the way up where it met his crotch, which must have been very confusing in the dark, if not actually painful.  His face and hair were encrusted with pine pitch, needles, and camp dirt, and one of his arms lay in a position that made it appear like it was no longer a part of his body.  Leroy Brown was asleep next to the fire, and yes, the stick was still in his mouth.  I looked to where our half-unpacked backpacks had toppled over, and a chipmunk hustled out from inside my pack, chirping an alarm that the smelly mounds of flesh were on the move.  A colorful confetti of camping gear, beer bottles, and bits of foil salmon packaging was strewn about indifferently, as if left over from a very strange New Year’s Eve party.

Greg moaned and rolled over, with one dirty, bloodshot eye fixed on my approximate position.  “Blob frigate blinker poodles,” was the closest English translation of what came out of his mouth, but the meaning was understood.  I unzipped and peed right there in the bushes, still on my knees.  We were the poster boys for the Boy Scouts of America’s warning campaign: “Don’t let this happen to you!”  The revelry and thrill of the night before had vanished, and now the bill was due.  I vaguely remembered that our debts had been foreclosed upon by a flask of fine scotch that Greg had extracted from somewhere deep within his pack the night before.

Our stiff and sore muscles refused to cooperate for several minutes, and we flopped helplessly around the campsite like catfish in a shrinking mud puddle.  Our sleeping bags were dirty but intact, and everything else was grimy and scattered, but within easy reach.  After a desultory breakfast consisting of the last bits of salmon and crumbled rice cakes, we resolutely began the massive cleanup effort that would hopefully compact our gear into two bundles that could be transported up another half mile or so to Little Bear Lake, about 800 feet above us to the south and east.  This cleanup began with ourselves, as we rinsed off our filthy, aching, red and white bodies in the frigid lake water.  In my mind’s cartoon newsreel, dozens of German Brown trout floated to the surface, stunned senseless by the toxic influx of manly sweat and grime.  Nothing actually floated on the surface but a greasy rainbow slick of musk and oil, for which we should have at least had to file an EPA report.

With fresh trail clothes on, we started to look halfway human again.  Except for Leroy Brown of course, who was at least three-quarters dog.  He still had his precious stick in his mouth, and watched us wearily, as we picked up all the litter and attended to our many possessions.  He glanced down at the log he carried as if to say, “This is all I need.”  Two sets of heavy, damp clothes remained, and we decided to leave these, along with our ample smelly trash, the golf equipment, and a few other unnecessary items, at a point where we could retrieve them on the way back.  During the five days we were in the area, the salmon foil and other food wrappings may have attracted varmints, but our soiled clothing so repelled them that upon our return we found everything almost as we had left it.  We rolled, tucked, stuffed and strapped everything else together, and began the zigzag ascent up the side of Dis Butte to gain enough altitude to avoid the worst clusters of boulders and brush.  Greg’s shoulders were so raw and sore that he wedged the straps of his backpack into the crooks of his elbows most of the way up.  My custom walking stick was a tremendous help once again, allowing me to use my arms to leverage up a steep step, or to prevent a fall with a quick, stabilizing jab.

The night before had been our virtual sweat lodge; our purification ceremony for entering the temple of Little Bear Lake the following day.  We were inexplicably drawn to that sanctified ground, as pilgrims on their hands and knees crawl in humble faith towards a holy shrine.  Our abused bodies were screaming at us to lounge in the shade all day and watch the sunlight dance across the grand alpine ballroom of Big Bear Lake, but it was the smaller, more secluded dance hall calling us, from between the rays of sunshine that poured over the rim to the southeast where she lay.  Our physical forms were helpless to resist our intent, and we dragged them by sheer willpower, up and across the steep crest of the great sloping blocks of granite that stepped upward, as the worn and tumbled flanks of the Great Pyramids.  Trancelike we swayed, as if hypnotized like hicks at a cheap carnival, reeling and gawking before the fantastic wonders of the world spread out before us.

As always at this stage of the hike, the dominant feature was the metaphysical bulk of Sawtooth directly to the north.  Its presence was both near and far at the same time.  The air was so crystal clear, and the mountain’s features so distinct, that it was hard to resist reaching out searchingly to see if we could touch its stony face.  To mitigate this urge, my eye could trace each of the thousands of rocks I would have to touch to actually get there – all of them just as rough and sloping as the one on which I was presently trying to maintain my balance.  I could see the tangled waves of manzanita crashing against the mountain’s bulwarks, and although it looked soft and velvety from this distance, with the charms of model railroad scenery, my scratched and sore legs were all too familiar with the effort it would take to get through them.  The few trees that dared to grow upon the verdant flanks became fewer and fewer as the purchase waned, and the highest ones looked ragged and forlorn in the austere manner of hermits.  This amazing vista was not only a good excuse for a rest, it was downright distracting.
 
We noticed that the face of Sawtooth has a huge scar, beginning near the top where it looks like an entire cliff sheared off suddenly, and the resulting gargantuan avalanche gouged out a glacier-like chute of white granite all the way down the mountainside.  Indeed, these boulders now appeared to be scattered across the feet of the mountain all the way down to the trail, as if some indifferent giant had flung a handful of gravel carelessly into a ditch.  An enchanted half hour passed before we realized that time was marching on, and we should be too, if we wanted to make it to our ultimate destination, where time was superfluous.

Most parts of the southward traverse across the great, broken granite slope were not so difficult, involving a quick look ahead to find a horizontal ledge or an eyebrow cleft in the rock that allowed steady progress a few dozen yards at a time.  I like to think of it in yards, so that the half mile to Little Bear Lake is about 880 yards, which sounds much better than the 8,800 required steps and balance checks.  We gratefully reached the Grand Staircase to Wee Bear before noon, exhausted once again by a meager distance that at home might be like walking to the store.  Out here, the terrain was so rugged and varied that it took ten times the energy to negotiate it, and the thinner air at a mile high gave us little sustenance.  Of course, the wanton debauchery of the night before didn’t help, either!

Our spirits were lifted at the sight of Wee Bear, nestled like an emerald gemstone deep in a jade and ivory showcase of beauty.  The phrase “lifted spirits” resonated with me at the time, and I pondered its many meanings.  That the spirit was an object that could be lifted was implicit in the metaphor, and this was enhanced by the sense of levitation, the breaking free of gravity, that accompanies the first glimpse of this insignificant yet somehow vital body of water.  Despite all our struggles, it felt as if our souls had taken the express elevator to the penthouse of glory.  Leroy Brown did what all dogs do at the first sight of this unspeakably rapturous reflecting pool – he walked right into it, lapping and slogging, stirring up the fine mud that collects in the shallows.  He let go of his stick momentarily, but snatched it up again and splashed ahead to meet us near the huge silver Ponderosa pine skeleton that still dominated the eastern shoreline.  It appeared to be completely unchanged, but a few leg-sized branches had fallen off, and were strewn in the bushes at its base.  Something made me want to bring these logs up to where we would camp, to be burned ceremoniously in tribute to the centuries that this lone sentinel had been a silent observer of such majesty.  Common sense told me there were many equally magnificent logs much closer to camp, and we moved on, crossing the trickle that squeezed between wedge-shaped granite blocks at the outlet.

Once again, inexplicably, we had the entire lake to ourselves.  The lake shore was pristine, as if we were the first ones camping there this year, but I knew it could not be true.  Someone had made a very elaborate fire “ring” in the center of the best campsite, which resembled a brick barbecue more than a campfire.  That was really the only sign of human habitation, and it was gratifying to see that for the most part, the beauty of this scene had impressed a “leave no trace” ethic on its visitors.  Greg laid out his sleeping bag and collapsed on it, too tired even to say “hi” to the lake.  Leroy Brown flopped down next to him, still clamping his scarred stick-log in his jaws, and the two of them commenced to take a nap before I even had my stuff unpacked.  I knew the adrenaline of exertion would wear off soon, and wanted to have everything ready for the food and sleep I would need.  When everything was hastily spread out, I staggered stiffly to the lake and peeled off layers of sweaty trail clothes, gratefully exposing my tender and much-abused skin to the caressing breezes and gently lapping waves.

Once again, I was overwhelmed with a welcoming feeling of “being home.”  That’s really the only way to explain it – it’s the feeling you get when you have traveled extensively, seen many things, and endured many struggles, and at last you arrive home to where everything is known and comfortable.  The hospitality and sense of belonging were palpable, and with a wide smile I drank it all in; refreshing as a cool glass of lemonade served by a doting grandmother.  All the well-known rocks, trees, and alpine scenes surrounded me in a panorama of familiarity, as gratitude oozed from every pore of my body and formed rainbow patterns on the surface of the water.