R. Mark Liebenow's Blog: Nature, Grief, and Laughter, page 14

Right now, early October, is the best time to hike in Yosemite – day hikes, long hikes, one hour hikes in the morning or afternoon. For the next ten days, temperatures are expected to be in the high 70s during the day and in the mid-50s at night, although both will start sliding a couple of degrees cooler every few days. It will be dry because the rainy season hasn’t yet started, and I’m hoping for a really wet winter because there’s been a long drought. There aren’t many people in the valley now and it’s really quiet.
You could hike for several weeks and not cover all the trails in and around the valley, but if you only have one full day in the valley, and you want to see a lot, this is what I’d recommend. 
Start off before dawn in Leidig Meadow and watch the stars give way to the orange and yellow colors of dawn. You will see deer and probably a few coyotes. Sunrise is at 7 a.m. and sunset at 6:30 p.m. so you have a maximum of 11 ½ hours to hike. As soon as it is light enough to see the trail, maybe 6:30-45 a.m., head for the top of Upper Yosemite Fall, pausing at Columbia Rock halfway up the wall to take in the view, as well as to catch your breath. 
One optional sidetrip at this point would be to walk to the base of Lower Yosemite Fall and view it from below. In spring you’d be pummeled by water hitting the rocks and shooting off horizontally. It probably won’t be doing much now, but you can see how the force of falling water has polished the rocks at the bottom.
Hike across the meadow to Sentinel Bridge, pausing to look at Half Dome to the left and Sentinel Rock rising up straight ahead. Continue on to Curry Village and follow the path to Happy Isles and head up the John Muir Trail toward Vernal Fall. It will now be around 12:30 p.m. A short way up, a bend on the trail has a clear view of Glacier Point and reclusive Illilouette Fall. Shortly after the footbridge with its great view of Vernal Fall, the trail splits with the Mist Trail going left and the John Muir Trail going right. Take the Mist Trail to the top of Vernal Fall and look for rainbows. Notice the Emerald Pool and the Silver Apron just above Vernal, and continue on to Nevada Fall. At the top of Nevada, have a late lunch in the sun, look carefully at the jointing in Liberty Cap and Mt. Broderick and wonder why the glaciers didn’t break them down and carry them away with all of their fracture lines. Notice how different Half Dome looks from the backside. At 2:30 p.m. head back down, taking the John Muir Trail this time with its view of Nevada Fall from a higher elevation.
Arriving back in the valley around 3:30 p.m., take the shuttle or drive your car and head for El Capitan. From El Capitan Meadow let the grandeur of this granite monolith overwhelm you. Look for climbers on the rock; they are the colored dots. You can drive around the bend to Bridalveil Fall and walk up to its viewpoint, as well as drive up to the Inspiration Point parking lot and gaze up the length of the valley and take in the wonder. But by all means, make sure you drive to Glacier Point in time to watch the sunset color the mountains in the rose and purple of alpenglow. Half Dome will be right in front of you.
You do have to prioritize what you do, and if you want to linger at certain places, by all means do so. This trip is for you. You may only want to do one hike and then drive up to Glacier Point. Or just walk through the meadow, sip coffee at Degnan’s and drive to Glacier for sunset.
The best single hike is the Vernal/Nevada trail. And if this is the only hike you are doing, you will have time to explore the area behind Half Dome. When you come back down, walk across the valley to the Indian Caves. A large flat rock near the main cave has holes worn deep into it where the Ahwahneechees ground acorns for food. Walk on to Washington Column and the Royal Arches, looking for climbers going up, and visit the grand Ahwahnee Hotel. Another grinding rock is along the trail by the parking lot. If you want to watch deer, the meadow by the Church Bowl is a good place to sit.
A quieter alternative to the rush of all this activity is to find a couple of natural settings that appeal to you (like Happy Isles, Mirror Meadow, and the bend on the river by Rixon’s Pinnacle) and stay in each place for a couple of hours, watching the valley change around you as the sun moves over the mountains. Discover what animals and birds call each part of the valley home. Feel yourself drawing close to nature.
And really, just to be in Yosemite and breathe the pine and oak-scented fresh air, is worth the trip. There is nothing that you need to do but sit back and let the majesty soak in.

            The most important decision I make when hiking in the wilderness concerns how many risks to take.
            If I stay on the trail, odds are good that I will survive. And I’ll survive if I have enough water for the trip and I’m physically in shape to hike up and down mountains for hours on end, and if the trail is clearly marked even when it goes over bare stone so that I don’t go off in the wrong direction, and the weather doesn’t change and turn beastly hot or frigidly cold, and it doesn’t snow and hide the trail, or freezing rain makes everything so slick that it’s impossible to continue on or go back over the ice. And I’ll survive if I don’t surprise a hungry bear or mountain lion, don’t trip and sprain an ankle, or fall down a ravine and have a boulder pin me down so that I have to cut off my hand in order to survive, like Aron Ralston, the guy portrayed in the movie. These are the common, everyday cautions.
            But I ratchet up the risk by pushing on the limits of my luck and doing things like hiking alone, which the rangers say never to do. Yet I do because I haven’t found anyone willing to get up before dawn, hike for twelve hours, eat fistfuls of nuts and raisins, and come back to camp at dusk. And I’ve discovered that I relish the quiet of a long hike by myself.  Forgotten matters rise to the surface from my subconscious that I think about, and I listen to the woods, the rivers, the birds, and the wind flowing through 200-foot-tall Sugar Pines, making them sing. When I’m in nature’s world, I like to pay attention to it. If someone were hiking with me, we’d talk and I would be thinking about what to say next. We’d be listening to each other, not to the outdoors. While this is valuable, it’s not what I go into nature to find. 
            There’s also part of me that likes to see if I can survive by myself in the wilderness, even if it’s essentially just walking through a strange forest filled with unsocialized animals for a really long time. Sometimes I take a shortcut between two trails, end up in a place that isn’t on the map, and have to figure out how to get back. Sometimes a bridge over a fast-moving creek is gone, and I have to find a way to get safely across. I like to sit quietly for an hour and see what animals show up.  Coyotes often come by, as do chipmunks and red-tailed hawks. I also like to stand on the edge of mountain peaks and look straight down below my toes, and to do things like hang from a tree that is leaning over the canyon just to have a better view of a waterfall because experiences like this put the taste of death in my mouth.
            What I want to find is what life is made of and to see how I react when I’m challenged and there’s the possibility of death if I make a mistake. I want adventures that remind me how glad I am to be alive.

In a favorite area of Yosemite, I like to sit by a bend in the Merced River and watch the reflection of Half Dome glow on the water. A slight breeze causes the surface of the slow moving river to ripple slightly, making Half Dome flicker.  A line creases the river’s surface where an underwater sand bar ends and the river drops down to a rocky bottom. The trees reflecting on the surface of the water shimmer with the water's movement.  Looking deeper, I see leaves fluttering on the river's bed, moving not to the movement of the air but to the current of the water.
Is the reflection of Half Dome on the water more real than the reflection of light on Half Dome?  Without the light, I would not see Half Dome at all.  When I see love on the smiling face of my beloved, is that a reflection or real? 

Anne Lamott tells the story of having her tonsils taken out as an adult.  After two weeks her prescription for painkillers ran out.  She called the doctor’s office to get a new prescription.  The nurse said No and told her to find some gum and chew it vigorously, which is the last thing that Lamott wanted to do with a painful throat.  The nurse explained that when we have a wound in our body, the nearby muscles cramp around it to protect it from any more violation, and that Lamott would have to use those muscles if she wanted them to relax.  She got the gum and she said that the first chews felt like she was ripping things in the back of her throat, but in a few minutes all of the pain was permanently gone.
For some people the death of a loved one is so traumatic that they never want to deal with the grief.  This freezes the one who died in a perpetual state of unresolved dying, and prevents survivors from taking the risk of loving someone else as deeply again.  They think this protects them from ever feeling the pain of grief, and it partially does, but it also drags shadows over every good thing that happens.  If we take no risks, we will experience no wonder.
Reality check.  If we love someone deeply, the benefits of this love outweigh the grief that we will feel when she or he dies. 
Reality check.  Life involves death; that’s part of the package.  It doesn’t matter if you like this or not.  The people we love are going to die, some by accidents, some by health problems, some by old age.
After the shock of a death wears off, we need to take our grief and chew it.  We have to exercise our muscles for life again.  The death is never going to go away, and we won’t ever forget the one we loved, but we need to eat, and dance, and love because life is about celebrating and loving others as much, and as deeply, as we can.
Also, the one who died would want us to be happy again.  Unless, of course, they are one of the demented few who want us to keep them on a pedestal and pay homage for all time.  In this case, now would be a good time to step away from this.

We aren’t alone when we hike by ourselves.  If we respect nature, it will be a companion who walks alongside us.  It will share itself with us, sometimes conversing so loudly in a waterfall that we can’t hear ourselves think, and sometimes murmuring so quietly in a creek that we have to get down on our knees to hear what it is saying.
We don’t have to hike very far to feel nature’s presence.  We can sit and let nature come to us.  After half an hour, the birds and animals will set their caution aside and resume what they were doing.  As we watch them go about their daily lives, we discover the many ways that we are kin. And when I am tired and silent, I lean back into nature’s arms and listen to the world we share.
We can also hike on and on without ever stopping until our senses overload from all the beauty and the endless discoveries and we fall mute in ecstasy.
When we begin to hike, we head off on a trail eager to discover what it will show us.  When the trail starts to head up a mountain, we take another trail to stay under the trees, or along the river, or in the meadow, unless, of course, we want the challenge of going up the steep side of the mountain.  We pause when we want to linger in a setting where we feel a presence, then move until we feel drawn to stop again.
Nature meets us where we are and guides us further down the path into our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs.  Nature also challenges us by bringing mysteries for us to ponder by the campfire at night.
When we listen to nature, we hear our own wilderness respond.   

A few years ago I was traveling home from Montana to Illinois when I decided to detour three hundred miles to Kathleen Norris’s town of Lemmon, North Dakota.  I didn’t tell her I was coming.  I just stopped in.  Not that I saw her, and I doubt that she even knew I was there.
Norris is the author of such books as Dakota, Cloister Walk, and Amazing Grace, and moved to North Dakota after living in the bright, shining din of New York City. I wanted to see where she writes of isolation and spirituality in a place she describes as “the high plains desert, full of sage and tumbleweed and hardy shortgrass.” 
Half an hour from her town, I drove into a thunderstorm and the world went dramatic -- dark and moody with hard driving rain.  As I came around a bend in the road, a slant of sunlight burst through the clouds and lit up a patch of the prairie.  I pulled over to the side of the road to watch.  The hillside sloped down to a low ridge of brown rock that cradled a small marsh with cattails and sedge.  The rays of the sun shimmered on the wet, green prairie grass as blue sky returned in the west.  A strong wind pushed the black storm clouds east and made it hard for birds to fly anywhere.  The rough, unforgiving land was stunning.
By the time I arrived at her town, the sky had cleared and warm sunlight was drying the earth.  The town is what I imagined it would be from her writing, a place trying to survive with the boom years behind it – abandoned stores, buildings in need of paint, and a petrified wood park.  I felt nostalgic surveying an aging town that had been physically pared back, but there were enduring signs of life.  A town is its people and if those who remain still gather to sing and dance, then their community is strong.
At the small café downtown, I ordered coffee, a slice of cherry pie, and watched the customers around me, thinking, these are Kathleen’s people.  They know her, and they knew generations of her kin.  Undoubtedly she has settled into a place among them as the Norris who writes books, is famous in the big cites, and flies off to give speeches.  They probably talk farm details with her, as well as matters of small town life that are coming up for debate at the next town meeting.  They see her in the grocery store and in church on Sunday.  Perhaps some of them talk to her about spirituality and mysticism, although most probably don’t.  Spirituality here is understood in one’s bones more than it is spoken, if it’s anything like the small town in Wisconsin where I grew up.
I was tempted to tack a note on the restaurant’s community bulletin board that would catch her eye one day, to let her know that her writings challenge me to be Protestant and spiritual, to value silence for the wisdom it brings, and to pay attention to my spiritual geography, the interplay between the landscape where I live and my spirit. 
But this is where she lives.  It’s her space to wander around in meditations that are as open as the land, following the rhythm of her thoughts and inklings to wherever they lead, and writing about the connections that will inspire people who live far away.  This is where she writes, where she can be just another person in town.  If she thought that strangers were here to see her, she might not be able to focus on her work.  I wouldn’t.  I live in a large city and I like to go to coffeehouses and walk on the street knowing that people don’t know who I am. I can work out the structure of a piece without worrying about being interrupted.
For Norris, the western Plains were her deserts of Egypt and Cappadocia where fourth-century monks set up shop and connected to the spirituality of the landscape:  “bountiful in their emptiness, offering solitude and room to grow.”  It was here, in this land of rough beauty and constant wind, that she found her voice as a writer.  From her I learned to pay attention when nothing seems to be going on, for then I begin to travel the wilderness within me.

(originally published by antler journal)

The bombings in Boston remind us that public tragedies lead to public grieving, and even if we don’t know anyone involved, when we see photographs of the faces of those who were killed when they were happy, see the faces of the injured in pain, see the despair on the faces of those who lost loved ones, we also grieve.  Public grieving becomes personal because we identify with their sorrow, confusion, and anger.  It doesn’t matter if the photographs are of people in Boston, India, or South Africa.  We are affected and we feel compassion rise from within us because we are part of the same human community.
When innocent people are killed, this is like a hammer tapping on a porcelain vase.  It sends cracks shooting through our conviction that goodness is the ruling force in the world.  How could this happen? we ask, as if we hadn’t been paying attention to news reports of bombings like this occurring around the world almost every day.  The pressure cooker bomb?  It’s the bomb of choice in Afghanistan.  How did we not know this?  We may take note of tragedies in far away lands being reported on the evening news, but then we go back to what we were doing, thinking “How sad, another bombing in…”  But if we see a photograph of the face or the limb that’s been blown off, then it becomes tangible and it affects us personally.  We grieve individual people, not numbers.
Maybe it’s the sense of vulnerability that affects us the most, what gets under our skin and makes us uneasy.  Most of us live with an assumed sense of security each day, and anything that intrudes into this protected space shakes our confidence.  For example, yesterday I read a poem by Brian Barker called “Dog Gospel.”  In it a farmer takes the family dog and abandons it far from home where it suffers horribly trying to survive.  A boy finds the dog, ties it to the ground, and watches as it slowly starve to death.  I don’t know if Barker is writing about something that really happened, but it reminds me of real people in the world who deliberately hurt the innocent just to see how they react.  It doesn’t matter if you call these individuals evil, mentally unstable, or sadistic, things like this happen far too often for me to dismiss it as isolated aberrations.
The truth is that life is always uncertain, even though we act as if we have all the time in the world and will live far into our eighties.  The truth is that life is still worth living even with all of the tragedies, because life is good and noble.
When we watch a public disaster unfold like the one in Boston, we see how ordinary people step up and take care of others simply because there is the need.  This teaches us how to help others when a tragedy happens near us, it prepares us to grieve, and it shows us that as horrible as something might be, we can survive if we refuse to give up.

I grew up in Wisconsin playing in the woods through the seasons and reading about John Muir, Aldo Leopold, and Sigurd Olson, nature writers in Wisconsin and Minnesota. I lived near Muir’s home, we both went to the University of Wisconsin, and one side of my family is Scottish, so there are those connections. Then he headed west and found himself entranced and delighted by Yosemite’s grandeur.