solitude.

Two weekends ago, Julian and I started a major fall cleaning and I tasked myself with scouring the living room for anything to get rid of. Since I don't own much, all there was to scour was through my boxes of books that still don't have a proper bookshelf in which to be stored. Someday. But I pulled out a National Geographic from April of 1989 that featured an article by photographer Galen Rowell about the John Muir trail, which I just got around to reading last night sitting on couch with Julian next to me looking at a picture puzzle book his aunt Kathy had given him last year while she was out visiting.

The article about the JMT was good, and Rowell quoted Muir in saying ~

".... only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness."

Ernie DeGraff, an assistant recreation officer for Inyo National Forest, was quoted ~

"Solitude," letting the word hang for a moment, "is a legal requirement for designated wilderness. Congress directs us to provide 'outstanding opportunities for solitude.'"

This was surely the direction of the Wenatchee National Forest, governed by the Department of Agriculture (as opposed to national parks, which fall under the Department of the Interior), in its instigation of a quota system for a small corner of the North Cascades known as The Enchantments. So few groups are let in at the same time during the peak months that rarely does one run into another soul while up there exploring amongst the glacial lakes and granite peaks.

I write this now because I am going to make the gamble and head up there tomorrow under half inclement weather and what appears to be a hole in it right around Leavenworth (the town just outside The Enchantments). I'm betting it'll be at least a little sunny, and I'll be able to sneak in under it and maybe capture some photographs of the larches before winter closes down on the mountains here in the next couple of weeks and the larch lose their needles.

I am going alone for the very essence of what Muir talks about, remembering my last trip there alone under perfect skies that unleashed a fury during the night. Dramatic as always, the mountains. I'm hoping for nothing less.