darwin’s god.

Monday July twenty-second.




Forty feet to go. Twenty. I let J catch up out of breath persistent as ever clambering up the rocks below a feeling in me impossible to write. A pride beyond belief exploding. I let him pass as I always do so he could lead to the top. Struggling now I could tell with his own will to make the last few steps to the col. I snapped a photo of him. Then followed behind. At the top at last there was the sign: ENTERING KINGS CANYON NATIONAL PARK LAMARK COL. Someone had scratched in the metal the elevation: 12,880. And then beyond there was the view. So epic it took me by surprise. Startled. There was the whole granite rampart of the Sierra spread out in front of us peak upon peak upon peak. Darwin and Mendel leapt forth from the canvas that had up until this point only existed in my mind. Now here tactile enough to touch as if a chiaroscuro painting heavy handed unfolding. Light and dark. I turned and pointed south in an exclamation of all that was real in that linear moment toward streams of sunlight bursting forth from the literal hands of God. A complete painting of Darwin Canyon unfolded awash in focused pale light. Brushstrokes of cadmium and bromine. The lakes still a thousand feet below shimmered effervescent. Scraped dirty ice of glaciers tens of thousands of years old. The granite millions and millions. And J. Above me on top of the rocks now silhouetted against the chromatic blue sky fading. I felt alight in the dim instinct of the mountains. Afire. The stone and ice and water and light and fear and joy and myself were one. There I wept. And now I stare at this journal here trying to etch the sense of that moment knowing I cannot. Hanging on the molecules of air were droplets of water like tiny prisms scattered somehow in four dimensions. The iridescent light over it all.

*  *  *

A little over an hour earlier we were huddled under a rock overhanging while the storm at last died down. Rippling off in the distant west and north. We had been there almost three hours cowered while lightning flashed and hail dumped from blackened skies to cover the mountains as if from a fresh dusting of snow. At one point tucked in a ball with Stanley and George as his pillow J fell asleep all the while the hail fell and thunder exploded. I shivered. We were facing north and could see the way back from where we had come down to all the lakes we had passed. Upper and lower Lamarck. Grass. And North Lake even where the trail began splitting from the other heading over Piute Pass further to the north. Out even beyond then the outskirts of the dusty eastern Sierra town of Bishop and across the Owens Valley and White Mountains stark. More rain. Hail. The bolts of lightning seemed not to stop. Thunder shook the granite. But eventually it all began to quiet. The thunder more distant. Subtle flashes of lightning replaced sheer strikes still northwest over Mount Emerson and Humphreys and the red rock of the Piute Crags. North over Owens Valley. At last sunlight illuminated Bishop. The hail gave up. We had to decide at that hour whether to continue on to the col still another thousand feet above or retreat down to treeline and a small snowmelt stream. We decided for the col. Grabbed our packs. As we climbed the skies eased more and as we crested the final plateau and snowfield below the col the sun found us while dark clouds still clung to peaks west. J valiantly kept up and I stopped every so often to look back and see him soldiering on his legs unwilling to quit. The group of three we had met earlier at the start of the climb had given up and decided to pitch camp near the tarn below the col. We greeted them again as we made our way past up through the talus a giant mess of boulders to the snow and then the last hundred feet crumbly sand and rocks.

*  *  *

The descent down to the lakes seemed to stretch onward to infinity. Both of us drained from the storm nervous and frightening. Steep and no real path. I’d pick up the hint of a trail through the talus and gravel benches but lose it in an instant. The lakes and patches of green dotting their shores beckoned in the fading day. There after such exaltation I felt the rush of an impending low. Crawling over talus along the second lake inching our way over to a flat area just further beyond. More storm clouds approaching. How did J do it? How was he so strong when I felt on the edge of such collapse straining to keep leading us on? Struggling with every pore of my being for the strength. I saw my own transience. Tried to understand the meaningless of the mountains. How they simply exist. How I do not. Here this place so wild and desolate as to overwhelm. Mythic. Unchanging and changing. Above all the sky. We arrived and let our packs thud heavy on the granite. Rushing against what little light was left in the canyon I lit the stove (always such a welcome and comforting sound!) and while our food cooked rushed about setting up our tent and preparing camp here on a small perch nestled against a wall of rock. The light melted to pink. The granite glowed radiant with the hue of stormy Sierra summers. In all of my desperations to get us settled for the night I managed to stop only a few moments before fetching water and inflating air mattresses and unstuffing down bags. To absorb the spectacle of the light falling and filling against the stone the ice the water. Everything around us. Flicked on the lantern in the tent glowing a pale soft green against the dark sullen blues and greys and blacks of night. We engulfed our hot meal. J literally fell backwards muffled into his bag exhausted. Me - I braved the night to quick as I could do dishes and fetch water. Finally crawled into mine soft and warm. I could feel the storms descending like a dense heavy blanket. Spectacular.




Monday July twenty-third.





Awoke to hail beating down. Five o'clock. Just getting light. The sound of thunder clapping rebounding scattered off the walls surrounding us and returning as an echo of itself. Lightning flashes through the walls of the tent. Rain. Hail. Rain. Then slowly the dawn. A grey glow. The storm ravaged outside around us and I scurried deeper into my bag all the while J slept. Eventually both of us awake and around eleven finally a calmness settled. Slowly. At last I could peek out and eye the clouds south towards Evolution. They were breaking up. Hints of blue skies propelled me to break camp after together a quick hot breakfast. Shouldering our packs we headed off through the trail-less canyon picking our way along and around each of the lakes following at last an outlet stream as it spilled itself onto Darwin Bench epic below before branching out to bring life to tens of tarns and smaller streams all combining to crash a mile south far down into Evolution Valley. We scampered along the eastern edge of the bench to find the 'good use trail' (as Roper described it ... ) that would take us down to the John Muir Trail and onward to Evolution Lake. Followed it to the top of the final switchback climbing up from McClure Meadow far below. Then at last to Evolution. Cloud shadows. The immensities of Mounts Mendel and Darwin. And finally Mount Spencer ahead as we came upon the lake. Found a spot on which to toss our tent. Now to wander. Explore. Try to put to good use a view camera carried all this way over mountains. Find a photograph to make that possibly captures the grand scale of it all. Witness water from the outlet of Evolution crash and carve its way over disappearing falls to a creek far below winding through endless meadows illuminated. Shadows lengthen. The setting sun.




Tuesday July twenty-fourth.





I love Sierra mornings. Not like yesterday morning the thunderstorms on again off again hail. But these like today where I watched from inside the tent shadows created by the sun. Moving. Spilling. Falling. Our little camp goes from shadow to full sun in an instant. Brewed some coffee. Now sitting on granite wrapped in my sleeping bag the sound of Evolution Lake lapping at the shore nearby. A light breeze. Spectacularly quiet. No clouds though today. A group of hikers sets off around the far side of the lake east through this Evolution Basin. Over the Goddard Divide and Muir Pass east. Down into LeConte Canyon and further onward. The light last night was brief. It turned quickly from pinks to greys and then lost to dusk. Today under harsh unforgiving skies we climb point 11576 on the map above the western edge of Evolution Lake. To see south toward the divide and Sapphire and Wanda Lakes and a realm of rock barren jumbled and forsaken. Return to break camp and head back up to Darwin Bench for the night. J is up and moving now. Soon we'll be off.




Wednesday July twenty-fifth.





Morning of the fourth day. Sitting on granite with sun and breeze looking out over Darwin Bench. Clouds materializing off in the west distant horizons it seems as if over the ocean! Listening to The Violent Bear It Away. Goosebumps. A Godsend the wind. For some inexplicable reason I realize how I am drawn to this view now here of a faint trail far off beyond that leads into a clump of gnarled whitebark pine disappearing off toward the edge of the bench. Beyond the drop to the chasm of McClure and Evolution Valleys. And beyond that the massive wall of Sierra granite peaks immense. The Hermit looms. I am mesmerized with that trail. I know where it goes because we found it - followed it - two days earlier onward to Evolution. But if I did not know - and even that I do - it disappearing off to somewhere that cannot be seen pulls me forward like gravity and reminds me of how I know but do not know. A mad-crazy wild. A treeless waste. Moby crescendos and tears well up in my eyes all of this exploding right now in this absolute moment unbearable. The secret of mountains. How they and we are the same. How we are both made up of the same elements. How we are both alone mountains and men. I here on Darwin Bench. Mendel beside me. Everyone everywhere spinning through the universe. Surrounded by these peaks in this immensity of silence is awesome. I am alone. I feel the onset of something more grand and frightening than of which I can speak. I break down in the instant. Walls crumble. I expect nothing. I am nothing. I aim to go forward lightly from now on without hesitation or thought of attainment. Ruined and at the same time reborn under the glistening sky. These experiences. This solitude. The complete and desperate loneliness. But just the same in utter contrast and harmony the sharing of these moments. How they parallel each pushing and pulling the other. The ones alone like this right now with the ones of J and I together. The immense pride a father himself weak of his son who under his own little power crested the mighty Sierra Nevada thirteen thousand feet above the sea then followed his father himself lost flailing inwardly down miles and miles. Always following without question. Without hesitation. Only trust. An absolute and complete trust that frightens me whole but also gives me an unbearable strength. An unbelievable responsibility to bear for which I am never certain I can truly fulfill but cherish the crushing weight of it perhaps more than anything else this life has so far brought. It is in these places looking off into infinities endless where I can find some resemblance of peace. Let my insecurities and failings and weaknesses disintegrate into the atoms of the air. I exhale. It is okay to feel alone at times. Vulnerable. Scared. Petrified even as I do now a sinking feeling deep within. To cower under granite and let the hail and lightning and thunder crash down and shatter the still silence and security of everything that once was now surely soon to be lost. The very frightful torment to realize the weight of everything every moment I have ever lived and have ever rejoiced and have ever regretted. To pick a way through a treeless canyon under towering granite and glaciers where I know storms have raged and ravaged raw the stone and waters pure then let revealed again the sounds of meadows and of waterfalls and of streams all finding their way endless to the ocean towards the omniscient sun. Clouds paint broad strokes across a calm sky. Tonight we plan to camp at the lake just below the col on the other side of civilization. Will have to watch the weather. It can approach fast and I do not want us stuck on this side of the crest. Should be going soon. From here it seems an impossibly long climb to the col and I relish this delicious moment made complete with the realizations of all I am. Of all I am not. I could sit here in the sun warm on granite forever. Just lie down. Rejoice in the sun and the storms and the skies. The soft trails that show the way. The sharp talus that does not. The shade and the water of streams. Listen. Feel. Push on. This wildness is in me now. I take it with me. Inside me. When I am back over on the other side of the crest I reassure myself now I will always have this moment. And the moment suspended at the col with J. Music washes over me like the imperial sun flowing through me and becoming part of everything that is here now real. I can touch it all. But time to let the silence now fill me. Time to go back. Find J (I see him looking for me now!) Skip rocks together in the tarn near camp. See if I can beat his six skips (the record so far!) Be his dad. Be strong for him. Lead him once more up and over these mountains. Reveal everything. Hide nothing. Climb. Laugh. Play. The present here and now.




Thursday July twenty-sixth.





Last morning. Had breakfast then coffee (coffee is infinitely more delicious out of beat up metal mugs!) Now sitting again on granite. Always. There will be time later for couches and cushions. For now there is sun and breeze a kind of summer Sierra perfection. Even the bugs have kept away. I am staring south to Mount Lamarck and the monolithic Sierra crest rugged stretching like a craggy spine along the topaz sky. Remnants of glaciers nearly melted forever now scrape hold to rock. Clinging. Grasping on with all their might. We were on the other side of all this just yesterday. Removed from everything else. From the impending tragedy that has me here now myself clutching to the past. To the present. Fearing the future. The arriving. The leaving. On the other side of the crest there was nothing but ourselves and light and stone. The elemental space found in these places where only God is as the Buddha described everywhere and in everything the sun and the stars and the time and the space in between it all. We were at the cosmic center of the universe. Nothing else mattered. I could forget all that had happened. All that had not and would still. Shortly we pack up for North Lake and Spencer and showers and swimming pools and real food and cotton. I try to hold on to this moment. Desperate. We even might try to see a movie in Bishop tonight to complete our reintroduction frighteningly abrupt and sudden back into civilization. For certain the Bishop town pool will do the trick swarming with California kids in bikinis and smiles skin darkened under months of the Owens Valley sun. But I will try when we've returned to keep this center. I must. No matter what. To not lose hold of the moment atop the col now centuries ago it seems the light shimmering everything else God it seemed even the universe holding its breath standing still for us. Allowing the pause. I face the crest now intentionally. To my back the view north to Bishop and the valley. An old gentleman khaki-clad daypack had passed us earlier as we stirred around camp. Seemed a bit lost looking to find the way to the col for the day. Silliness. Doesn't he know as Muir once said that to truly experience wilderness one must spend the night out in it? Under it. Surrounded by it. Where we can be boundless. Where our imagination makes us infinite as he once wrote. But I pointed the man in the right direction nonetheless. Just no sight of him yet across to the steep ridge switchbacked up onward to talus (he should be climbing it by now?) Maybe he turned back. We just have to pack. Easy hike out all downhill. A few miles. Crazy I think now the geology of mountains. How they all rise and rise and rise ever higher to a crest then fall away on all sides in every direction determining in their very essence which way the rivers spill to the oceans. Summits splinter the space above. To themselves fall away over time. Eons. And on the other side such wildness. Such incredible breaking beauty. How far one can go with only a pack placing one foot in front of the other. Thousands and thousands of feet up and down. Miles and miles and miles. J plays and swats at flies nearby. I must finish writing this. The sounds of the stream below the upper and lower lakes the only thing that breaks the silence now in between. The blue polarized sky cloudless. The grey granite looming.