Last summer, near Walker, CA

Two entries from late June, starting out on the PCT backcountry crew. This was back when we were training somewhere off highway 395, and my writing had space to breathe in the boredom of time passing in camp as we went through wilderness first aid and crew member training before the season really picked up.

6/27/2022

The way a piney floor warms, cut sparsely by a gentle breeze. Time to time, the wind picks up, a sheet of sound moves through these mountains. Fallen pine cones scatter amongst the needles. We pry off a scale, snap each in half to reveal the ribs beneath the woody surface. 

Just past 6 I headed up the ridge and bore right for a view of the valley going wide, out to the town in the flat. Trying to understand my position between these slopes. These ravaged slopes–a sliding mess of ash, of downed pines, and the greenery fighting to stake a claim on this severe slope. 

Twin babbling creeks, a spindly lupine taken root. The placement of boulders. The ones I sat amongst to shelter feebly from the wind. And the puzzling, rounded ones I saw high upon a steeper slope, left of where I chose to go. 

6/28/22

My sleep broke up into little anxious shards. This morning I got up at 5:20 to mount the ridge again. Walking up along the scree I was morning light thrown upon the far slopes. The sun was somewhere, hidden. 

Now it’s just before 10 and I’m in bed, fly open, spread wide to see the luscious array of stars upon the dark. I am tired.

Tired day. I took a wretched nap after lunch laying in the bed of needles by the babbling creek. Warm sun and flies danced upon my face. There and now a delicious rousing breeze would push through the valley. 

Stevie, fielding, jake and I went up that scree-covered slope to see what there was. We went up and up to the left, where I’d never been, us in a rocky intermediate hilltop all surrounded by majestic slope. Jake reads my tarot. We sit upon the earth, I dip my hands into earth and ash melded together and the dust glitters upon my sooted skin. 

I am going down alone, watching my shadow cast down the hill, making big strides as the sweetest portion of day blooms into light. 

Today after class was over I set out on the trail leading out of our campsite. 

I watched the crown of light shrink upon the rocky ridges, and a haze of sweet evening light settled and morphed over Walker. Then back down. Bed down, bedtime.

Penstemon’s fiery plumage looking down the spine of a valley. Granite faces that beckon you to mount, to push further, that threaten to take your breath. The squirrel mewling in the newborn dawn. The fractallike patterns found in the arrangement of scales in the freefallen pinecones. Vibrant snowflower pulls life from a fungal system. A snakefly meanders through the deep furrows of spruce-bark. The land that still has so much to teach me. What will i learn this summer?