The Range of Light

To all, I apologize for shirking my blogging duties so brazenly, I just returned from a wondrous, refreshing backpacking trip with my Father - there are no PCs in the High Sierras. Two Saturdays ago, we walked into the heart of the Sierra Nevada mountain range with our grins and what we could carry on our backs, eventually covering a 75-mile stretch of the John Muir Trail from Florence Lake to Kings Canyon National Park. Last Friday I reluctantly walked out to face the world and responsibility once again, spent, satiated, and utterly at peace with the world's everything - even the blinding pain of my blistered feet were natural, normal and accepted, if not welcomed.

We traversed three twelve-thousand foot passes, were rained on every afternoon and a few nights, caught and ate fresh trout, and saw less than 10 people every day. It was like a dream, a sweet lucid dream that flitted all too briefly and lambently on the surface of our consciousnesses and left us scratching our heads when the time was up and we realized the alotted days had passed. I was a boy scout again, and Father an 18 year old at Outward Bound survival camp.

Indeed, there were flashes of both my passed childhood and my emerging manhood, as there were of Father's youthful vigor and waning strength. The first night we camped, it began raining while we were still walking - we made camp hastily in the cold and the moisture, the sun dropping rapidly, and I promptly crawled into the tent and laid there quietly, worrying. Father stayed outside in the rain to do the various small, essential camp-making tasks - covering our packs with tarps, preparing our frugal dinner, and hanging our food out of any bear's reach, high from a pine bough. I felt 12 again in that little tent in the rain, helpless, completely dependant on his strength, experience, and determination.

As the next few days went by, though, and as more and more of our supplies made their way into my burgeoning pack so that his bad ankle could be spared their weight - a silent but acknowledged understanding between us in which I simply removed items from his and placed them in mine - I realized that he was becoming dependant on me; that my strength and perserverance were making our current journey possible, just as his had made our previous trips possible. I think this fostered an even greater love and respect between us; I finally understood some of the sacrifices he'd made as the father, as our pillar, and he realized (and acknowledged gracefully) the sacrifices I was currently making as the son, as our pillar.

As I write this, my Father is still out there in the wilds of the Range of Light (as John Muir himself called it), Father being somewhat slower than I, Father being somewhat smarter than I, he's taking his time to explore that majestic land. That bright Thursday morning I left him smiling there under a 100 year old Ponderosa Pine, wearing the same red windbreaker he had worn on our first JMT excursion 9 years ago, I was saddened, frightened, and empowered - I walked the last two days of my journey alone, 40 tough, decending miles to civilization with a pack lightened by the supplies left behind for Father. I breathed the clean air and ruminated on the petty butting of heads Father and I had shared, so typical as to almost be ritual, during our 5 days together in nature's playground. Though the generation gap affects us less than most, I believe, it still affects us, and I, alone, felt belated guilt and shame for letting my hunger and fatigue dictate my petulant responses to his earnest questions and observations. I'm sorry, Dad. truly. And maybe, just maybe, that was the karma hitting the fan, that rain I felt on my first day's lone walk as I ascended Mather Pass at 12,399 feet, that twinge of pain in my bad shoulder as I wrapped poncho around body and backpack, my just desserts at eleven thousand feet.

But our camraderie and love shine through all else in the shadows of my memory and, I suspect, in his as well. We shared jokes, jabs, and a love of nature so raw it left us speechless on an hourly basis. We built campfires and shared the warmth. We slept side by side, both out under the stars and in our tiny tent, as the weather dictated. We goaded eachother on when tired and we forced eachother to rest when bullheaded. We fished together, we cooked together, we filtered streamwater together.

So, Dad, when you read this, even though now you're still up there, in the closest place to Heaven on this Earth, I just need to say thanks, for being there, together with me, for this past week, and for the past 25 years. I love you honestly and openly, fiercely and profoundly, in a way only you could've taught me.

I love you, my pillar, my burden, my Father.

-Sherpa Teddy

PS - Links to pictures will follow. Scout's honor.

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