The pinnacle of the camping experience may be for some the complete absorbtion into nature while sipping ice cold canned beer and eating canned chili. For me it is different, and I don’t know yet what it is… but I felt a great thrill last night to be sitting on top of a giant boulder overlooking Mirror Lake, truly the only humans in the world, Kate and I out there and awake at all.
Kate was finishing her beer and suggested that we walk unarmed and unaware of where we were going by the faint moonlight of a setting quarter moon. “Great” I of course said.
So we walked a bit trotted some throguh the almost sickly thin pines of the campground, over a ghostly quiet bridge, and a long the rushing roaring Tenaya Creek. Eventually the roar hushed down, and we were left to sit in solitude above the water so still that the stars were reflecting. Above us, Half dome mightily caught every last drop of moonshine, and the snow on its rim sparkled pure white.
Yesterday was of course, The Day. My birthday. And so symbolically we had been planning to take off on this epic trip for two months now. And its been all waiting.
And in the final days it was all packing. Pack the bags, the lanterns, the towels, the stove, the mattresses, the jackets socks shirts the flashlights batteries. And then take them all out and repack since they dont fit all that well. And then get all stressed out about it becaues you are subconsciously thinkking the whole trip will be a disaster inevitably because you will die in the woods attempting to camp. from a truck.
Yesterday I woke up, showered, made coffee and packed. As opposed to the previous three days where I woke up and packed. Its just finding places for things. Kate rearranged food boxes, containers were shed, and a certain sense of ‘fuck it’ just kind of creeped in. And I went with it. We’d be alright. Its a camping trip not the end of the world.
The leaving is the best part of driving. Cruising down 80 East going 75mph just to keep up with the big rigs riding your tail is a glorious feeling.