A Sacred Duty

I climbed the sweeping broad steps, passed between the towering columns of the grand old building, walked through a pair of heavy oaken doors, and entered the hushed antechamber. The familiar place, the auditorium of San Fernando Junior High (nee San Fernando High School), had been transformed into a secular temple for the day. People spoke in whispers. American flags draped the walls.

 

 

On November 7, 1972, I voted for the very first time. I was a member of the first class of eighteen-year-olds voting for US President after the passage and ratification of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment to the US Constitution in July 1971. The Vietnam War was in full tilt. President Richard Nixon was running for a second term against Senator George McGovern. The buzz around the election was deafening.

 

The auspiciousness of the occasion was a bit intimidating. The pride I felt in being a “real adult” with the rights and responsibilities of a full citizen pushed me forward. My shoes clicked on the tile floor as I queued up behind the handful of my fellow citizens waiting to vote.

 

I scanned the long and narrow, high-ceiling foyer. At both ends were arrayed several voting booths. Sturdy and tall, built of dark wood, and the size of a phone booth, each was draped with a privacy curtain of vertically striped canvas. Some stood vacant, the curtain drawn back and inviting. Other curtains, pulled closed, revealed only the voters’ knees, ankles, and shoes, while protecting the voters' privacy of choice from the public eye.

 

“Name?” asked the first gray-haired woman sitting at the check-in table.

“Joan Griffin”

“Address?”

“556 North Brand Boulevard, San Fernando.”

She found my entry in the long list of names and checked me off.

“Put your signature here.” A younger woman, as conservatively dressed as the older women who bookended her, pointed at the line next to my printed name in her own book of lists. “Be sure to sign your full name.”

I took the pen and with great care wrote my first, middle, and last names in my best script, then pushed the book back. The woman scrutinized my entry before passing me on to the third clerk.

“Here’s your ballot.” The immaculately dressed and coifed woman held out a long, sheathed card. Then, noting my youth, she stood up, unfolding all five-feet of herself, and added in a grandmotherly voice, “Have you done this before, dear?”

“No, ma’am. This is my first time voting.” I spoke in the steady confident voice of my new personae—liberated female college freshman—but I’m sure she caught the ample dose of nervousness mixed with my bubbling pride.

She pointed me to an open voting booth to my left and reminded me to use the special pen waiting inside to put an X in the boxes beside my choices.

“Thank you.” I turned and approached the booth, feeling empowered and anxious.

 

I removed my marked-up sample ballot from the large macrame purse hanging on my shoulder, stepped into my booth, pulled the curtain tight behind me, and took a deep breath. Pressing my papers flat on the small shelf, I pick up the pen and was surprised to find my hand shaking. Another deep breath. I marked my ballot slowly and with great care. I took great pleasure in voting against Nixon and The War, voting for McGovern and The Peace Movement. 

Filled with pride and a deep sense of patriotism, I swept back my curtain, dropped my ballot in the box, and strode through that sacred space and outside into the bright light of that brisk and breezy autumn afternoon.

Dances with Dragons

Another glimpse into my memoir, Force of Nature: Three Women Tackle the John Muir Trail. JMTers and PCTers we met on the trail would pass along snippets of advice or warnings about obstacles and challenges ahead. Sometimes the story was complete and helpful, sometimes it was more a scary mystery than informative advice. Cappy and I began to call the warning tales Trail Legends. This is the story of one of those Trail Legends.

 

            I tossed my backpack up onto my back with one easy motion.

            That’s right.

            TOSSED. BACKPACK. EASY.

            My pack had become an integral part of me, rather than an ungainly piece of luggage strapped awkwardly to my back and shoulders. Like a camel has her hump, like a crow has her caw, like a shark has her fin, I had my pack… and we were one. Not only had its shape become my shape, its weight become my weight, and I knew exactly where, in its myriad of inner and outer pouches, each an every one of my possessions was hidden. Packing, unpacking, accessing, and carrying had all become second nature, instinctive.

            It was satisfying knowledge that gave me growing confidence. And confidence I would need, as this was the day we would face and ford Silver Creek—Trail Legend Number Two.

            We’d been hearing rumors about the treacherous Silver Creek water-crossing for two days. It seemed every person on the JMT had something to say on the subject of the Silver Creek Waterfall. Those headed north, mostly long distance PCT hikers, mumbled warnings as they strode swiftly past, disappearing before one could even ask a question. Fellow SOBOs, gathered at trail-side rest stops, compared what they’d heard, and attempted to assemble bits and pieces of information into a cohesive story.

            The gist of Trail Legend Number Two was that the sweet little meandering Silver Creek would grow into the powerful Silver Creek Waterfall… which just so happened to land directly on top of the trail, pounding downwards to sweep travelers off their feet and down the face of the mountain. The story left us with a dozen questions and no answers. The day before, I’d written in my journal about the Trail Legend.

 

The river is full and fast, they said.

You have to pass under a waterfall, they said.

It’s dangerous, they said.

It might be impassable, they said.

 

            So it was with this odd combination of confidence and trepidation that we set out that beautiful morning. The morning’s hike was mostly downhill, first through lovely green meadows, then through pine and fir forests, always following the Silver. Twice, we crossed the creek in thigh-high water.

            We stopped everyone we met to ask about Silver Creek and its waterfall crossing. The NOBOs, muscled and tested as they were from nearly four months on the trail from Mexico, all seemed to confirm what we already knew, but offered little advice about how to approach the crossing beyond, “Be careful,” before rushing off.

            “Obviously, all these people survived the crossing, so could it really be that bad?” I asked Cappy, my mind working on the problem.

            “They’re all so much bigger and stronger than we are. Remember yesterday, at the lunch stop, that bearded guy said people had gotten knocked down the hillside and hurt?” Cappy worried out loud.

            “If it was just one group with the story, I’d think they were pulling our legs,” I said. “But everyone seems to be telling the same story.”

            “I know,” Cappy agreed. “That’s what makes me worry.”

            We’d had this conversation a half dozen times just between the two of us, trying to wrap our brains around the obstacle and come up with some sort of a solution. I told myself to not think about the waterfall anymore, to just wait and see, but that was like telling myself to not think about pink elephants. It was all I could think about.

            

            The gentle trail ahead turned into switchbacks that would take us steeply downhill alongside the plunging Silver Creek. Before descending, we stepped off the trail to stand on a granite hump right at the point where the cascading creek first leapt off the edge. I looked over the side to watch the water falling and bouncing for hundreds of feet. Cool air rushed up from below amplifying the roar into a cacophony.

            “Somewhere down there, we have to cross under all this water,” Cappy shouted above the din. Looking down the mountain for some indication of where the trail and the creek would meet again, I couldn’t see past the tumbling water and its cloud of spray.

            I raised my open hands to signal that I shared her disbelief.

 

            It was well after our morning break when the trail stopped dropping, leveled out, and became a nearly flat path, a shelf, cut across the face of the granite canyon wall. Trickles of water from snowmelt higher up made their way haphazardly downward, darkening the bronze-colored stone. Trees stood tall between us and the sun, and vegetation lined the path on either side, carpeting the ground with green moisture-loving ferns and shrubs.

            According to Cappy’s map, we were just steps away from a face-to-face meeting with Trail Legend Number Two. The same creek we’d admired two hours earlier as it leapt into thin air was about to make a reappearance as its alter ego, the crashing end of the waterfall.

            Walking, I searched ahead, trying to bend my vision around each next curve of the trail, in order to catch a first glimpse of the watery obstacle. Emerging round one of those curves, striding directly towards us, was a figure straight from the pages of Outlander. Had we been transported to the Scottish Highlands? Or had he walked through a time warp into the Sierra?

            He stood well over six feet, with broad shoulders that made his backpack look like a child’s toy. His hair and beard were a thicker, longer version of the curly ginger fur that covered his muscled arms and legs.

            “Hey, Ladies!” his deep voice greeted us from a dozen feet ahead. A broad smile spread across his warm and friendly face as he approached from the south. “I’m Bear!” His PCT trail name was an apt moniker; he did resemble a great big cinnamon bear, rippling with muscles.

            “Hey,” we both responded. This was our last chance to learn something helpful about the fast approaching crossing.

            “Can we ask you about the waterfall?” Cappy said quickly, before he could vanish.

            “Why sure, Little Lady,” he beamed, his gold-green eyes twinkling under bushy brows. “What is it you want to know?”

            A floodgate of questions burst from us both.

            First Cappy, “How far is it? How high is it?”

            Then me, “Does it really fall on the trail? Is there any way around it?”

            “Whoa there. It’s not so difficult or scary as all that. If you do exactly what I tell you to do, you’ll be safe,” he assured us, putting one paw-like hand on Cappy’s shoulder and the other on mine in a calming, reassuring gesture.

            Bear remained there in the center of the trail with us for a full five minutes, while he gave us step-by-step directions for approaching and passing safely through the infamous waterfall ford. He gestured with his hands and used his body to demonstrate proper stance and movement, like a sensei in his martial arts dojo instructing his students in The Way. And we were good students, scrutinizing every movement and hanging onto every word.

            It all boiled down to three things: First—Pass through one at a time, enter slowly, then get through quickly, so you’re not inside too long. Second—Stay way over to the left, with your shoulder right up next to the canyon wall, so you’re behind most of the water. Third—Unbuckle your pack, so if it goes over the edge, you don’t go with it.

            "Oh, Bear! Thank you so much!" Cappy and I talked over the top of one another showing him how grateful we were.

            Relief and a smidgen of confidence began to return. We can do this, I thought.

            We waved farewell to Bear, our Trail Angel Sensei, whose appearance was so perfectly timed it felt like Trail Magic, and watched him disappear around the corner headed north.

            Less than a-quarter-of-a-mile down the trail, we put his advice to the test.

            The siren’s call of the water reached out to us, drawing us in, long before she was visible. Cappy and I walked side-by-side, slowing our pace, stretching our vision to find the first sign of what had taken on the personality of a water-breathing dragon. The trail curved slightly to the left hugging the curving canyon wall.

            I saw a flash of white and reached out to clutch Cappy’s arm.

            “Is that it?” I whispered.

            We took a few more steps, my hand still on her arm.

            “Yessss,” Cappy said, breathing out what had become obvious.

            We stopped in our tracks to watch the living thing as she danced atop the rocky ground shining wet from the mist that hovered like a cloud. The roar at the top of the cliff, two hours earlier, had been loud. At the bottom, where the water pounded on the stone, she was deafening, yet beautiful, in the way live dance music is floor-poundingly beautiful, even when it makes your ears ring.

The fire hose of water fell straight down the cliff from above. It bounced once, right on the footpath, and fell again. The trail disappeared into the bouncing froth. Shards flew. Foam boiled. The gush roared. Twenty feet ahead, the footpath reappeared. This was it. The Trail Legend was true after all. We really did have to walk through a waterfall.

“Stay left,” Bear had said. “Lean into the cliff, then walk straight.”

I stood on wet rock, watching the water. Calculating, I prepared myself.

“Okay,” I said. “On the count of three,” I breathed deeply, sucking in courage.

“One…

"Two…

"Three!”

I plunged forward, head and shoulders down. My feet found solid footing on wet granite. The torrent flew over my head and past my right shoulder. The backspray of frigid water engulfed me, more airy foam than water. I gasped. I shrieked in shock… then in delight!

It wasn’t difficult after all, like wading through thick bubbles. It was exhilarating, thrilling, wonderful! I slowed down to savor the last steps of my stroll through a waterfall.

Cappy waited behind, watching from the other side. I found her eyes and waved across the white dragon’s back. “Come on!” I yelled, raising both arms in the air in triumph.

She waved and hollered in return, her voice swallowed by the roar of the falling water between us, her meaning making its way across without it. She celebrated my triumph with me.

“It’s fun!” I hollered, knowing she couldn’t hear my voice. I took out my disposable cardboard camera, with its last remaining shot, and carefully took aim at Cappy completely engulfed in a halo of foam and against a backdrop of bronze-hued rock.

After she emerged, we stood, wet and ecstatic, looking back at conquered Legend Number Two and laughed. We clinked poles in a metallic high-five and stood for a long time admiring the mighty and graceful falls.

Where minutes earlier I had seen only her power and the danger, felt only my fear, I saw sublime beauty—turquoise and white cascading downward over glistening
rock, polished to marble and carved over eons by torrents and trickles into sensuous curves.  

[First and last photos are mine. Second and third photos were taken by Caroline Hickson.]

 

Cornucopia - Preparation & Plenty

 

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

~ Mary Oliver, "The Summer Day” from New and Selected Poems, 1992

         

When it comes to travel and adventure, I’m a planner and organizer. I love it when I have everything dialed out—details researched, decisions made, lists created, piles gathered, bags packed—well before departure day. It’s probably obsessive, but it bolsters my confidence and sense of control when all my ducks are lined up. I’m free to be spontaneous in the midst of an adventure and enjoy the moment when I’ve allowed myself to be obsessive beforehand. 

Of course, this has also been my approach to my memoir writing project, Force of Nature: Three Women Tackle the John Muir Trail. To kick off entering the final leg of this writing journey—the very first steps of the challenging final leg—I'm sharing a chapter that didn't make the editor's cut. Stephen King calls that culling process "killing your darlings." This "darling" of mine is a bit of a prologue to the grander adventure story.

 

 

It was June 2006. I sat on the dark Oriental rug in my living room amidst mounds of the food and supplies that were destined to be packed into four shipping boxes. My food caches would be mailed ahead to specific pick-up locations along the two-hundred-mile trail. One cardboard box, already packed, taped, and addressed to Red's Meadows Resort, where we'd be on Day Five if all went according to plan, sat off to the side. It contained five days’ worth of meals—four planned days of hiking plus one extra day, just in case we didn't make the distance we intended.

I filled in the label on a second box, addressing it to myself at Vermilion Valley Resort, where I intended to pick it up on Day Nine. It contained meals for four days, one for each walking day, plus an extra. Red's Meadows and Vermilion Valley (known among hikers as Red's and VVR) were both commercial campgrounds situated on the border of the wilderness, a short hike off the JMT, and they would, for a moderate fee, provide caching services to JMT and PCT thru-hikers. When I finished addressing box number two, I set it next to number one and turned my attention to the third.

Picking up food cache at Muir Trail Ranch.

Container number three would travel to Muir Trail Ranch. Located halfway along the trail, at about the one-hundred-mile mark, Muir was more remote than Red's or VVR, so charged hikers more for its caching service. They also required supplies be packed inside a heavy duty, five-gallon, plastic paint bucket with a secure lid. It seemed they had a rodent problem, and plastic kept the wildlife out of the people food. I pulled the bucket to my side and began the packing process for the third time.

           I'd started a few hours earlier with several shopping bags filled with the food and supplies I'd purchased over recent weeks spread all over the floor. Slowly the bags' contents became mounds, which were sorted and organized into smaller piles.  

           Then I'd begun organizing the food, measuring and packaging individual portions into bags for thirty traveling and eating days. Thirty little bags of mocha or chai. Thirty of Gatorade. Thirty medium bags of nuts with dried fruits. Thirty of assorted powerbars. Thirty of cookies.  Thirty lunches. Thirty freeze-dried dinners, all pre-tested and chosen for cooking ease and savory flavors. Each of those placed into larger Ziploc bags, one for each of the five legs of the hike. Five little bags of hard candy.

All measurements and calculations were based on a three-thousand-calorie-per-day diet that included plenty of proteins (for keeping muscles strong) and ample fats and carbohydrates (to maintain consistent energy).

            “Three-thousand calories a day. Now that’s a lot of food!” I said aloud, though no one was there to observe me sitting like an island in a sea of Ziploc bags.

I'd learned when hiking I'm rarely very hungry at breakfast time and never in the mood for breaking out the stove in the morning cold, so I planned to eat a pair of protein bars. My chilly morning’s true pleasure came from a steaming hot beverage, so I’d put my efforts into measuring and pre-mixing various coffee ingredients into the smallest Ziploc bags.

For lunch, when I’d be starving, I planned high protein options with lots of carbohydrates. Summer sausage, spicy and fatty, was my favorite backpacking lunch protein, but once opened it would only last two days unrefrigerated. I’d eat it first, then alternate between the tuna and peanut butter.

For dinners, I’d fire up the stove and cook hearty dehydrated entrees. I'd used Enertia brand before and loved their savory, no-mess meals. Hot tea would top off my evening meals. Between meals, I planned to snack on nuts, dried fruit, and more bars. Tangerine-flavored Gatorade and hard sugar candies mid-afternoon would give me that extra energy boost I’d need. I measured, weighed, counted, and packaged until I had ten sets of bulging plastic bags.

Making dinner on the trail.

Nine days finished, two shipping containers to go. Still arrayed across the floor on three sides of me, were twenty-one days’ worth of food in little organized piles. I’d carry six of those remaining in my backpack on the first leg. For leg three’s nine days of walking I prepped ten sets of meals for the plastic paint bucket going to Muir Ranch Resort. That left five for the final box being mailed to the packhorse service.

Just thinking of the packhorse service made me a little nervous. The location along the trail where we wanted the fourth food cache was nearly twenty miles away from any town or supply facility, so we’d arranged for a horseman to pack in our food and meet us right on the trail. Those arrangements were causing Cappy and me anxious concern. The other three advertised their services online, and we’d made arrangements over the phone, but the packing outfit had been difficult to contact. Our first calls went unanswered. When they did respond, their messages were garbled and missing key bits of information. The fee for a horse and rider to make the trip out to the trail was expensive, and meet-up directions were vague. The food drop was a necessity, however, so we were determined to make it work.

Packhorse & Cowboy after delivering food caches.

"We’ll meet the man on the horse without difficulty. I'm sure of it," I told myself out loud like an aphorism—things said aloud sound more certain.

I refocused on packing. Despite my concerns, I was excited. Packing boxes for mailing was a tangible step towards making my adventure dream come true.

I put the food in first, sturdy dinners in a pile at the bottom, then the more fragile lunches on top. I stood the bags containing protein bars around the outer edge, circling the stacked meals. That would hold them tight without jostling during shipment. On top, I placed my personal care and first aid supplies, with the softest bits—undies, socks, and shirt—on the very top. Last, I filled the empty space with crumpled newspaper and sealed the lid.

 

Cappy, Jane, and I planned to step onto the trail on Wednesday, July 19. I’d drive down to Tuolumne Meadows Campground in Yosemite’s high country early to acclimate, on Sunday, July 16. I’d mail my food caches two weeks before D-Day on July 5. So, I intended to have everything ready to mail before the Fourth-of-July weekend began.

 [First two photos were taken by my hiking partner, Caroline. Third photo was taken by "Zoe".]

Fish Out Of Water at Camp Gold

A small stream flowed through Camp Gold. Dammed and widened into a small pond under the shade of tall trees, it was kept richly stocked with trout exclusively for young fishermen and women. Dad and I took part in an organized father-daughter fishing activity one afternoon. A good sport, Dad patiently followed the leader’s directions to guide me through the complicated task of putting a bait worm on my hook — a “night crawler” pulled from a cardboard cup of soil and worms we’d picked up at the camp store where we’d checked out my orange-colored fishing pole. I wrinkled my nose, but didn’t let go when the long, pink worm wiggled and contorted each time I stabbed it with the small barbed fishhook. And I had to stab it a few times to get its long body to stay on the hook. When I’d finished, the poor thing looked like I’d tied it into a big, ugly, painful knot.

Next, Dad showed me how to get the bait and hook out into the water. The trick was to gently cast it into the pond without entangling my line with any of the dozens of other lines being tossed about by the other father-daughter pairs encircling the pond. Inexperienced young fisherwomen sent their lines flying this way and that, and lines crisscrossed first to the left, then to the right, sometimes three and four at a time. It was a bit like a circular firing squad, the result being entangled lines galore.

Miraculously, fish managed to get caught despite the chaos! I yelped each time there was a tug on my line. Usually, it had just caught or been caught by another young angler. But once, the tug came from an actual fish!

Dad, seeing the tip of my pole dip dangerously toward the water, grabbed it halfway up and held it steady. “Reel it in,” he said. There was excitement in his voice, though not nearly as much as there was in mine.

“What do I do? What do I do?” I squealed! I gripped the handle of the pole with my left hand and the handle of the spinner in my right. I was concentrating so hard on the fish and the pole that time seemed to stop and the other people and their noise seemed to disappear.

“Don’t rush now. Very slowly, turn the handle this way,” Dad said, his bushy black eyebrows pulled together in concentration. Still steadying the pole for me, he put his large, free hand over mine and together we turned the handle and began to pull in my fish. After a few turns, he removed his hand, but held it close by at the ready.

When my fish began to emerge from the water, Dad helped me swing the pole to the side and bring the sparkling and wiggling trout to dry land beside us. He grabbed the line, and the fish flopped and thrashed on the ground. “Take it. Take it,” I said, pushing the pole towards my father.

“No,” he answered. “It’s your fish. You get to finish this.” His dark eyes were serious and his deep voice modulated to keep me calm.

Together, we held the wet slippery animal, while Dad worked out the hook.

I don’t remember how we transported my catch to the cleaning area or anything about that messy process, but I remember taking the cleaned fish to the back door of the mess hall. I remember the kitchen staff accepted my prize, wrapped it in white butcher paper, labeled the package with my name, and placed it in an oversized refrigerator.

The next morning, at breakfast in the huge, rustic mess hall, my name was called on the loudspeaker. Dad and I stood and waved from our wooden benches, and a white-aproned waiter wound his way across the room to deliver to me my own cooked catch. Head and tail still attached, its round black bead of an eye staring directly at me, my fish greeted me. Dad showed me how to pull the head, tail, and backbone out with one smooth movement.

“I’ve never had fish for breakfast,” I laughed, my fork poised.

I offered everyone in the family a bite of my prize catch, but I ate most of the moist white meat and much of its crunchy, salty skin all by myself.