on camp curry & what the woods taught me // yosemite twenty-thirteen.

Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer. Camp out among the grasses and gentians of glacial meadows, in craggy garden nooks full of nature's darlings. climb the mountains and get their good tidings, nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. the winds will blow their own freshness into you and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autum leaves. // john muir // 

As long as I live, I'll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing. I'll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm, and the avalanche. I'll acquaint myself with the glaciers and wild gardens, and get as near the heart of the world as I can. // john muir // 

Everything is flowing -- going somewhere, animals and so-called lifeless rocks as well as water. Thus the snow flows fast or slow in grand beauty-making glaciers and avalanches; the air in majestic floods carrying minerals, plant leaves, seeds, spores, with streams of music and fragrance; water streams carrying rocks... While the stars go streaming through space pulsed on and on forever like blood...in Nature's warm heart.:: my first summer in the sierra || John Muir :: 

on camp curry // 
it's almost like walking like ghosts, only our steps crunch under the summer growth that has long since settled into somber piles of leaves. it's weird thing - footsteps echoing off of silence and being the only living thing on what was like ground zero. camp curry a little crevice in the shadow of glacier point that harbored even more memories of childhood idyllic. while most kids went off to camp for a week in the summertime, we went on an annual family vacation to yosemite every year when i was a kid from age 8 to 13. i formed some of my best friendships here, and there i left them when i walked through the skeletons of cabins and rubble of what used to be the foundations. guess time does really change who we are, or simply reveals it to us. all i know, i have it has revealed to me how much i've changed within such a short course of time. life since then has been a pile of good things and a pile of bad.

brushing my hands through the carpet of moss that has grown over the years on the huge boulder i used to spend hours on as a little girl, was like brushing my hands through the past. recollections of eating noddles in a cup and playing indians with homemade mortar and pestles and gathering firewood and spotting a bear coming out of the woods ten feet away and wiggling my way out of things just so i could spend an hour on that rock with my friend katy made my heart ache. and i thought of all the stories someday i'll tell my children and theirs as well if i am blessed with the opportunity of taking them there.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

things i learned in yosemite national park // 

i. i've changed within the three years of absence. yosemite hasn't. not much anyhow. true, half of curry village and all the memories that were made there lie in piles of rubble, and the "activity center" has now become as hushed as a library because it's a wifi hot spot. but cliffs still jut majestically about the walls of the valley, and the river is just as low as ever as it always is during the latter part of summertime, revealing her pebbly bed while what little stream flows down the banks chatters endlessly about who knows what. i've never been able to catch her secrets.   
ii. i don't capture things like i should. period. maybe i don't have the eye, or maybe i'm just learning don't be afraid to take that imperfect still. it's better than never taking it at all. it's taken me how long to learn this?  
iii. the blaring rumble of the generator at 7 o' clock is probably one of the most welcome sounds in the morning. because it means heat. it's amazing what we take for granted, and all the excess we can live without in the woods. 
iv. storms bring the prettiest clouds at sunset. 
v. i don't want to go my days without seeing the stars pinned up on the midnight sky. part of my soul starves.  
vi. i forgot how much you get hurt in yosemite. apparently, one needs to look where they're going when riding a bicycle. otherwise, you might end up like me, nearly swerving into a tree and nursing bruises and scratches for the rest of the week. 
vii. everything tastes better out-of-doors, by the fire, in the company of people you hold most dear. 
viii. apparently, vanilla tea has become extremely sparse {to the point of which my fav. company has stopped making it}. basically, i'm doomed. 
ix. i'm thankful for people who keep yosemite preserved through the years. so that my children shall someday see the cliffs painted in gold and the brooks chattering under the stone bridges of my childhood. 
x. there really isn't any place like yosemite. and i'm going to miss it. dearly.  
xx from a yosemite adventurer