Chapter 8 ~ Page 110
Packing our last minute purchases in our arms, we headed back, discussing how the name of the park should be changed to Yosemite National Car Park, or Disneyland North, when we met Mr. Red Pack again. Headed back to the road.
"Hey, you get turned around? You're going the wrong way."
"No. I decided I should go home and work out all winter so I can be in shape to enjoy this wonderland next summer."
Of all the people we met that day, he is the only one that understood. I think of this 'friend' often, and I hope that by now he has been able to make it further up the trail, for I feel the park should be preserved just for him.
North of Tuolumne we didn't have the trail to ourselves, yet everybody we met was 'kin'—including those that only were hiking the short distance to another chalet located below the very lovely falls of the Tuolumne River. We enjoyed chatting with families that had children the ages of ours, and other couples that must have been in their 70's. We met so many happy hikers coming and going that it started me thinking in terms of relativity. Each traveler felt they were completely in wilderness. Yet, for the first six miles of trail if everyone had been driving a car, it would have been bumper to bumper traffic. If automobiles 'shrunk' our world, then, in these days of crowded recreation areas, banning all forms of vehicle traffic should make it expand. It is the same at lakes that allow fast motor boats that can zip from shore to shore in seconds. That same lake, to twice the number of canoeists, would seem a small ocean.
Further back in this wilderness, all of ten miles, we came upon a troop of boy scouts that felt they were so isolated from the world they could skinny dip right off of the trail. They were separated from the crowds of Tuolumne by a days travel—not twenty minutes if the trail had been a road—and must have felt they owned the world. I've never seen so many bare bottoms, move so fast when we came around a bend and one of the boys shouted, "GIRLS!" Some hid themselves behind skinny bushes, others dove into the shallow and crystal clear waters of the creek, and three got into a tug-of-war over a tea sized towel.
This was the first of what I called the, "bare facts of Yosemite," and Bernice refused to discuss at all. At our first camp north of the meadows, I and James went out to bring back the grazing horses with nosebags of oats. I thought we had picked a deserted valley and was surprised when we came upon another campfire.
"Did you see that fellow's hair," James asked later?
"What fellow? All I saw was a girl, buck naked, sunning herself on a rock in the river."
"You did?"
"I did."
"Let' s go back that way again."
"Hey, you get turned around? You're going the wrong way."
"No. I decided I should go home and work out all winter so I can be in shape to enjoy this wonderland next summer."
Of all the people we met that day, he is the only one that understood. I think of this 'friend' often, and I hope that by now he has been able to make it further up the trail, for I feel the park should be preserved just for him.
North of Tuolumne we didn't have the trail to ourselves, yet everybody we met was 'kin'—including those that only were hiking the short distance to another chalet located below the very lovely falls of the Tuolumne River. We enjoyed chatting with families that had children the ages of ours, and other couples that must have been in their 70's. We met so many happy hikers coming and going that it started me thinking in terms of relativity. Each traveler felt they were completely in wilderness. Yet, for the first six miles of trail if everyone had been driving a car, it would have been bumper to bumper traffic. If automobiles 'shrunk' our world, then, in these days of crowded recreation areas, banning all forms of vehicle traffic should make it expand. It is the same at lakes that allow fast motor boats that can zip from shore to shore in seconds. That same lake, to twice the number of canoeists, would seem a small ocean.
Further back in this wilderness, all of ten miles, we came upon a troop of boy scouts that felt they were so isolated from the world they could skinny dip right off of the trail. They were separated from the crowds of Tuolumne by a days travel—not twenty minutes if the trail had been a road—and must have felt they owned the world. I've never seen so many bare bottoms, move so fast when we came around a bend and one of the boys shouted, "GIRLS!" Some hid themselves behind skinny bushes, others dove into the shallow and crystal clear waters of the creek, and three got into a tug-of-war over a tea sized towel.
This was the first of what I called the, "bare facts of Yosemite," and Bernice refused to discuss at all. At our first camp north of the meadows, I and James went out to bring back the grazing horses with nosebags of oats. I thought we had picked a deserted valley and was surprised when we came upon another campfire.
"Did you see that fellow's hair," James asked later?
"What fellow? All I saw was a girl, buck naked, sunning herself on a rock in the river."
"You did?"
"I did."
"Let' s go back that way again."
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Text and Photographs © Barry Murray 1971-2007 Mac&Murray Multimedia