Saturday, we went on a mini hike with our dearest friends Tim, Nikki & Sophia. I thought I'd have Tim narrate the whole adventure, seeing as though, most recounts done by Tim nearly bring me to tears (of laughter people, no sad stories told from his mouth)
Enjoy!
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This is a lot of pressure. See, yesterday Kat called to tell me 3 things:
1) Tim, I will be sharing the pictures from our wonderful Saturday hike with you via dropbox this very day.
2) Tim, would you mind guest blogging and writing the words to accompany the pictures from our wonderful Saturday hike?
3) Tim, the sermon today at the little Mennonite church was really good and Jake will tell you more (he didn't).
This is quite the honor, I'd say.
Several weeks ago we started scheming up an out-of-town trip with some of our favorite companions; we wanted to camp on the beach for a couple of days. We have our favorite spots along the central coast, but we wanted to visit Big Sur, which we've barely explored. Apparently, part of the highway fell in the ocean, though, so it's pretty hard to get there. Side note: does it bother anyone that over 100 feet of asphalt fell into the Pacific ocean?
After more plans (we always have plans and dreams, don't we?), we downgraded for the sake of Little Ones. Or, at least for the sake of our own nerves, which I sometimes like to call my Little Ones. So, a day hike at Road's End it was. Road's End is the very end of highway 180. We wound all the way through Sequoia National Park and into Kings National Park just past Cedar Grove. It's no joke, folks, no joke. Bear country, and all that.
As the observant reader can see, here we are on the road, so we didn't quite make it to the end of the road (fear not, the road was not closed and if it had been, my fellow hikers would've tired of my endless rendition of
"The Road's Closed" in my best Canadian accent). We stopped short by a couple of minutes to hike to Sheep's Creek Cascade, a part of Don Cecil trail. All said, we went about 4 miles. Jacob and I, as you can see, manned the baby backpacks with great vigor.
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Halfway up the trail, we encountered the burnt woods. Lightning, or some force of man, torched the ground and a few trees. For being so destructive, it was really quite beautiful. |
This was the only time Violet didn't enjoy being in the backpack. In the past: mixed reviews. On this day she wanted as much backpack as any of us could handle. On the way up the trail she pointed out objects she knows, only to have Jacob repeat their names back to her in German. She played us merry little tunes on her harmonica on the way down the trail. She thinks I'm hilarious when I trip (too much time with aunt Nikki). I love her like my own. Hope that's okay, Jake and Kat.
As I said, burnt and beautiful.
Well, hello there, ladies.
Family photo: 4 smiles, 5 pairs of eyes on the camera, 1 Tim's upper-inner (just trying to keep up with
Papa Jack's upper-inner from the 80's in the previous post; it's a Dad thing).
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To make up for my upper-inners sinfullly abrasive presence, I read Rilke at the top of the hike. The water drowned out most of it, but that's just as well, really. Poets are chasing the waters' timbre anyway.
"When you were children you had planted trees.
They've grown too huge for you to hold.
Yet wait,
for there are breezes... for there are spaces...."
Rainer Maria Rilke "O You Delicate Ones" |
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| After the hike, we ate and le the girls do some stretching of their little legs (fate would have it that I measured Sophia's inseam last night: 8 inches. It's safe to assume that Violet's inseams take after her dad's and clock in somewhere north of 10 inches, for the time being). We packed up to leave, Jacob and I each requested one more stop. His was Grizzly Falls. The heavy snowfall this year has left the run-off in our neck of the woods impressive. From deep in the Monarch Wilderness, snow melts and flows from peaks over 11,000 feet high, running through back country and over each crevice, once dry, to fall some 75 feet in an awesome display of mist and power. Feeling small is what I need some days. |
Violet was unsure of this new twist in the trip. She was the only one with her wits about her, really: "You guys! That's an absurd amount of water spilling over great heights with such force it could do us great bodily harm!" I imagined her yelling. The rest of us felt our primal unconscious bubble up into our awareness and run rampant across our faces as we crept closer and closer, with no care for our safety or dryness. Kathleen, she of The Many Shades fame, one-up'd us all and defiantly stood up to the spray, thumbs-up and all. I think we can all agree, she's pretty great. Jacob snapped the pictures, while Nikki and I each held Little Ones.
The next stop was to scope the canyon views, terribly majestic. Looking across to the burnt orange cliffs, lined with shades of glacial erosion, was like those stupid optical illusions so popular in the 90's. You know, the ones that demand optical yoga, focusing and unfocusing, in order to see some cheesy and simple image somehow spring up from chaotic lines. The towering canyonside was like that, but not as stupid. It made me dizzy, but I was comforted by the fact that there was no secret, hidden image. All that was, was.
I can still hear the water if I close my eyes, smell the fragrant pines. I still feel tiny from staring at giant peaks and falls.
Sacred moments where we all become Little Ones.
