Back to the grind today. Up and at 'em, keep it moving. Wake up numbed and drained. Coerce those stiff limbs out of the bag and up to salute the new day. Deer have been the source of constant clatter in the woods around us. Cow bells have been tinkling in the valleys like windchimes. The day was hot. We walked the ridgeline of these fresh looking, colorful granite peaks, exposed and dusty. My mood, the day itself, moves quietly. A light somnolence lingers in the atmosphere -- sleepy summer slow.
Back in California, and it feels like it, somehow. Could those political boundaries mean something real in the natural world as well? Again, reptiles are dancing at my feet. Again, the endless, rugged, mountainous terrain of California is all the canvas can possibly hold. Again, we wake and walk today, as every other day.
The mountains have changed noticeably since crossing the Interstate and passing Ashland. The volcanic, still blacks and airy greys of the rocks and earth in the Cascades -- that narrow range crossing Oregon -- have been replaced by a rainbow of hues -- from dusty, psychedelic oranges and rusty red to a smooth, irridescent platinum.
It is dawn, the morning of the 10th. Out of the tent's flap the delicate pink of first light breaks the darkness, washes a window, promises a new morning. No birdsong, save the ocassional far off screech of some raven or crow, warms the still coolness with greeting. Eliza's heavy breath rises and falls still, rhythmically, greedily. She won't waste an instant on this floating boat of unconscious speed -- flat, motionless, drifting within.
Yesterday, we passed many more northbound through-hikers. The numbers, it appears, are much greater than we would have guessed. Dave and Kelly, a couple we met in SoCal and last saw at Richard Skaggs' home in the Antelope Valley -- curiously enough, I dreamt of him last night. He was engaged in a contest wherein he took center stage out on some rolling dune beach, went through a preparatory dance of some kind, then launched three dazzling orbs up into the air. Following this performance, the three balls, or four now, came to the ground one by one and set to bouncing around of their own accord. The contest was, I think, to get your balls to bounce longest there on the beach. Next I knew I was in a Burger King and having a difficult time getting my order placed. Just popped into my head . . . strange. Anyway, to return -- Dave and Kelly, whom we ran into today along with Super Dave, told us that they've heard that a group of nearly sixty hikers should be coming up behind them.
Sixty!
I am amazed. "Impassable," then, was the wrong word all along for describing the snow in the Sierra this year. Over the course of the rest of the day we pased another four or five northbounders, none of whom we had previously met. It will be interesting to see how many there really are coming up this way.
We're headed down the mountain and into Seiad Valley this morning. We've got packages to pick up and a breakfast to sit down to.
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