Press Wilderness Adventures - Backpacking California: mountain, foothill, coastal & desert adventures in the Golden State

I grew up on Sunny Mountain Ranch, which wasnt a working ranch but rather 34 acres on the west side of North Lake Wohlford Road, in a rural town called Valley Center in east San Diego County. I learned directions at a young age, and scoured every inch of our property in search of blue-bellied lizards, veins of gold (the fools variety), and a certain tree, rock, or brush pile that would become the foundations of my next fort.

Our property butted up against the Mountain, as we called it, the geographic feature that both consumed the bulk of the acreage and was the inspiration for the name of our home. Most of my young life was spent between the boundaries of the road and the property line that was drawn (north to south) along the top of the Mountain, not far above a huge granite slab we named Zebra Rock because of its striping.

The Mountain, which may as well have been Everest, was around a thousand vertical feet from our driveway to the top and densely vegetated by chaparral, manzanita, and sagebrush. It was shaded generously by giant oaks spilling down into a pasture that was my parents garden, and, for a time, our Christmas tree farm. As a kid, I was never satisfied until I reached the top of every climbing tree, so when it came to exploring I always gravitated up onto the Mountainhigher and higher as my parents played out more and more leash, trusting, even by age six or seven, that I probably knew the ranch better than they did.

But it was easy to get lost up there on the Mountain, both figuratively and literally, especially when my eyes were fixated on the immediate surroundingsalert to rattlesnakes, red ant piles, poison oak, and the source of the wild howls we heard every night. It was the Mountain that introduced me to the idea of wilderness and how little is needed to escape. It was also a constant reminder to never forsake whats in our own backyard.

Like most outdoor-minded kids in Southern California, I was initiated to overnight hiking and real mountains with the High Sierra. The Range of Light brought perspective to things I had once considered big, tall, and vast. I was fourteen at the time of my first backpacking experience and Cottonwood Pass, my doorway to the high country, still evokes nostalgia twenty-six years later. Once my father and I made camp and counterbalanced our food bags, I stalked golden trout in a narrow stream that crossed a lush green meadow. The creek gurgles through my memory. The Shakespeare Rod and Garcia reel my oldest brother gave me is still vivid: the feel of the cork grip, the red-handled needle-nosed pliers I used to bend down the barbs on Eagle Claw hooks that I drifted weightless with salmon eggs for bait into likely pools and undercut banks.

I found romance in the beckoning narrow line of the trail cutting across the meadow and disappearing into the distant treeline. Imagine the excitement when the ranger checking our permits told us that our trail was a days hike to a lake whose name I cant remember, but what he called a sure thing.

I woke the next morning before the sunif I slept at all. The meadow had a mist hugging its contours, and the thick slabs of Spam my dad fried up for breakfast atop slices of hearty wheat bread were wrapped in tin foil that was hot to the touch when I tucked it inside my jacket pocket. We stirred the mist with our legs as we followed the trail. I felt like the man in Jack Londons To Build a Fire when I pulled out the still-warm Spam sandwich from my jacket pocket an hour later. The man had noted the same comforting warmth of his biscuitscut in half and soaked in the grease from the slab of bacon hed fried for breakfast that morningwhen he lunched on them.

After our meal, we climbed out of our Yukon to a clear blue, tropical reeflike lake that proved to be loaded with trout. When I left the group to circumnavigate its shores alone, I was Robinson Crusoe angling for my lunch. Theres magic in wild places, and theres not a spot Ive ever visited that doesnt call me back.

Im often drawn back to my earliest jaunts into the wilds of my childhood, before my sojourns into the Sierra, Dolomites, Alps, Alborz, and Himalayas, to when I was eight or nine, chugging a warm canteen of Kool-Aid in the shade of an oak tree at the upper elevations of Sunny Mountain Ranch. By that point I knew, or had blazed myself, every trail on the Mountain and had been recruited more than once to guide old people up its face. My older brothers Harley-riding friends dubbed me Eric the Red because I was always exploring, always finding new ways up the Mountain.

Thats what this book is all about: finding new ways up the mountain whether its in our own backyard or over yonder. Californias wilderness areas are like Never Never Land. Just tighten up your laces, pick a trailhead, and keep on hiking straight til midnight.

Eric Blehm is the author of The Last Season , the true story of the life and mysterious disappearance of legendary backcountry ranger Randy Morgenson in the high country of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. Learn more at www.thelastseason.com. Blehm won the prestigious 2006 Barnes & Noble Discover Award, naming him the best new author of the year in the category of nonfiction. He lives in Southern California with his wife and two young children and is currently working on his next nonfiction book, which is set in Afghanistan.