Kim Stanley Robinson - The High Sierra

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I woke in my sleeping bag and saw Terry sitting up in his. I had gotten some sleep and now it was time. It was still dark but the sky was blue in the east, beyond the great gulf of Owens Valley. I had slept poorly, a little high on Diamox and altitude and the knowledge I was back in the Sierra. Around us stood tents and picnic tables and grills: the car campground at Horseshoe Meadows. A girl in a nearby tent had put us to sleep the night before by reading aloud to her friends, her musical voice like a lullaby. Now tall pines soared over us, black in the dawn. All the people around us were still asleep. Where else do you find so many people sleeping outdoors together? Its a thing from an earlier time. We packed as quietly as we could and took our stuff to the nearby parking lot. Sitting on the asphalt by my old station wagon, we brewed up some coffee and finished packing our packs. It was cold but not too cold. With a final check we were off. Destination Mount Langley, the tallest peak at the south end of the Sierra.

The sky was lighter now. Sunrise would catch us in a forest on the eastern slope. We had done it again: another Sierra trip. Well over 50 of them at this point, Terry and I, almost half of those just the two of us. Rambling the Sierra with my moody friend: at various times he would be gloomy, exuberant, calm, remote. It didnt matter. Both of us were there for the Sierra. In that sense we were a good match. For sure we were used to each other.

Now we flowed up the trail, hiking fast through shadows. A long gentle uphill walk through narrow meadows, threading an open forest. Everything was cool and still, the shadows horizontal, the light yellow. I felt the energy of the trips first hour, and yet things were still a little dreamy too. Sometimes hiking involves a lot of looking down to be sure of your footing, but other times its like strolling up a sidewalk. Minute follows minute, they unspool with nothing in particular to mark their passing. Youre just walking, and youre only going to be walking for the rest of that day. And so you begin to shift into hikings different time, its altered state of consciousness. Sierra time. In that morning light, at the start of a trip, I sometimes laugh out loud.

That feeling is one of the things I want to write about here. Crazy love. Some kind of joy. There are people who go up to Californias Sierra Nevada, fall in love with the place, and then live the rest of their lives in ways that will get them back up there as often as possible. Im one of those, and in this book I want to explore various aspects of that feeling, thinking about how it happens, and why. Analyzing love: Is this wise? Possibly not, but I notice we do it all the time. So Ill give it a try.

On that particular day in 2008, we came over a rise to a sudden huge view. Cottonwood Lake One stretched before us, a narrow blue expanse banked by reeds. Over the pine trees on the far shore loomed the Sierra crest, here a stretch of broken gray cliff blocking our way, 2,000 feet high and topped at its north end by the summit prow of Mount Langley, the southernmost of the Sierras 14,000-foot peaks.

We followed the trail along the grassy south shore of Cottonwood One, and stopped at the far end of Cottonwood Two for second breakfast. It was very satisfying to look up at the giant rocky wall facing us and see that the rest of our day was going to be above tree line, and here it was only 9:30. When I remarked on this, Terry told me that the Pacific Crest Trails thru-hikers always start early. Ten by ten, they call it, meaning ten miles by 10:00 a.m. To me that sounded awful, but in the actual performance it had been quite nice.