After hiking and guiding in Yosemite National Park for over 30 years I have come to learn a few things.  Yosemite, with its grand monoliths, peak-piled panoramas, and intimate gardens, holds a metaphor for every corner of the heart. These are the lessons that Yosemite has taught me as I’ve passed through her and she has passed through me.

Descending the outlet off-trail from the Mildred Lake outlet is a lot like life: overwhelming if you look at it all at once but by staying in the moment, carefully choosing one step at a time, in a serpentine fashion, one can negotiate the steep and varied terrain.

The Cathedral Lake outlet which spills over a few granite steps before it tumbles down around the side of Pywiack Dome teaches me that not all baptismal fonts are in churches. Likewise, the Cathedral Lakes Basin teaches me that some Cathedrals have no pews.  And a sunset last summer at Lower Cathedral Lake taught me that even God blushes.

The panoramic view from Glacier Point, where the roof of the Park stands out in waves of peaks like a choppy sea, reminds me that sometimes you need some distance to see the big picture.

Half Dome has taught me that sometimes what seems impossible from a frontal assault isn’t impossible at all if you find the easy way that circles around the backside.

Standing on Clouds Rest as my fellow guide, Mike, stood there speechless with his hands on his head and tears in his eyes, I am reminded of the sense of awe and gratitude that Yosemite has taught me for all things.

Yosemite has also taught me, that while the grandeur of the landscape is overwhelming, to not forget the pockets of beauty right at my feet.  I hiked the Yosemite Creek Trail for many years before I discovered the tiny pink Steershead flowers, only half an inch long, in the moist soil at my feet.

The Three Graces in the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias, home to trees 3000 years old, teach me perseverance through the ages.  Fire is as natural a part of the Giant Sequoia landscape as tumultuous times are in our own lives. Giant Sequoias stand tall and proud bearing the scars from many fires during their lives. In fact, they need fire to dry their cones and drop their seeds and they require freshly burned mineral soil for their seeds to germinate.  Upheaval in our own lives can feel like fiery death and destruction but we can use it as fertile soil for new ideas and new ways of being.

Speaking of destructive forces, Slide Canyon, where the Volkswagon size boulders of a landslide go down one side of the canyon and half-way up the other, and wildflowers blooming best after the hot fires in the woodland areas, teach me that some perceived catastrophes leave a new kind of beauty in their wake.

Hetch Hetchy, Yosemite Valley’s sister valley just 20 miles north and still in the Park, flooded under the lake behind O’Shaughnessy Dam, teaches me patience as she holds her breath until the Tuolumne River wanders through her meadows free again.

Snow covered Yosemite, like the lines on a woman’s face reminds me that beauty has no season and camping during winter, I learned that you can make yourself at home wherever you are.

The Milky Way over Tuolumne Meadows on a moonless night reminds me that even on the darkest night there is light to be found.

And mostly Yosemite has taught me that when I’m feeling lonely, the mountains are always standing ready, silently waiting to wrap  their bony arms around me. All I have to do is hike into them.  Join us: sierraspirit.biz.

  Copyright Nov. 2011 by Karen Najarian, links added 12-16-12.

Good morning 2013.  Two trees across the street, still on fire from Fall’s flamboyance, welcome me as the cool morning air slams my face on my way out the front door to get the newspaper, my pink nightgown hanging out from under my Mountain Hardwear fleece jacket and over my fleece pants.  (My backpack clothes never seem to get any downtime.)  Birds flee from the dangling ornament-like Liquid Amber seed pods as I gingerly step down the drive.  The exposed aggregate driveway is cold, hard, and nubby on the soles of my bare feet.  The clouds hanging over our neighbors’ roofs to the west still retain a touch of pink and, as I bend over to pick up the paper tossed at the base of the rhodys, their buds pulled in tight against the cold, I see the daffodils are three inches high already.

It’s 7:48 am and Rick hasn’t returned from the search in Marin. He was called into service before our New Year’s toast with friends at midnight last night.  I don’t know any more than that.  Who gets lost in Marin on New Year’s Eve?  An autistic child?  A great grandfather with Alzheimer’s?  A despondent teen?  An angry husband who checks himself into a hotel?  SAR is hardly ever about looking for someone in the wilderness but the reasons people are missing are as varied as the wilderness of the heart.  Whatever the reason you are misplaced, these dedicated volunteers will be there.

The hummers perch and dip at my office window feeder.  I must refill it today.  A friend once told me that since they are the last item on her list of priorities, you can measure the order of her life by whether her bird feeders are full. Today, I find mine empty.

The bird clock my sister gave me chirps eight o’clock in the kitchen and I hear in response Abby-the-dog’s collar tags jangle as she jolts from repose amid the pile of blankets on the waterbed.  Yes, we’re children of the 60’s… still.

The computer has booted (I’ve been writing longhand) and as I click on the Yosemite Association web cams, which I do every morning, I see a snowy Half Dome and Clouds Rest.  Tenaya and Echo Peaks, Mt. Watkins, and Half Dome are lit on one side from the rising southern sun.  Yosemite Falls is frozen onto a brightly lit face of granite like a still out of a movie, it’s winter ice cone rising at the base of the Upper Fall.  John Muir climbed his way up the ice cone more than a century ago and fell through into the hollow rocky abyss within. He also wallowed up the steep snow-covered boulder field of Indian Canyon from the valley floor and descended in an “avalanche of snow stars,” cheating death more times than I can count.

Muir had a purpose, it seemed. And his life refused to let go of him until he achieved it no matter how much he put it at risk.  He won for us National Parks, the idea of glaciation in the Sierra, and the beginning of the conservation movement.  Even his last fight, the defeat of saving Hetch Hetchy Valley from being dammed and flooded for San Francisco’s water tank, solidified the future defense of wilderness as no win could ever do.

So, 2013, what have you in store for me on this new morning in this new year as Sierra Spirit Backcountry Guiding Company continues to awaken people to the comfort and joys of the wilderness?  Yep, there’s work still to do.

Copyright © by Karen Najarian Jan. 1, 2013.