Catch a Whiff...

What a trip. First the euphoria of getting out, the freedom of the road, the falling in love with the country and the scenery. Then, the disillusionment, the feeling of ‘what am I doing here?’ and, ‘do they really want me?’ All that’s available as far as jobs go is housekeeping positions. I didn’t come here to clean people’s rooms. I came willing to clean up after their meals, but it looks like that’s not an option. Apparently bussing is one of the higher-end jobs – yikes!

So I went for a long hike, checked out the library, rode the bus around, slept in the woods, hung out by myself, went bouldering once, wondered where all the climbers were, made a plan for myself, forgot it, got bored, and then it rained. So I started talking to people.

I saw a man who looked like he could have been from Eugene, a hippie Santa, sitting on the porch of the Curry Lounge, which is why I approached him and proposed a conversation. This is not an easy thing for me to do, but because I’d seen him around the last couple of days and we’d shared smiles over something, I decided I could do with a conversation and this man seemed fairly innocuous. It could be, if nothing else, good practice for me. Before I even had a chance to introduce myself, but after I said, “hi, would you like to have a conversations?” he said, “Hi, I’m David.” And we talked comfortably about our respective road trips, life, living, Buddhism, life philosophies…I confided my painful shyness and he said not to be too conscious of self, just to think of myself as an extra on the movie set of life – what I’m doing is just not that important.

That helps a lot.

And we talked about saying yes and no and maintaining a balance. He’s an architect from Ohio, and I asked him how he finished projects, since I have trouble finishing pieces of writing. He said, “I get fired.” I guess I’m not the only one who has trouble.

The point here is, I made an unexpected connection by moving over two deck chairs and saying ‘hi’. It’s easier than I thought, easier than I made it out to be to meet people and it’s just me, being me being self-conscious and lacking confidence (read: being ridiculous) that made it so difficult. Once I decided to be open, to put myself out there as I am, I started making connections. The next person I talked to was a couple. The husband was reading Naked, by David Sedaris, and we chatted about the park, etc. I talked about being a writer, the way I want to write outdoorsy stories that inspire the everyday nobody to get out and DO these things, how I want to convey that they’re not that scary. We talked about the Ahwahnee Lodge (the four-star hotel hereabouts) and the architecture, and I mentioned how it’s an intimidating place. The wife said I should check out breakfast – it’s really not that expensive, and I get the Ahwahnee experience. I hemmed and hawed, until she said, “you could go there and write about it as a new experience for people.”

Duh, I thought. This is what I want, to do stuff that scares me and probably a lot of people out there, and it doesn’t just have to be outdoorsy stuff, it can be anything. Like breakfast at the Ahwahnee.

My next meaningful conversation was with a man who’d been sitting in front of the fire, (in front of which I’d been standing, talking to a woman), reading a Western his friend had written and listening to our conversation. He asked what I was writing, and I told him it was about how forging a connection with someone in a place makes that place and your relationship with the person more meaningful. As I explained, I felt like I was full of shit because I really didn’t know what I was writing about. I was just recording my porch conversation with the architect and analyzing it and trying to decide if it was meaningful enough to remember in a year or five. I told the Western man this, and he kept talking to me. I must have been at least more interesting than his Western.

We segued to dealing with fear; I talked about spending four months in Yosemite and how I felt scared right now more than anything. He said you just have to push through the fear, and that courage is acting in spite of your fear. We talked about change; how it’s scary but necessary, and failure; which is one of those things – it’s not final or fatal. You learn from failure and you move on.

This was getting deep, until another man, bald with a belly, also sitting and reading a book, chimed in about how you have to change with the times, kind of a repeat of what we’d been saying, and then he mentioned the rain outside, and our conversation got a lot more mundane after that.

All these men I talked to were older, probably retired, probably single, except for the married couple. Yosemite seems to attract the old traditionalists. This is where they come to pretend they’re still in the Wild West. It felt oldschool in front of the fireplace – the Western man tended the fire expertly and kept us all warm on a stormy afternoon, and I think he liked having a job to do. He was that kind of guy.

After my day of conversations I feel better about being open, smiling at people, more willing to believe others are looking for a connection too (even if none of them are my age or sex). It adds to my experience, and I feel I understand better where people are coming from, why all these tourists are here and why Yosemite is one of the most-visited National Parks. There’s not just climbing here. There’s everything. And there are people from all over the world, of all shapes and ages, who are here to experience this seven-mile square piece of land.

I think I’ve got a lot more exploring and experiencing to do in this Valley. I’m not completely sold, although last night, after the rain stopped and before it was really dark, I headed out to take pictures of the mist around the granite spires. I walked up to Lower Yosemite Falls (all of ten minutes on a paved path, lined with signs warning of icy death) and marveled at this completely accessible piece of beauty.

Why hadn’t I come before?

Because it was mainstream.

Now I know that’s no excuse to skip something. Yosemite Falls is something I should’ve seen the first day. I was lucky and caught it just as the last people were leaving, so I had the splendor and power of the falls in silence and solo. I didn’t feel alone, however, there was no sense of solitude. I felt comfortable and reverent. I tried to freeze a moment of that greatness into a picture, convey an inkling of the scale of the falls and the arcing wall beside it, catch a whiff of the spray heavy enough to be rain. Everyone else and their foot-long lenses seem to be trying to do the same thing. I caught it in my heart.

The definition of discovery is finding something that’s been there all along. So for example, I can ‘discover’ Lower Yosemite Falls and find it amazing and beautiful like millions of other people without trivializing my discovery, because it’s a personal discovery more than a “look at what I found. The third tallest waterfall in the world,” kind of discovery.

I like Yosemite, it’s surprising. It makes me smile. I can’t wait to see what else I discover.