How vividly my own first camping trip in the Sierra comes to mind! This last summer I wanted to go to Alaska to explore some fine busy glaciers that are working on the flanks of Mt. St. Elias and the mountains about Cook's Inlet and Prince William's Sound. But I could not get away early enough for such extended explorations as would be required there; and so I just rambled off for an easy six weeks' saunter in the Sierra above Yosemite, and about the head waters of the Tuolumne, and down the Grand Cañon of the Tuolumne to Hetch Hetchy and the sugar pine woods of the main forest belt.
If your world is similar to the world of the ancients, then you may easily imagine that one day you suddenly come upon a sixth or a seventh continent, upon some Atlantis. The sun, it was no longer our light evenly diffused over the mirror surface of the pavements; it seemed an accumulation of living fragments, of incessantly oscillating, dizzy spots which blinded the eyes. And the trees! Like candles rising into the very sky, or like spiders that squatted upon the earth, supported by their clumsy paws,or like mute green fountains. And all this was moving,jumping, rustling. Under my feet some strange little ball was crawling... I stood as though rooted to the ground. I was unable to take a step because under my foot there was not an even plane, but (imagine!) something disgustingly soft, yielding, living, springy, green! All this magnificent, beautiful, noble, lofty, crystalline, pure.
In a narrow ditch filled with three feet of still water, I spotted a key ring glinting in the sun. Just beyond it lay something else: a woman's body, clad in a white T-shirt and blue jeans! I was dazed; I was strangled-yes, strangled; it is the best word to express my state. I stood holding fast· with both hands to a swinging branch.
I went down on my knees at once. On the floor close to her hand there was a little round of paper, blackened on the one side. The paper had been sealed in several places with a thimble by way of seal. Opened the seals with great care, and there fell out the map. There were several additions of a later date, but above all, three crosses of red ink—two on the north part, one in the southwest—and beside this last, in the same red ink, and in a small, neat hand, these words: “Bulk of treasure here.” Of course, people usually keep their best advice to themselves. They'd be crazy not to, what with all the crowds tramping around outdoors nowadays.
I followed the directions exactly.
I was directed through the Pacheco Pass, and from the summit of this pass I gained my first view of the Sierra, with its belts of forests and the great San Joaquin and Sacramento Valleys. Yes, it did cross a few extra deserts and some unusually high mountain ranges; the unfortunate Donner Party read Hastings's book, followed his route, and famously came to its grisly end below the narrow Sierra pass.
Descending the pass, I waded out into the marvelous bloom of the San Joaquin when it was in its prime. It was all one sea of golden and purple bloom, so deep and dense that in walking through it you would press more than a hundred flowers at every step. I was dead tired, as you may fancy; and when I got to sleep, which was not till after a great deal of tossing, I slept like a log of wood.
Around 2 a.m. I had been very sound asleep, and I had this sense that something was badly wrong and it was bringing me out of my sleep. I was just becoming aware, and the bear clamped down on my arm. The tent was gone at that point. The saddest part is that I crumble in this situation, every time. Then the bear bit down and held me there for a while. My back was to the bear and to my bear spray. The bear was driving me into the ground, and it was trying to pull me up every once in a while.
I could hardly bear that chaos.
You will readily believe how little taste I found in my breakfast and with how uneasy a heart I set forth behind my captors on the quest for treasure. I awoke at dawn. The rose-colored firmament looked into my eyes. Everything was beautiful, round. I continued to run so as not to be late. I started to run as fast as I could. The wind whistled in my ears.
Soon I reached the road running along the Green Wall. From beyond the Wall, from the infinite ocean of green. I suddenly heard the wind beating the glass with its enormous wings. Of course it had been blowing all the while, but I had not noticed it until then.
In the clearing, around a naked, skull-like rock, a noisy crowd of three or four hundred ... people, fellows in plaid shirts and fedoras who offered sensible tips about how to find water in the desert by cutting open cacti. There above the heads of all I saw her, a golden haired woman, her whole body silky-golden and diffusing an odor of different herbs, "Brothers, you all know that there inside the Wall, in the City, they are building. And you know also that the day has come for us to destroy that Wall and all other walls, so that the green wind may blow over all the earth, from end to end.”
The war between the city and the land.
Everybody ran. Close to the wall there was still an open gate in the fence and a lonely spot. Everybody dashed through it, heads forward. It was clear that if they had had in their way a wall, a tree, a house, they would have moved on just as unhesitatingly through the wall, the tree, the house. I was confused, casting a glance to the right, then to the left. Without saying goodbye, without looking back, I ran out. This was a run of eight or nine miles.
At last I came right down upon the the white rock, visible enough above the brush, was still some eighth of a mile further down the spit, and it took me a goodish while to get up with it, crawling, often on all fours, among the scrub. Night had almost come when I laid my hand on its rough sides.
And thereupon I entered the cave. It was a large, airy place, with a little spring and a pool of clear water, overhung with ferns.
I found the treasure. It has been said over and over again, it is a dramatic, gorgeous film, and and the emotional stakes make it one of the best outdoor-sports documentaries of all time: Free Solo. I just went limp.
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