We wake early at the Love’s truck stop, drink coffee, and then drive to Fresno Yosemite International Airport to pick up my friend Sam. Our journey is entering a new phase.
Sam and I have been friends for more than 25 years, since I began attending a church youth group he helped lead. After I graduated, our mentoring relationship evolved into a friendship. We corresponded via lengthy emails, and on my visits home from the Air Force Academy we took hours-long walks around the parks and beaches north of Seattle. We could talk for hours about anything and everything. I was drawn to his intellectual curiosity, encyclopedic knowledge, and quirky sense of humor. We accompanied each other through major life events like marriage and the births of our children. We also accompanied each other through many shared interests, like Antarctica and Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s The Lady of Shalott.
We still correspond almost daily, although we’ve shifted from emails to lengthy asynchronous voice recordings in which we recount the books we’re reading, the outdoor adventures we’re undertaking, or the ups and downs of our lives.
Sam loves the outdoors and hiking, but his work and family commitments have kept him in the greater Seattle area for most of his life. He has developed an extraordinary intimacy with the stretch between Edmonds and Lynnwood; he knows every beautiful spot for a quick walk of any duration, every amusing piece of graffiti, and every arcane bit of urban lore. He has also adopted a disciplined but flexible approach to exploring the Cascade and Olympic mountain ranges, ticking off every notable hike as trail conditions and weather allow.
The first time I visited Yosemite Valley, I thought “Sam would love this.” We made a tentative plan for summer of 2020, but the pandemic upended that. Now, finally, it’s time.
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This entire trip is an experiment in a different way of living. For as long as I can remember, I’ve felt like an awkward composite of two selves: the Air Force pilot-technologist-entrepreneur and the spiritual writer on a lifelong pilgrimage. For these three weeks, I’ve resolved to give the latter free rein. In this seam between major chapters, I have the opportunity to be someone new, to live a different kind of life, to test out possibilities I might cultivate later.
Trying to design a dream life is an illuminating exercise. In 8th grade, my English teacher tasked us with describing a dream “pod” in which we might like to live. Much later, while reading a book about healing from relationship wounds, I encountered a similar exercise that entailed envisioning a dream house. It was a way of using creativity to circumvent reason, to get in touch with deeper impulses.
My imaginative dream life has stayed remarkably consistent over the years, and takes the form of what I call The Forest House. I sit outside this remote mountain cabin in the mornings, writing and meditating and watching the deer go by. In the early afternoon I go for long walks or other outdoor adventures. These long, slow days satisfy my deep need for solitude and meaningful, cerebral, focused work.
But in the evenings, this solitude is transformed. My dream life is, as the poet David Whyte calls it, a well peopled solitude. I light candles and switch on the party lights, casting my patio on a warm yellow light. My forest house looks like a Thomas Kincaid painting. Friends drop by. I uncork a bottle of wine. We talk for hours, pausing to grab blankets when a chill settles. When the cold becomes intolerable, we migrate indoors, light a fire, and pour more wine. In the wee hours of the morning, my guests slip away one by one, leaving me to the next morning’s solitude.
Friendship needs to be a pillar of the well-lived life. It is in dangerously short supply today, especially for men. This is one reason why my daydreams of escape into the mountains will never entirely satisfy. I want a life rooted not just in good places, but among good people. Even Thoreau, who we imagine living alone at Walden Pond, valued friendships, entertained visitors, and didn’t dwell far from human society. One commenter suggests he was a bit like “a child pitching a tent in his parents’ backyard.”
So after a week of idyllic solitude, Hannah and I are glad Sam can join us. I’m eager to share Yosemite Valley with a friend.
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It doesn’t take long for reality to rear its ugly head, when we hit a 1.5-hour traffic jam entering Yosemite’s south gate. I try to keep my irritation in check. At least the conversation is good, as we catch up on the months since we last saw Sam in Washington state.
Then we’re through the entrance and on our way. We pass through Yosemite’s famous tunnel and are rewarded with the sudden, overwhelming spectacle of the entire valley: El Capitan looming over the Valley floor, Half Dome peeking out behind Glacier Point in the distance, Bridalveil Falls pouring unfathomable volumes of snowmelt into the thick trees below. Sam snaps a photo that, in black and white, looks uncannily like an Ansel Adams. Amazing, the gifts modern technology bestows on us. The Tunnel View parking lot is packed, but it’s hard to complain when we’re part of the problem.
Our next stop is El Cap meadow, where climbers and tourists gather to gawk at the monstrous 3,000′ granite dome dominating the park. Sam, like Hannah and I, has seen all the documentaries, read all the books, and is conversant in the decades of climbing history that have unfolded here. The more one knows, the more one sees. I’m learning, slowly, and point out iconic features like the boot flake and great roof.
From the meadow it’s only a short walk to the base of El Cap. We crane our necks and give ourselves over to vertigo, looking upward at the frozen ocean of granite. Two haul bags sit at the base of the Nose, arguably the most famous rock climb in the world. We hear two climbers somewhere up on the first pitch, calling out to each other. I’m surprised they’re starting up this late in the evening. I catch the word “shitshow.”
We turn right and follow a steep ascending trail along the wall’s base. We’re beneath the Dawn Wall now, although I regrettably don’t know where the route actually starts. At one point, we scramble up onto a gentle slope of granite, where it seems that El Capitan has begun melting into the valley floor and then hardened again. We sit for a while enjoying the view, imagining what it would feel like to be up there, lost in the granite sea. I can at least say I’ve climbed “on” El Capitan, even if climbing it remains a distant dream.
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Our van is crowded enough with Hannah and me. With Sam, it’s simply hilarious.
We find a satisfactory parking spot on a dirt road just outside Yosemite National Park, but nobody wants to go outside because of the mosquitos. We play musical chairs while cooking dinner: chicken stir fry tonight, which requires two pots and a frying pan. It’s a lot for our little 1-burner stove and limited counter space.
We talk as we cook at and eat dinner, reliving the day’s adventures. Sam is as mesmerized by Yosemite Valley as I hoped he would be. It feels good to share this with him, as if Yosemite Valley was ever a possession of mine that I have to give.