It is a day of departures.
We spent the first few days of our Sierra Nevada trip in Truckee. After leaving to spend time in Yosemite, we missed Truckee so much that we returned for several more days. Those day were magical, allowing us to settle into the place in a deeper way, but now it’s finally time to move on. We want to visit one more destination on our Sierra Nevada Trip: Tuolumne Meadows, the high country in the northeast portion of Yosemite Valley.
I deliberately planned this trip to be a transitional event in my life: the end of one chapter, the beginning of another. Over the past few ways, I have asked what it means to truly arrive in a place—to wholeheartedly commit, slow down, observe, and learn. Our time in Truckee became an experiment in arrival, a rehearsal for whatever arrivals will mark my entry into a new season of life.
Now I find myself contemplating what it means to intentionally depart a place. The easy thing would be to simply jump in the van and leave. I want better than that; I want a departure that both honors this place and safeguards it in my memory.
We make our last day in Trucke slow by design. After visiting the Donner Summit Tunnels, and paying homage to Steinbeck’s Lee and the Chinese railroad workers he represents for us, we string up a hammock between two pine trees on a granite dome overlooking the Donner Summit Bridge. We read in the warm sunlight, with the valley sprawled out beneath us. The breeze occasionally carries the voices of climbers on the granite walls above us. Eventually we drift off into naps, curled together in a tangle of limbs. It is a perfect moment, of absolute stillness, with all our senses absorbing the fine details of this spectacular summit.
Afterwards, we head to Good Wolf Brewing, which a barista at the local coffee shop recommended. The brewery is small, cozy, with earthen tones and stone pillars. We order flights of local beers and sit and process everything we’ve experienced over the past two weeks. It feels like a fitting way to say our goodbyes.
In the morning we make one last visit to our beloved coffee shop, then start our drive. It’s a long descent out of the mountains, which somehow feels symbolic. The temperature steadily increases. Alpine beauty fades to desert. Billboards for personal injury lawyers appear like blight. We enter Reno, the biggest city east of the northern Sierra, the artery of civilization that nourishes and sustains human life in these spectacular mountain places. It feels uninspiring. I remember what a mountain guide told me, near the summit of the Grand Teton, sweeping his arms around at the majestic peaks: “THIS is civilization.”
After Reno is Carson City and then nothing: just vast stretches of desert, choked with dry shrubs, pale green or yellow or almost blue in the harsh sunlight. Perhaps calling all this “nothing” is unfair; perhaps I simply haven’t learned to see what this new place offers. We are in a new climate, a new biome, a new place that must be met on its own terms.
We arrive early at a small RV campground in Bridgeport, a meager town that serves as a highway stop between other, more important places. We dock like a ship entering port. We replenish fresh water, dump our sewage, do laundry, and take real showers, which is a special treat; our usual “dirtbag” showers entail shivering outside the van, sponging ourselves down while dribbling water from the van’s limited fresh water supply.
It is a lovely little oasis in our journey. We are in a space between worlds, having departed one place but not yet arrived in the next. Tomorrow will be Tuolumne: alpine beauty again, real mountains, and hopefully the biggest and hardest climbs we’ve yet done. A new arrival.