Surfing Ruined My Life

After two days of experiencing nature with 3000 of my closest friends I needed some serious space.  I don’t care how beautiful one’s surroundings are, throw in a excess of humans and the beauty becomes significantly reduced.  My parents and my time at Yosemite had come to a close and despite the amazing sights we beheld the three of us sort of needed a break from other people on vacation.   We are all from very densely populated areas ourselves, them flying over from New Jersey and me from southern California.  You can understand how important some alone time with nature can be for us.

On our way out we decided to cruise through the eastern end into the Tuolumne Meadows area.  After only putting about twenty miles between us and Yosemite Valley a large difference in the number of park users was observed.  Don’t get me wrong we were not alone in the wilderness, but we certainly were enjoying more breathing room.  This was just at all of the view points that were directly off the road.  I got the feeling if one was to strike out into the wilderness he could easily disappear forever if such was desired.

As we would find out from postings at both trail heads and the visitors center people go missing all of the time in the park especially in this area.  Many of the cut trails have not nearly been walked upon as those in, around and above Yosemite Valley.  The effect is that some are hard to follow and what looked like your trail turned out to be a smaller off shoot that easily allowed one to go astray.  My parents and I stopped at this cool vista point off the road where there was a hiking trail through all of this granite and sparsely forested terrain.  Along this trail we came across lots of cool views of rock formations, Pine laden valleys, lakes and streams.
It did not take long of us not paying attention to our immediate route to realize we had lost the trail and been wondering about on this giant granite hillside.  With out throngs of people all over the place our situation seemed a bit scary.  Luckily a pack of foreigners came out of the trail head and up onto the granite hill we were meandering.  Its a good thing they did because we were totally looking for the trail in the complete opposite direction of where the car was parked.  At that moment it became apparent how easily it would have been for us to end as another national park statistic.

Found this little guy enjoying a snack the size of his head right along side the trail.

From there we made our way into Tuolumne Meadow where there were plenty of cool valley streams, lakes and meadows.  It was here that I was reminded why I came out into the wilderness to begin with.  Everyplace I went was empty and I reveled in the divine peace it afforded me.  All I can say is it made me a Yosemite fan once again and I plan on visiting many more times and in various seasons.

At one with nature.