The Swiftest Traveller

Morning trek begins downhill, through still-asleep neighborhoods.  Bagel for breakfast but no coffee in sight.  Clomping West along Angeles Crest Highway - "why not just drive there?"  Like Elliott and me, when three summers ago we hopped a lone tour bus, tired and beat, down an old dirt road on the southernmost end of the rainy island.  And now, three years and a few trails later, on a sunny saturday on the southernmost corner of Turtle Island... I know that if I were to see it in a crystal ball, he'd be doing the same this very minute.  Couldn't be happier to be on the move.

Hour or two later, following up a gully in deep-settled powder (how deep?), slow going, very slow going.  The blue ridge trail is here, hidden somewhere under here and out of sight.  Salvage two dead limbs for walking sticks, one short for the uphill traverse and one long for the sloping descent, you boys aren't done for just yet!  The pastel sky, the shapeless carpet of pure white, and the evergreens in between, socks, boots, gaiters, water knife sandwich and poems ("Cold Mountain is a house / without beams or walls").  Now if you get out into the open fields well you start to sink in slush every blasted step; better to stay beneath the trees and close to trunks, where sun shines less and snow stays crisp.  Better you learn to discern a squirrel track from a rabbit, because you read about it?  Because I saw him just now, in his characteristic stop-and-go fashion, go a scampering from trunk to trunk.

Come upon a high ridge, treeless expanse, views of desert in the distance, views of ski-lifts down the opposing valley.  Squinted eye-level with the highest ridge around.  Finally to rest upon the high dry slope: no signs here, no panorama view or guest-book... but the place gives me a good feeling, a kind a hospitable quiet.  And the sun here breaks through clouds warm as august.  Leaning bare skinned on a 200 year old Ponderosa, with direct view of his brother: much more to look at, though not as tall, gnarled and twisted back again, with lots of crooks and crannies up there, as if he couldn't decide which way to the sun (must be the younger of the two...).  All around are simply needles, dry and weightless, 8-inch clusters.  And also a fallen patchwork of bark flakes, amazing curvatures of smooth golden brown.  An encircled summer oasis from the snow with golden heat beaming down.  Ingredients aside, brand names regardless - the harder you work for a sandwich, the better it tastes.

Time now to pick up the sticks, head over the valley, across the contour and down-slope to the road again.  Off toward a regular Saturday morning.  Stopping at the ranger station on the way back to town (open 9am): "Say, any good trails around this area?"