Random Flat Spot Near Tuolumne Meadows to Sunrise Campground
Over breakfast the conversation turns to mileage and days and time. We’re already ahead of schedule but with the abundant smoke from nearby wild fires filling the valley we make the call to condense the last three days of hiking into two.
The morning starts with a relaxing stroll towards the Tuolumne Valley store where there will be fresh food and picnic tables to eat on instead of just sitting in the dirt like we’ve grown so accustomed to. We pass dozens of hikers this morning. Clean, sweet smelling day hikers waft by us. SoBo JMT hikers, excited, just a few days into their trip bounce by, trekking poles merrily stabbing the ground, packs loaded with days of food. The skies above curdle and threaten rain. Clear and the sun makes a valiant attempt to shine through. Round and around this goes.
Suddenly we’re walking through a massive campground, children shrieking as they streak past us. Bleary eyed tourists with their coffee mugs in hand stare unabashedly as we walk past. Quick quick quick. There is food ahead of us, and these hoards of tourists are less interesting to us by far.
We lunch at Tuolumne Meadows cafe and while Keith gets us ice cream I watch a Japanese tourist encourage her little girl to throw bread to a bird near the garbage cans. At this point, I’m so bored by the blatant disregard for our wild spaces, the flippant air taken by frontcountry and backcountry travelers alike that I barely find this annoying any more. Plus it’s not like I speak Japanese, so I stay silent and soon the woman and her daughter climb into their shiny rental car and disappear from my life forever. The bird they were feeding gives me a dully inquisitive look and when I do not feed it, hops away to beg from someone more lenient than I.
When at last there is nothing else to eat or entertain us at Tuolumne we get back on the trail. The relaxed hiking of Yosemite is like a balm on my tired body and I ride my legs as they carry me forward toward the end. I find I cannot feel terribly sad about the terminus of our thru hike approaching, as this whole trip has felt closer to the beginning of something, rather than the end.
In the afternoon we climb towards Cathedral lake, passing fellow JMT NoBo’s along the way, 10 or so in all. Passing fellow thru hikers stokes my ego every time, a little balloon swelling inside my chest. Along this climb we pass a man hiking in one crock and one hiking boot, a woman in socks and flip flops mincing up the trail on ruined feet. Something between pity, admiration, and passive nothingness at the struggling of these aimless strangers. Grateful, under it all, for my able body, intact toenails, unblistered feet, calloused by years of climbing hiking running and everything else.
We’re in camp by 5:30pm set up amongst the torn down canvas cabins of a high sierra camp which never had the chance to open this year, due to the snow. Our neighbors are a group of four brightly enthusiastic women who are section hiking the JMT from Yosemite Valley to Red’s Meadow, drinking and fraternizing the whole way there. They flirt openly with a group of young guys who invite them over to their fire for the evening. I’m half envious of their breezy sociability – a skill I fear I’ve never mastered – and half grateful when the campground falls silent aside from their ringing tinkering laughter that sidles into my ears, the too loud noises of inebriation.
Tomorrow this whole trip will come to a resounding end. It’s hard to parse out my emotions, but my body deeply wants to rest.
In the gloaming light over our little pots of food (potato soup, I think) I turn to Keith and ask “what if we just kept walking and didn’t stop?” To which he replies “we could.”