Oh how I love a good rest day. Hot breakfast burrito, relaxed blog posting, charging devices, doing laundry, picking up packages at the post office. Soothing prosaic tasks.
I woke up and went first to the laundromat next to the hostel so I could wash all my clothes before putting them on my clean skin. This means I have nothing to wear but a rain suit while they wash, which is awkward and uncomfortable, but it lasts for only a short while and the subsequent pleasure of slipping into clean, soft clothes is sublime. While I was doing laundry, a woman came in to do hers and we got to chatting. Her daughter, along with a friend, is hiking two of the high routes I’m hiking, which is a small-world coincidence since these routes aren’t hiked all that often. I was interested, though as the conversation wore on it became clear she was quite proud of her daughter, and would tell me of one her accomplishments and then ask have you done that? It became a little strange after awhile, as I attempted to honor her obvious love for her child while gently continuing to suggest that she and I lived different lives and would thus have different accomplishments. I would have liked to talk to her daughter, because apparently her party just finished the Southern Sierra High Route today and I’m embarking on it tomorrow.
I went to the Post Office after breakfast to pick up my resupply packages, and as I was walking back the eclipse was under way. It was fairly overcast in Owens Valley, which I understand is unusual for a summer morning. The world darkened nonetheless, not to civil twilight but on the way there. The scene in this town was probably similar to towns and cities all over the country: people out on the sidewalks, heads craned up, cardboard glasses being passed around. I encountered a man with a welding mask who let me look through it (and I know this is not safe eclipse-viewing protection, but it was very short), and I could see a black partial disk superimposed on the sun, even through the clouds. A half block later, I borrowed a pair of eclipse glasses from some other onlookers for a moment, but the lenses were so dark that I couldn’t see light through them at all. Perhaps they work better if the sky is not overcast. I loved experiencing the disconcerting feeling of reduced light though. It illuminated how intimately my body is connected to its environment, the levels and movement of light and shadow, in a way I don’t even notice most of the time. That is what it takes to notice what mostly passes invisible to us: disruption.
I brought my boxes back to the hostel in the gloom and sorted out my food for the next leg. I had to decide how fast I think I can move through the upcoming terrain. Originally I planned for nine days, but I’ve been faster than I anticipated and frankly I don’t want to carry all that weight back up Bishop Pass tomorrow. I figured eight days instead, though there are many unknowns. It seems like the daily amount of elevation gain on the Southern Sierra High Route could be greater than on the Sierra High Route. I’m also unsure of conditions in some places that could slow me down or even turn me around–snow in the gully on the climb up and over Mount Whitney via the Mountaineers Route, for example (which is included in my upcoming route). Go forth not knowing. Eight days of food will probably be fine, maybe even too much, and if not I can hike on an empty stomach for a time.
After sorting and packing up my resupply, I had the rest of the day to run small errands, relax, eat. I even managed to catch up on some political news. Yowza.
So tomorrow, on to the Southern Sierra High Route! It overlaps for about ten miles with the Sierra High Route, so I’ll only miss the last thirty miles of Roper’s SHR (and some of those miles I’ll get to visit on the last of my routes, the Kings Canyon High Basin Route, in a couple weeks’ time). It will be interesting to switch authors, from Roper to Dixon and Wilson. Different people, different tone, different lines. Following someone else’s route through the mountains is like reading a piece of music they’ve written and trying to play along, or following their math proof and filling in the missing details. The shape of the music or of the proof reveals something of the author, and yet how we choose to fill it in with ourselves is highly personal. Thus it becomes a joint affair, such a cross country traipsing, and as such the author of the route seems, to me, relevant to the nature of the route. So, new route, new author, new walk in the mountains.
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