Nothing much has happened. I left for the airport in the early morning hours, after feeding my goat and watering the garden, noting as I did each that I wouldn't again for some time and feeling as though I ought to bring a special kind of attention to my chores, to appropriately mark a goodbye. And noting that I didn't know how to do that. It is the confusion of saying goodbye. Perhaps there is nothing to do but simply say it.
My day consisted of many small steps towards a beginning, a pre-beginning: the trivial indignities of air travel; a long wait among the flashing lights of gambling kiosks in the Reno airport; a sleepy bus ride down the eastern flank of the northern part of the Sierras. The eastern side is the dry desert side, sheltered under the rain shadow of the mountains, and sage brush and cattle blurred by out the bus windows. I got off in Bridgeport, a small town with a frontier look, just minutes too late to pick up my permit from the ranger station here that I need to begin my hike. So I'll stay overnight in town, have a burger, and take this extra time to begin acclimating to elevation. I'm at 6500 feet now, from 0 feet in Seattle, and an extra night at mid elevation in the front country can only be a boon. On the first day of hiking I'll surpass 11,000 feet, and the possibility of altitude sickness lurks in such dramatic changes of elevation. Us sea-level dwellers are oxygen hungry.
From this flat, desert-dwelling town, the Sierras rise dramatically to the east. They are close enough that I can see ridge lines, valleys, contours, and lots and lots of snow. The Sierra Nevada had a near record amount of precipitation last winter, and the fact of snow has been deeply on my mind. To be honest, I'm not sure the routes I hope to take will be passable. I won't know until I'm trying of course, and that illustrates one of the fantastic humblings on a trip like this: going forward even when we don't know. How do we respond when we don't know. How do we marshal our courage.
Early tomorrow morning I'll go for my permit and then hitchhike to the trailhead, up Twin Lakes Road to the Horse Creek Trail, the footpath on which I begin this curious expedition. With some luck I'll spend tomorrow tonight up up up in the mountains. I am eager to begin, and a little trepidatious, and also hot and restless and overfull on French fries. My backpack is ready. My body is willing. Gonna get to it.
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