National Park Love

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On this day in 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act, making Yellowstone the nation’s first national park. Recently my husband and I visited the far younger and less visited Big Bend National Park, in Texas, so I thought I’d give a shout-out to our national parks at a time when they and so much else are being assaulted instead of protected. Call it a trip report with politics (you know I can’t help myself).

Why Texas, you may ask? Quite simply, we wanted a winter hiking destination, and more northerly and high-elevation parks are under snow. The other place we considered was in and around the northeast part of Los Angeles, where our daughter lives, but it’s just as well we chose Big Bend, given that a lot of the trails we wanted to explore are now charred ruins (our daughter is fine).

Speaking of charred ruins, there is a lot of post-apocalyptic terrain to traverse in order to get to Big Bend National Park. We’re (somewhat ambivalent) fans of the streaming series Landman, which mostly takes place in Midland, where we flew into to start the four-hour drive to Big Bend.

The Midland of Landman seemed like one of the least appealing places on the planet, but it turns out the show features the golden-tinged, Vaseline-on-the-camera-lens gauzy version. IRL, we drove through miles and miles of flat, drought-scorched desert littered with metal warehouses, rusty machinery, and trash. The giraffe-like bobbing oil derricks added a touch of mechanized whimsy to the hellscape. At least there was no traffic. And the Border Patrol officers at a checkpoint an hour and a half north of the border were very polite.

Big Bend, thankfully, was prettier. At least we hoped it was, since it was well past dark when we checked into the Chisos Mountain Lodge, the only place in the park to stay that isn’t a campground (it’s about to close for a 2-year renovation). Luckily, it’s in the heart of the most beautiful part of the park–the photo above was taken from the parking lot, and most of the trails we hiked started from the lodge.

Two weeks before we got to Big Bend, there was a cold snap, with temperatures as low as 15 degrees. During our time, the highs were mostly in the mid-80s, and in the high 90s in the river and desert portions of the park. Luckily, we’re early risers who hit the trails by 7:30 every day, allowing us to sit on the lodge’s shady patio and read in the afternoons. The patio and the visitor center were the only places with wi-fi, and there was zero cell coverage, so our news intake was blessedly limited.

We loved the Lost Mine Trail so much that we did it twice:

There we met Tom, a lovely volunteer ranger who hails from Vermont and waxed enthusiastically about everything Big Bend: the geology, the birds, the tight-knit group of rangers and volunteers who spend a lot of time carrying extra water on the trails for unprepared tourists. I wonder how Tom and his merry band are faring now that the Trump/Musk wrecking ball has hit the national parks with frozen funds and massive layoffs. Maybe the birds will still be fine, even though this roadrunner was on the soon-to-be-demolished patio, mostly admiring his reflection in the glass.

But we were there in the relatively innocent days of unfit cabinet nominees being rubberstamped by spineless Republicans; the annihilation of USAID was just over the horizon, and sparse wi-fi preserved our sanity. So let us resume our carefree, if hot, hiking of the Pinnacles, South Rim, and Laguna Meadows trails:

If you’re noticing a lot of brown leaves, that’s because there’s been a two-year drought in southwest Texas. Another ranger told us that nature could withstand another year without permanent major damage. It remains to be seen how much more damage we can sustain.

Sparse water meant the Rio Grande wasn’t all that grand, but nonetheless, Santa Elena Canyon was one of our favorite places, a narrow chasm with Mexico on one side, the US on the other, and a slim ribbon of water running down the middle, the clarity and stillness of the river creating the cliffs’ mirrored doubles. Our two countries, so close and yet so far, seemingly one and the same place and people. If only. I thought of the beautiful book by Francisco Cantu, The River Becomes a Line: Dispatches from the Border.

We did not go to the Rio Grande Village, a legal point of entry where people wade across the river between Mexico and the US. A ranger advised us to get there by 7:30 am, since it would be 97 degrees there. She also recounted her trek on a completely exposed trail through prickly pear cactus on a mission to rescue tourists suffering from heatstroke, and how she hadn’t wanted to go back since. Not having packed our passports anyway, we took her advice, and stayed in the mountains. We wonder if this nice ranger still has her job. Or maybe she, Tom, and the rest of them are part of the Deep State?

There was one more trail to do from the Lodge, and aside from the fact that the Window Trail descends, forcing you to ascend when the cool of the morning is past, it’s a beauty, especially with a scramble up to the top of the Oak Springs Trail:

It was a short jaunt from our room to the Window Viewpoint, a lovely sunset ritual:

And my favorite view of all, flying home to the bejeweled Bay Area on the approach to SFO. Home, sweet, home!

Happy Belated Groundhog Day: Horror Replaces Rom-Com

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Groundhog

Note: I was on vacation on the real Groundhog Day, but worked diligently before leaving to write and schedule my annual GHD post. Alas, it never appeared, apparently falling victim to the Trump-Musk DOGE infiltration of WordPress, intent on eliminating all criticisms of the new regime and mistaking non-white-male images as DEI subversion. Now I am back, and, like my fellow Democrats, stand ready to fight back as I shake off my “Why bother?” torpor. So here you go, in case you’d like to turn back the clock and relive the last 3+ weeks.

*

Like a lot of my favorite things–sleeping well, democracy, following politics–Groundhog Day has been turned on its head.

True, there’s still a resemblance to the 1993 film, in which Bill Murray hits the alarm each morning only to find he is trapped in the same day. I feel trapped, too.

Only my day begins with hair-on-fire head exploding as the radio blares the latest atrocities of Trump 2.0. Unlike Bill Murray, whose do-overs present an opportunity for tiny adjustments that make things better, Trump’s do-over is an opportunity for vengeance and making everything worse. Guided by his less lazy and smarter Project 2025 Overlords, he’s doing a bang-up job. At least I feel pretty banged up, and except for being female and from a Blue state, I’m not even a target! The dreary, gentle tedium depicted in the film has been supplanted by a fast-track descent into ever more horrifying levels of hell.

So if I were a groundhog these days, I’d be tempted to go back in my tunnel and never come out. At least not until the mid-terms.

But then I realize it’s Bite or Flight.

I’m rooting for Bite.

Caste

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The ambiguity of whether or not the Equal Rights Amendment has actually been ratified perfectly captures the status of women in today’s America. On the one hand, women have made huge strides in the last few decades. On the other hand, the US Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobb’s decision overturning Roe v Wade effectively relegated women to second-class citizens by stripping away their bodily autonomy. Oh, and did I mention that Kamala Harris lost the election to a man whose campaign Tim Walz characterized as the “He-Man Women-Haters Club?”

The recent news about the ERA brought me back not just to the election, but to this summer, when I happened to be listening to the audiobook of Isabel Wilkerson’s 2020 Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents right after Joe Biden’s disastrous debate. Caste refers to artificial hierarchy that helps determine standing and respect and shapes the infrastructure of our divisions and ranking. It encompasses sex as well as race.

As Democrats hotly debated whether or not Biden should step aside, and who should replace him, I listened to the section toward the end of the book in which Wilkerson predicts to a friend well before the 2016 presidential nominations were sewn up that Donald Trump will beat Hillary Clinton. She was sure that the conscious and unconscious pull of caste would be just too powerful to overcome.

Listening, I thought to myself, “There’s no way Kamala Harris will be elected President.” 

I had thought the same thing about Barack Obama in 2008. Talking myself through my fears took some doing. Eventually I came to realize that not voting for Obama because I believed America wouldn’t elect a Black man meant I was participating in the very racism that stood in his—and our country’s—way. 

Obama won. He even won twice, making what could have been a fluke seem more solid, hopeful. Obama’s victories added to the rare examples Wilkerson cites when people stand strong against the headwinds of caste. Arguably, though, the rise of Trump as his immediate successor demonstrates the powerful backlash against daring to defy caste’s strictures.

This time around, eight years later, there was a lot of talk about how many Americans feared that the country was not yet ready to elect a Black woman (often from Black women themselves, who carry first-hand knowledge in their bones). There was just as much talk urging people to work hard to elect Harris rather than succumbing to and thereby entrenching the iron rule of caste.

And so we did—millions of us, with wild joy and enthusiasm. It wasn’t enough.

Although I believe Kamala Harris lost primarily because people were upset about the cost of living, that does not negate the existence of racism and sexism. I never shook my fear that Isabel Wilkerson was right. As a Black woman, Kamala Harris faced a deep and double reservoir of bias, conscious and unconscious.

Trump’s constant degradation of women and non-Whites certainly granted a permission structure for outright sexism and racism to flourish openly. It’s not for nothing that the GOP’s first reactions to Harris’s candidacy were to call her a DEI hire and accuse her of sleeping her way to the top. Trump’s pronouncement that Harris had only recently decided to “turn Black” was a ludicrous insult, but also an effective dog-whistle signaling untrustworthiness and opportunism.

Still, the impact of racism and sexism is hard to quantify. Most people know better than to say to a pollster or a reporter what an older White man cheerfully told Jennifer Egan when she was canvassing for Harris in Pennsylvania: “I would never vote for a Black, and I would never vote for a woman.” Yet that’s exactly what I suspected people meant as the chorus of “I don’t know, I just need more specifics” grew every time Harris rolled out another concrete proposal.

Mentioning the possibility of racism and misogyny as factors in Harris’s defeat in the early days after the election generated such an intense reaction that you’d think the women of America had risen en masse to force spoonfuls of Skippy down the throats of men with severe peanut allergies. Per usual, women were blamed for Harris’s loss, although the candidate herself almost never talked about her race or sex. As New York Times columnist Jessica Grose pointed out, Democratic strategist James Carville often opined that “preachy females” are the problem and Democratic messaging comes across as “too feminine.” Grose wrote her essay as Trump was floating his fellow sexual predators Matt Gaetz and Pete Hegseth for Cabinet heads, and as the post-election slogan, “Your body, my choice,” became a taunt many boys flung at their female classmates on school yards across America. No wonder Grose acidly wrote, “But I guess I should stop talking about it” in response to the outrage common if someone dared suggest that sexism may have played a role in the election outcome

So here we are. Trump will be inaugurated again tomorrow, making what could have been a first-time fluke seem more solid, uglier than ever. As Ezra Klein notes, “the present feels decidedly male,” an even more amped-up version of Trump’s “gaudily masculine” campaign. I can think of less diplomatic adverbs, but I guess I should stop talking about it, too.

Caste has not yet loosened its grip. Equal Rights Amendment or not, we are going back. There’s no ambiguity to the diminished status of women and that sexism played a role in Trump 2.0.

The Fire This Time

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My daughter Emma and her husband, along with their two cats, are back home in their LA apartment for the moment. They’d spent two nights in her studio (Emma’s an artist), a bit farther south and more removed from danger. The studio lacks heat and a place to sleep or shower, but at least it had electricity and better access to more escape routes. The cats loved exploring their new digs, blissfully oblivious to Santa Ana winds, go-bags, whether an evacuation warning would turn into an order, and if there’d be time if it did.

After a brief respite that included showers and a warm, soft bed instead of a concrete floor, the winds are picking up again. There is no rain in the forecast, no end in sight for the City of Angels.

Into this tragic hellscape blusters our once and future President, convicted felon Donald Trump. As usual, he is pouring gasoline on the fire. The firehoses in some parts of LA ran dry due to pressure drops and the magnitude of the catastrophe, but Trump’s divisive firehose of lies and vitriol spews at full force. He has not even had the decency to muster desultory thoughts and prayers for the millions of Angelenos, tens of thousands of whom have been displaced and whose homes and neighborhoods lie in charred ruins.

In the past decade since Trump has wormed his way into my brain, I have mused about what epithet best suits him: Thug, carnival-barker, wrecking ball, charlatan, mob boss, and some others I reluctantly rejected because they’re the same dehumanizing words used by Nazis and Rwandans to soften the ground for genocide. Arsonist-in-Chief strikes me as the most apt.

Trump delights in setting fires and watching people scramble amid the unpredictable chaos. The more, the better, so people are overwhelmed and have no safe place to turn. It’s a sadistic form of shock and awe. Right now, his lies and finger-pointing about LA have added to the conflagration. Before that it was the victims of Hurricane Helene, the residents of Springfield, Ohio, Puerto Rico, trans people, and–always in the line of fire–immigrants, women, reporters, Black and Brown people, anyone who dares to defy him. He even has the tell-tale fixation of the firefighter who lights the match–the stealth arsonist cloaked as hero. “I alone can fix it,” trumpets Trump about the fires he starts. But there is never any repair, just the kind of fix that is in for him and his rich and powerful cronies. Broken families, broken hearts, broken country be damned.

It breaks my mind that America has re-elected Trump despite, or even because of, his clear unfitness and incendiary vengeance. Now we are stuck with another round of the Arsonist-in-Chief, also the Climate-Denier-in-Chief. Climate change is the real culprit in LA’s fires (besides the original water theft from Owens Valley to create a city of millions in a desert).  

We will not be spared the floods, or the fires, next time. They are here now, and will come more frequently and with more devastating impact unless we wake up. But being woke is out of vogue, so instead we’ll have a President hellbent on unraveling the fragile progress we’ve made to try to keep the planet from burning.

Trump voters and voters who stayed home, what have you done?

Channeling Hugh

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My father-in-law had a handwritten note above his desk that guided him every day through his long life (he died at age 96 just weeks after Trump’s 2016 victory). It read:

  • Pause
  • Think
  • Plan
  • Act

I think of my father-in-law a lot, especially now. Hugh was a conscientious objector in WWII, a political science professor in later life, and a committed civil-rights and anti-war champion throughout. He was invariably courteous, friendly, and even-keeled. Hugh favored reason over emotion. So he followed his credo in times of trouble, whether trouble came in the form of a clogged drain or foreign policy catastrophes: Pause, think, plan, act.

And that is what I intend to do now.

I very much doubt that my father-in-law would applaud how I’m currently fulfilling these intentions. For instance, I don’t think Hugh’s “Pause” would consist of listening to Elin Hilderbrand’s delicious Nantucket beach reads. Nor would he lie awake at night thinking about how remaining behind on New Yorkers maybe means the election hasn’t really happened. His plan would probably not involve looking at comfort food recipes. Stress-eating a batch of freshly made chocolate chip cookies wouldn’t be his chosen action.

He might be with me on doing a lot of yardwork, though.

Hugh is also with me as inspiration as I try to pick my way through Trump 2.0’s “Move Fast and Break Things” manifesto. As an antidote to this horror, and in honor of my father-in-law, I will slowly move to come up with my own, more enduring version of Pause, Think, Plan, Act.

At least I hope so.

One Conversation at a Time

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Phone banking can be tedious: Hang ups, wrong numbers, people who are angry because they’re inundated with calls.

There are also plenty of people who affirm they’re voting the way you hope they are, or need a bit of help with voting information, or thank you for your work despite the fact that they’re inundated.

Then there are the nuggets that make it all worthwhile. The other day, the father of the woman I was trying to reach in Pennsylvania said she was at work, but could he help? I said I was a volunteer calling about the presidential election. He replied, “I am a 67-year-old lifelong Republican who is voting for Kamala Harris and other Democrats all the way down the ticket.” His immediate family of five—a mix from both parties—were all voting the same way.

Last week I spoke with a woman I’ll call Kay in Wisconsin who told me that she and her husband had decided not to vote this year. When I asked her to tell me more, it was clear how overwhelmed she felt, not knowing who or what to believe. It just felt easier and wiser to lay low and sit this one out.

Immigration was one of Kay’s top concerns. She didn’t like that so many resources were going to immigrants. “It’s a complicated issue,” I said, mentioning that Kamala Harris would sign the border bill that Trump had torpedoed. Did she have any personal experience with immigrants in her community. No—she’d just read about it. Kay also mentioned that she was unhappy about the Dobbs decision.

Kay had watched the debate, and thought that Trump was a liar and Kamala was great. I noted that what disturbed me most was how Trump constantly sowed chaos and division. Our conversation then turned to Springfield, Ohio; we agreed that Trump’s and Vance’s lies about pet-eating Haitians had brought harm to the city’s immigrant and native residents alike. We talked about lots of things, including our fondness for President Obama.

Still, Kay seemed discouraged. “Does voting matter?” she asked. “Do they even count the votes?” Yes and yes. Especially in Wisconsin!

“If you were to vote,” I asked, “Who would you vote for?”

“Oh, Kamala!” Kay replied without hesitation. So would her husband.

I said, “It breaks my heart that you feel like your voice doesn’t matter, and that you’re voluntarily letting louder people drown it out.” Kay took this in. I told her how moved I was by our conversation, that it would stay with me long after we finished talking, and I hoped she felt the same way.

“You’ve given me a lot to think about,” Kay said. “Thank you for helping me see the light.”

I do not know for sure if Kay and her husband will vote this year. But I do know that this conversation mattered, and that tens of thousands of us are making these connections, unearthing these nuggets, turning non-voters into voters every day.

Happy Birthday, Mom(ala)

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My mother and Kamala Harris share a birthday. Kamala turns 60 today, and my mother would be 101 had she not died in 1995. (No Jimmy-Carter-like hanging on to cast a vote for her, alas!)

I think of my mother a lot, and especially during momentous political times. How she would have loved to mark her ballot for Kamala! On the other hand, the prospect of Trump as president once, let alone possibly twice, would have killed my mother. Although she died far too young, I am grateful she was spared having to live in an America with him as cause and symptom. Still, I wish she were here to guide me through these times.

I think back to 1972, when I was a senior in high school and highly aware of the presidential election for the first time. I found it impossible to believe that anyone could vote for Richard Nixon, and fervently believed that George McGovern would win. Did my mother share the same delusion? Or simply not want to disturb my beautiful, naive idealism? Was she as crushed as I was? How did she keep on going? Because I know she did. We all did. Less than two years later, we broke open the champagne when Nixon was forced to resign.

I miss my beautiful, naive idealism, and I miss my mother, but of course I’ve kept on going, too. I would like to put champagne in the fridge to celebrate Kamala’s victory. I find it impossible to believe that anyone could vote for Donald Trump. But the traumas of 2016 and the MAGA-fication of the Republican Party have taught me otherwise.

Still, I am cautiously optimistic. Not delusional, but hopeful. I would love to compare notes with my mother about keeping the faith through dire times. I would love for both of us to be able to bask together in the joy and fortitude that Kamala exemplifies, to celebrate her victory.

Happy Birthday, Mom. Wish you were here, though I’m glad you are not. I will work and vote with all my heart for Kamala in honor of you.

And thank you, Kamala. Happy Birthday to you, too!

Election Countdown

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Soon after Joe Biden was declared the winner in November 2020, my husband said, “I thought we’d at least get a mental health break, but I guess not.” Trump and his allies, who’d sowed chaos and seeds of doubt about fair elections long before any votes were cast, wasted no time in spreading the Big Lie and passing lots of laws to make voting harder in swing states. Although personally and even sometimes politically we’ve had many bright spots in the last four years—2 weddings, no funerals, and no red wave in 2022!—it’s been quite a psychological slog.

My mental health improved greatly on July 21, the day President Biden announced he was stepping aside and endorsing Kamala Harris to take his place as the 2024 nominee. Before then, and especially after his disastrous debate performance, I had pretty much felt on a glide path to doom. “At least there won’t be another insurrection,” I consoled myself at the thought of Trump’s re-election.

With the coming of Kamala, hope and joy returned, along with a fighting chance. I have reveled in cat memes, rising poll numbers, a pitch-perfect convention, Taylor Swift’s endorsement, Michelle Obama, Tim Walz, Doug Emhoff, and all the Every-Identity-Group-Under-the-Sun-for-Kamala fundraisers. And whose mood didn’t improve watching an unraveling Donald Trump swallow the bait every single time in their September 10 debate?

And yet, here we are at essentially a coin toss. I feel cautiously optimistic, and also increasingly anxious. It all depends on the day’s vibes, my wish-casting, whether a new Times/Siena poll has dropped, and the number of undecided people who complain that they still don’t know enough about Kamala Harris’s plans, which I fear is a way of saying There’s no way I’ll vote for a Black woman. I feel good about reports of Harris-Walz signs in deep red towns, somebody’s ancient, rock-ribbed Republican uncle voting for Kamala. Then, on a phone bank to Michigan, a guy answers, “Are you planning to vote for Harris or Trump?” with “I would not piss on her if she were on fire. Have a good day!” At least he was polite.

So I’m pretty anxious, but living by the axiom, “Do more, worry less.” I volunteer a lot for Airlift, which raises money to support grassroots groups who excel at turning non-voters into voters in battleground states. I know a lot of people who are responding to Michelle Obama’s call to “Do Something.”

We’re doing what we can for our future. And for our mental health. Let’s bring it home in the next 35 days.

Passing the Torch

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My husband Jonathan and I had recently left the Denver airport and were driving along Highway 70 on the first day of our vacation hiking in the Rockies when the texts started pinging.

Jonathan checked my phone, and there was the news we’d been hoping for: President Biden had stepped aside. The 27 minutes between his announcement and subsequent endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris had not yet elapsed, but by the time we stopped for lunch, Biden had passed the torch and the $96 million in the campaign chest to his VP. The cafe we chose had good chili and a comfy reading nook. There on the shelf was Kamala’s Way and Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future, by Pope Francis. “From the Pope’s lips to God’s ears,” I said to Jonathan.

Now five weeks later, the Democratic Convention has just ended, converted quickly from what likely would have been a valiant but manufactured attempt at optimism to through-the-roof euphoria. On the first night, ear-splitting enthusiasm rocked the rafters as just about everybody’s lips sang the praises of not just the newly formed Harris-Walz ticket, but also and especially of President Biden.

“Thank you, Joe!” chanted the first-night crowd as they waved signs that reinforced the message. The ever-snarky New York Times political reporter Peter Baker wrote, “They were thanking him, yes, for what he accomplished during a lifetime in public service. But they were also thanking him, let’s be honest, for not running again.” He’s not wrong.

At the end of a long night, President Biden delivered his farewell address–reworked just a little, it seemed–from the acceptance speech he had hoped to give at the Convention’s crowning event. It was a poignant moment, and also a reminder that had Convention Joe shown up to the debate, he would still be the nominee, and we’d likely be Ridin’ with Biden over the cliff to defeat.

The most moving part of Biden’s speech came near the end, as he quoted a verse from a song treasured by his family:

What shall our legacy be,

What will our children say?

Let me know in my heart when my days are through,

America, America, I gave my best to you.

He did, over and over again, culminating in this final act of stepping aside. President Biden left the stage, left Chicago for a vacation in California, left the torch in the able and willing hands of a new generation of talent with an incredible candidate leading the way. Thank you, Joe.

Now it is Kamala’s way, a path to a better future. But let’s not just dream or pray about it—let’s work hard to make it happen.

Yosemite!

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After our daughter’s wedding last month, we decided that instead of a long slog home from LA on Interstate 5, we’d continue the celebration with a long slog on a trail in Yosemite Valley. So after the post-wedding goodbye breakfast, we drove to the cute town of Mariposa, positioning us for a restful night before an early morning entry into Yosemite. Since it was a weekday before the summer crowds descended, we avoided the need for reservations as well as swarms of people (though not necessarily mosquitoes–the price of being there during peak run-off).

Initially, we hoped to recreate a glorious hike we took 15-20 years ago, when we took the bus up to Glacier Point, then descended into the Valley on the long and scenic Panorama Trail. But since the bus hadn’t started running yet, we decided we would be the bus, using leg power to propel ourselves 3,200′ up the Four-Mile Trail (which is actually 4.7 miles each way) to Glacier Point from the Valley floor, then down again the same way.

As Google’s AI describes the hike, “it’s not for the faint of heart.” More enticing and poetic, the human who presumably wrote the park’s website notes that the Four-Mile Trail is where “Yosemite Falls gives you the full monty.”

It also offers “great views of most of the landmarks that Yosemite Valley’s famous for, and all from angles you’re not used to seeing on postcards.” These promises, unlike the mileage implied by the trail’s name, turned out to be true:

My husband and I met 40 years ago on a 15-mile hike, and have hit the trails together ever since. Which is to say that even though we’ve slowed down, we tackled the well-graded switchbacks with relative ease. After tooling around Glacier Point for a while and eating our lunch, we had the crazy thought: Why not go down to the Valley via the 8.5-mile Panorama Trail? Sure, it was twice as long as going back the way we came, but we had enough food and water, plus it was the hike we’d intended to do all along. Besides, wasn’t it all down hill?

Well, sort of. We forgot about the 1,000′ climb after descending to Illilouette Falls. But we were high on our spontaneity, and kept saying to one another that even though we probably shouldn’t have done it, we were glad we did. It’s easy to see why:

And so we happily proceeded to the top of Nevada Falls. Which is not the same as the bottom of Nevada Falls.

Or, for that matter, Vernal Falls, descended via the Mist Trail. Since it was early June–peak water!–it was more like the Carwash Trail. So we descended very slowly down hundreds of often-slippery granite steps, our feet feeling not quite as fresh as when we had started out eight hours earlier. Still, a rainbow is a sign of hope:

Eventually we made it to less vertical ground, the falls behind us, an hour to go on easy terrain to the Valley, our spirits and even our knees more or less intact, just in time for dinner.

That’s when we learned that the free shuttle wasn’t running at this particular stop until the next day. We ate our leftover lunch, then trudged endlessly to Curry Village, which looked like a tent-cabin refugee camp. But at least there was a shuttle stop, and then a shuttle bus, and then a short walk across the meadow back to our car, the golden light yielding to dusk. We had been gone eleven hours, and proudly sent a photo of our accomplishment to our daughters:

They were impressed, and jealous. Mission accomplished, we drove 2.5 hours to our hotel in Oakdale as the sky turned from orange to black, then tumbled into bed, exhausted but happy.