Category Archives: Personal

Women of a Certain Age

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My mother and me, both so much younger!

“Don’t grow old,” my mother unhelpfully advised.

Ever since I was diagnosed with cancer at age 57, there has been nothing I’ve wanted more than to grow old. It’s my aspiration, not something to avoid. I relish celebrating one birthday after another.

I just celebrated another one—my 71st. Although now seen as the younger side of old, reaching this age officially counts as having disregarded my mother’s advice.

Seventy-one is also the age she never lived beyond.

My mother smoked three packs of cigarettes a day and was also at least 150 pounds overweight for most of her life. Even when I was a kid, I remember my parents driving around and around the block to find a parking space right in front of wherever we were going because she couldn’t walk far. In my mother’s later years, she could barely cross the living room without stopping several times to catch her breath, and eventually was tethered to an oxygen machine. The aging process she exemplified struck me as an ever-tightening spiral of constriction, oppressed by living but afraid of dying (and nursing homes).  As my brother put it, “If you wake up every day for 10 years saying that this will be the day you’re going to die, eventually you’ll be right.” When that day finally came, it wasn’t exactly surprising, but it was mercifully quick and gentle—my mother’s heart gave out and she died instantly in her beloved home, her lovely Jamaican caregiver by her side and my brother downstairs.

My trajectory toward old age bears no resemblance to hers. I have never smoked a cigarette in my life, am a normal-ish weight, and walk two or three hours every day. I have had no further cancer scares or really any significant health challenges. Although I feel myself slowing down some and am on the list for cataract surgery, it’s highly unlikely that I’ll die anytime soon. Still, it’s freaky to have reached the milestone of my mother’s final age.

I’ve been thinking of her a lot lately, missing her salty humor, her devotion and love despite her suffering. Longevity is not in my genes—my father died when he was 72, and my brother when he was only 65! Aging quickly and poorly was the model I more or less assumed would be my fate, even though I’ve clearly made different choices to alter the outcome.

And I have succeeded (I hope—my mother made it more than halfway to 72, so I’m not out of the woods yet). Will my aging be a time of expansion or an ever-narrowing constriction as it too soon was for my mother? Luckily, I had some other great models to emulate, such as my in-laws, vital and mostly not caught in a downward spiral until their deaths at almost 97 and almost 90.

Do I have 20 more years left in me? Fifteen? I used to think I’d be lucky to make it to 75, but now I think it’s a reasonable hope that my husband and I will celebrate our golden anniversary when we’re 81. That’s only a decade away.

Dying together at age 85—holding hands in bed as we sleep, of course!—feels like a worthy goal. But 85 is so soon–the closer I get, the more I want to move the goal posts farther away. Will I see my 9-month-old granddaughter graduate from high school and college, or be lucky enough to attend her wedding?  What will it be like to have the years my mother missed out on?

I hope to receive them as the gift that they are, and to make the most of them, for my sake and for hers.

Hola!

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Almost 45 years ago, when I was a social work graduate student at UC Berkeley, I took a year of Spanish, along with my usual classes on community mental health, psychopathology, family and the law. Why not? I was there on campus anyway, and there weren’t so many hoops to jump through back then. I had a massive crush on the teacher, who regaled us with stories of his rum-soaked nights in various Caribbean countries. I took the class with my then-boyfriend’s mother, and remember her saying in class, “Soy muy cariñosa.” (“I am very loving/affectionate.”) This was not my boyfriend’s experience of his mother, but I was not going to get into it, especially in a foreign language.

Since then, I have used my very broken Spanish to communicate with the lovely women who clean our house. Their even more broken English and our elaborate gesticulations have served us well. But as things started ramping up with Trump’s terror campaign against immigrants, I wanted to resurrect my Spanish skills from the pile of rusty flakes they’d become in case I was ever called upon to use my Legal Observer training to actually help my fellow brown-skinned community members.

I was also trying to do what us older folks are supposed to do, which is to stay engaged and learn new things. This seemed even more important as my political dread and anxiety deepened my depression. To counter this, I’d tried my hand at watercolor through community ed, but each class escalated my dread and despair more than the daily headlines I was trying to distract myself from.

When the next community ed schedule emerged, a conversational Spanish class caught my eye. It was only six sessions long, met during dinnertime, and cost about three times what a regular semester-long community college class cost. I didn’t think I’d get much out of it besides hunger and the hassle of night-time driving, but at least it had nothing to do with art! Then I got the brilliant idea of trying something that was more of a commitment, and instead enrolled in a regular semester-long section of Spanish 101 that met twice a week.

It’s been the best thing I’ve done all year (besides becoming a grandmother). The teacher is warm, fun, and encouraging, and moves us along at a brisk pace. Except for the students from bilingual families, most of us sound like garbage disposals grinding down rocks as we try to converse in Spanish, but our teacher is adept at creating a safe and bonding experience. There are a few other gray-haired people in the class, but mostly it’s a diverse group of young people. We range in age from 16-77, from all different walks of life. I sit in the front row so I can see the board, along with three other gray-haired ladies, but a lovely 20-year-old woman from Uganda sits with us, and we’re all diligent about our homework and group exercises. “So you like hanging out with the old ladies?” I ask her. Yes, she does—she misses her elders back home, and wonders about our American culture’s lack of reverence for the aged.

I’m learning Spanish—“iEstudio español!” I told my housecleaners. “Oh, your Spanish is so good!” they exclaimed. At least I think that’s what they said. By the time I speak well enough to be of any use to our immigrant community, it will either be illegal to learn Spanish or we’ll be through this nightmarish time, but I’m loving the process.

As it turns out, the actual grammar and vocabulary, listening and speaking—you know, learning Spanish—is the easy part. I used to be good at languages, and I have a certain amount of muscle memory from 45 years ago. The real challenges have been:

  • Figuring out how to get onto the College of Marin site and register in the first place
  • Figuring out how to log onto campus wi-fi for all my devices
  • Figuring out Canvas, the learning platform we use as well as COM’s webmail and the virtual textbook
  • Figuring out how to do a Google Slideshow so I can submit my many homework projects on famous Latinos, “My Family,” a tour of our campus.

But the biggest and most hilarious challenge is when we’re supposed to identify pop-culture figures and say what they do and where they’re from. Bad Bunny, Selena Gomez, BeyĂłnce. I know exactly none of them by face, and others I’ve never even heard of. My one triumph was being the only person in the class who recognized Michael Jordan, of Black Panther fame. When in small groups we had to show an image of a famous person for others to identify, I was mystified by my groupmates’ choices. On the other hand, no one had the slightest idea who my pick was–Virginia Woolf, of course!

Life-long learning—what a gas, as long as it doesn’t involve picking up a paintbrush or night-time driving. Plus, I spend so much time in class and doing homework that my time to fret about the state of the country has diminished. But being around my younger, diverse, smart, and caring classmates gives me a lot of hope for the future.

Signs of Solidarity

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There are so many horrors perpetrated by the Trump Administration, it can be difficult to choose which to focus on. Right now the hair-on-fire moment is Trump’s and his minions’ weaponization of government against everyone they dislike, including rich and powerful people like Jimmy Kimmel and James Comey. This is indeed an alarming escalation.

But the assault on the most vulnerable people also continues; the reign of terror visited upon immigrants may have dropped from the headlines, but not from reality. We’ve witnessed masked agents abducting brown people off the streets and sending them to foreign gulags, gardeners who have lived here for over 20 years chased down, citizens and legal residents detained, American-born children terrified they’ll come home to vanished parents after a day at school. The Guardian reports that immigrants with no criminal record are now the largest group in ICE detention. So much for prioritizing deporting “the worst of the worst.”

That’s why I’ve joined Signs of Solidarity (SoS), a campaign devised by Indivisible to help immigrants feel safe and welcome in our communities, to educate workers and their employers about their rights, and most importantly to communicate that we see and condemn what’s going on. As an SoS volunteer, I’ve been going around to local businesses offering free, public-facing signs in support of immigrants as well as signs designating a private space that ICE and other immigration enforcement can’t legally enter without a signed judicial warrant:

The response has been overwhelmingly positive. Even when someone doesn’t want a sign because of a blanket policy against posting anything in their windows, they almost always appreciate the cause. One restaurant manager in a shopping center that doesn’t allow posting proudly put up a big flyer by the front door anyway. His neighbor, born in America but raised in Iran until the war there caused his parents to send him back to the US alone at the age of 14, was nervous about crossing his landlord, but prominently displayed a flyer on the inside counter. Customers standing in line while the cashier explained to me that she’d need to run it by the owners called out, “Thank you so much for what you’re doing.” One customer coming in for her treatment at a high-end beauty salon asked for signs to post in her own business a few towns over. A pizzeria owner, taping a sign to her window, handed me her staple gun saying, “Here, you’ll need this to make sure your other sign is secure on the outside bulletin board.”

I should say that my small town has not been a hotbed of immigration enforcement. I live in an affluent, mostly white community in one of the deepest blue counties in the country. Signs proclaiming “No Human is Illegal” bloom in people’s yards. The warm reception I’ve encountered is hardly surprising here. Possibly it would be different in a more conservative part of the country, particularly if business owners feared antagonizing a broader swath of their customer base than is likely here. There’s a natural tendency to not want to stick your neck out in dangerous times.

But if I, a mild-mannered, 70-year-old white citizen not the least bit in the direct line of fire when it comes to the more sadistic oppressions of the current administration, is unwilling to do something simple to stand up to the abuses of power all around us, then what hope do we have? We’ve seen how corporate leaders, media, universities, and law firms who capitulate to Trump only embolden him further.

I’ve been heartened by the conversations I’ve had, cheered by the growing number of signs popping up in windows downtown.

They help people feel less alone, less hopeless. They give people courage. The more we stand in solidarity, the sooner we can bring this nightmare to an end.

Respite

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Ever feel this way? The other day, my friend, one of the loveliest and most even-keeled women I know, calmly said, “I feel enraged all the time.” She recounted a recent dream, in which she was offered two bottles of pills, one labeled “Sorrow” and the other “Aggression.” Were the pills meant to cure these afflictions, or pile on more? My friend’s antidote is knitting. Mine is hiking. So rest, weary doom-scroller, and enjoy vicariously–without the jet lag or record-breaking heat–my husband’s and my recent trip to the Austrian Tyrol. Knitting is optional.

We spent the first week in Achensee, its verdant green. lush wildflowers, and turquoise waters a welcome change from the sun-baked golden hills of California. After slipping and sliding down steep, gravelly trails, we sought refreshment from the many huttes along the way:

Next up was Innsbruck, which we had visited in September 2017, when it was under snow. The large peach hotel in the first photo is where we stayed then, but this time we were in the Old City, home of Innsbruck’s most famed sight, the Golden Roof, composed of 2,657 fire-gilded copper tiles and completed in 1500 by Emperor Maximilian I in honor of his wedding.

We stayed in the Maximilian Hotel, which didn’t have old gilded tiles, but did have air conditioning, a rare and welcome treat to cool us off after our daily hikes in and around Innsbruck.

First we took a bus to the nearby town of Zirl, and hiked a long loop starting with the Ehnbeckklamm Gorge, enjoying the ants near the Hoch Zirl train station far more than the sugar ants that took up residence in our kitchen while we were away, and coming back down past some old castle ruins from the 13th century:

Next up was the Seefeld, pastoral with a posh town and nice church, and then a hike at Patscherkopfel with a great overview of Innsbruck:

Our very favorite hike was from the town of Grizens, to Kemater Alm and the valley beyond. The trail started by traversing a long, narrow cow pasture, and the cows, protective of their young ones, were not happy to see us. Polite but insistent, they walked alongside and behind us on the trail, mooing urgently to the next group of cows to take over as they ushered us through the territory. We hurried as best we could, but I was desperate to pee and had to stop. Soon I was encircled by cows, two of whom were real ass-lickers, as I quickly learned. But really, it was a gentle tickle, quite kind treatment for an invader. We hustled out of the pasture with their persuasive accompaniment as fast as we could (and returned on the road the cars take on the way down).

Our final week was in the Stubaital, a stunning valley with the beautiful Grawa Falls, a glacier, a hanging bridge, and many arduous hikes (one Gasthaus strategically placed painted stones along the steep and narrow trail to entice children onward, but our kids wouldn’t have fallen for it):

Hang gliders were everywhere, as were gorgeous wildflowers and vistas, and even some Stone Men, an art installation in the Pinnistal a bit more sophisticated though less charming than our sleeping frog:

Here’s the view from our balcony in Neustift and the town church.

Now it’s home, sweet, home, where I need only look at this picture of our two-month-old granddaughter whenever I need a break from the world:

Another Pizza Anniversary

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My husband and I met on a Sierra Singles hike in Marin County 41 years ago today, after which we went with the entire group to Red Boy Pizza in Fairfax. Unlike the Ethiopian restaurant where Jonathan proposed and the Bed and Breakfast where we married, Red Boy is still going strong, just like us. It’s where we celebrate every June 2, always ordering a pepperoni and green pepper pizza and inflicting our history on the bored teenager taking our order.

We are not as fresh and ebullient as we were when we met, with the wear and tear long-term marriages acquire, the sometimes alarming aspects of being 70, and the outside world pressing hard on us all right now. So it was a special gift to listen today to Ezra Klein’s conversation with the writer Kathryn Schulz about how to hold radically different feelings at once.

The podcast springs from Schulz’s memoir, Lost & Found: Reflections on Grief, Gratitude, and Happiness, about the intense grief of losing her father while simultaneously falling in love with her partner. They’ve been together 10 years now, and have two kids–long past the bliss of love’s initial rush, well into the middle. The advanced middle is where Jonathan and I now live, and Shulz really captures the deeper appreciation and commitment that comes from living within those intertwining contradictions of life and love:

Most of what we read and hear and watch of love stories is either the beginning or the ending. . . . When you are happily together with someone, what actually matters to you is the middle. And actually what you want to have go on and on and on is the middle. But nobody writes about the middle. There’s very little about the day-to-day happiness and texture of a happy life, which isn’t just happy. . . . A lot of this book is about the endless overlap and contradiction and friction in different emotions. And a lot of happiness is infused with annoyance or frustration or bad days or whatever it may be, but still somehow, fundamentally feels for us that the deep and essential name you would give to it is happiness. 

Happiness is a state of profound appreciation for what you have in that exact moment.

At this exact moment, I have had 41 years with a man who sometimes drives me crazy and whom I deeply love and appreciate. I’m sure he feels the same way. And tonight we’ll both savor those radically different feelings along with our pepperoni and green pepper pizza.

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!

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.

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!

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.