Taking Cues from John Muir

“Oh, these vast, calm, measureless mountain days, inciting at once to work and rest! Days in whose light everything seems equally divine, opening a thousand windows to show us God.”

— John Muir

View of Yosemite Falls from the bridge at Housekeeping Camp

I’m not certain how many times you have to do something to call it a tradition, but I’m pretty sure twelve is enough. That’s how many years our family has taken an annual saunter** into Yosemite Valley. 

It’s hard work making that reservation. Up between 3 and 5am a year in advance for nights on end trying to time the opening of the online reservations system just right. It’s a popular spot. Every year at 3am the demon on my shoulder asks, “Is it worth it?” To which the angel on the other quickly replies (with a wink), “Hell, yeah!”

“From a point about half a mile from our camp we can see into the lower end of the famous valley, with its wonderful cliffs and groves, a grand page of mountain manuscript that I would gladly give my life to be able to read. How vast it seems, how short human life when we happen to think of it, and how little we may learn, however hard we try!

And when they [tourists] are fairly within the walls of the temple and hear the psalms of the falls, they will forget themselves and become devout. Blessed, indeed, should be every pilgrim in these holy mountains!” —J.M.

As June draws near, each member of our family begins to anticipate the return. At this point, I think it has eclipsed Christmas, but I’d have to confer with my kids. My youngest, whom we’ve nicknamed le nez, begins to talk about that familiar, comforting smell of the valley that she has grown to hold so dear.

We start pulling out and sorting our gear, referring to our post mortem notes from the previous year. We’re making a list and checking it twice but we aren’t too concerned about the naughty and nice bit. We just want to ensure we are warm enough, cool enough, dry enough, and fed enough. And something really important doesn’t get left behind (which it always does somehow). 

Jamin begins to plot with one or more of the kids which insanely difficult peak they will summit. This year it was Clouds Rest, a mere 22 miles roundtrip and 6,000 feet of elevation gain, completed all in one day. (I opted for the meager 13-mile trail and I’m glad I did because it kicked my butt.) 

“Every morning, arising from the death of sleep, the happy plants and all our fellow animal creatures great and small, and even the rocks, seemed to be shouting, ‘Awake, awake, rejoice, rejoice, come love us and join in our song. Come! Come!’

Looking back through the stillness and romantic enchanting beauty and peace of the camp grove, this June seems the greatest of all the months of my life, the most truly, divinely free, boundless like eternity, immortal. Everything in it seems equally divine—one smooth, pure, wild glow of Heaven’s love, never to be blotted or blurred by anything past or to come.” —J.M.

A week in Housekeeping Camp (with phones turned off and tucked away, I’ll add) is just the right amount of time for rest and reset. The days are long and timeless which feels like a luxury in this modern day. “What time is it?” someone might randomly ask, to which I gladly answer, “Who can know?”

“Another glorious Sierra day in which one seems to be dissolved and absorbed and sent pulsing onward we know not where. Life seems neither long nor short, and we take no more heed to save time or make haste than do the trees and stars. This is true freedom, a good practical sort of immortality.” —J.M.

My first order of business after checking in and finding our unit is to head, as my dad would say “immediately if not sooner” to the beach of the Merced River with a camping chair and find a spot where the glory of Yosemite Falls is in full view. I crave the familiarity of it, noting the strength of the falls, the contours and contrasts of the cliff walls, the color and light.

This year a few weeks before our trip, I picked up a copy of John Muir’s published journal entitled My First Summer in the Sierra. I knew Muir loved the redwoods and Yosemite enough to work tirelessly to preserve them, but I had never read his journals. I quickly discovered that they were not mere journal entries. They were love letters. As he writes about the mountains and the trees and the flowers and the birds and his experience following a herd of sheep through the Sierra wilderness, I realized that I was being pastored by his words.

“Through a meadow opening in the pine woods I see snowy peaks about the head-waters of the Merced above Yosemite…How consuming strong the invitation they extend! Shall I be allowed to go to them? Night and day I’ll pray that I may, but it seems too good to be true. Some one worthy will go, able for the Godful work, yet as far as I can I must drift about these love-monument mountains, glad to be a servant of servants in so holy a wilderness.” —J.M.

I feel the way John Muir does when I enter the valley. In awe that such a place exists. In awe that I get to be immersed in it. In awe that I have the capacity to be in awe of it. 

The peaks and domes that line the edge of the valley ridges and the towering ponderosa pines and incense cedars that surround our nightly campfires turn my eyes upwards. They are nature’s cathedrals. On the evenings we spend in Curry Village, we sit at the outdoor amphitheater waiting for the glow of the setting sun to light up the flat face of Half Dome til it is a soft golden glow.

I drove my girls up to the high country for the first time this year. We used to go in May when the Tioga Pass was still covered in snow and days of work lay ahead to clear and repair it. But June offers a passport up into the transforming glory of the alpine lakes and meadows. Nine of us trekked up there—3 adults, 3 teens, 3 littles. We followed a footpath that wound along the banks of Tuolomne River and stopped to picnic. A small herd of mule deer grazed in the field along the opposite bank. The river and the birds sang upon the stage with the mountains and clouds their backdrop. I could see the transformation in my youngest daughter’s face. She relaxed, smiled, and settled in on a rock in the middle of the gently flowing river. I suggested to the group that we practice some silence and note all the sounds we can hear. Ten minutes went by and no one spoke. Then twenty. Then thirty. When voices did begin to re-emerge, they came in reluctant whispers, as if trying to hold on to the serenity of the moment. “I just found one of my favorite spots on earth,” my youngest shared quietly as we walked off the path.

“The stream flowing past the camp through ferns and lilies and alders makes sweet music to the ear, but the pines marshaled around the edge of the sky make a yet sweeter music to the eye. Divine beauty all. Here I could stay tethered forever…” —J.M.

“One seems to be in a majestic domed pavilion in which a grand play is being acted with scenery and music and incense,—all the furniture and action so interesting we are in no danger of being called on to endure one dull moment. God himself seems to be always doing his best here, working like a man in a glow of enthusiasm.” —J.M.

As my familiarity with this place grows, so does my love for it. Someone asked once why we go to the same place every year when there are so many other beautiful places to see. There’s a tendency to think that we require something new and flashy to ignite wonder—new sights, new job, new car, new home, new spouse. Check the box. Next? But what about the value of visiting the same place over and over again until its shape and form becomes familiar and precious? What about the beauty of anticipating what you have come to love so dearly and allowing yourself to be surprised by it over and over again? What about the goodness of evolving from tourist to inhabitant?

This year I overheard my dear friend’s daughter ask, “Mom, is Yosemite home?” to which she replied, “Why yes it is. We just happen to live elsewhere for the other 51 weeks of the year.” Her words speak to the power and significance this annual trek holds on our lives—mind, heart, body, soul.

“We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us. Our flesh-and-bone tabernacle seems transparent as glass to the beauty about us, as if truly an inseparable part of it…” —J.M.

** “I don’t like either the word [hiking] or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains—not hike! Do you know the origin of that word ‘saunter?’ It’s a beautiful word. Away back in the Middle Ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going, they would reply, ‘A la sainte terre,’ ‘To the Holy Land.’ And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now the mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not ‘hike’ through them.” —John Muir