It was time to get away from everything and just be with each other for a while. For some reason, that never actually seems to happen when we’re at home; people call and there are things to do with them, the duties of running the house take over, and I can never get fully away from being on-call to that damned job.

So we packed the truck with the sleeping bags and some snacks and headed for the hills.

We checked out camp, only to find that the loggers who’d intruded on it last year have completely taken it over. There’s a 20-foot high stack of former pine trees laying on the spot where we got married. Clearly, we’re going to have to find another place to camp this year, and maybe next. But it was getting close to dark, so we drove around until we found a nice quiet mountainside, blew up the air mattress, laid on the bug spray, and watched the moon set and the stars come out. We stayed up way too late, considering the sky started lightening at 4:30 in the morning, but it was great to sleep in the open like that.

In the morning we packed our tiny camp back up. I wanted to watch the sun come up over the badlands and Cherry Lake, so that’s what we did. Then, with no firm agenda, we started wandering.

Junior wanted to show me a hidden waterfall on a creek I’ve been all over and around, which I had never seen. It was still early morning when we pulled up to Jawbone Falls, and we climbed on the granite and had a little breakfast.

I wanted to show Junior the end of the creek that I’d found while waiting for him to come back from a bear hunt last year. I had thought he was further up the creek at that time, so I went to see if I could hear him and found a really interesting diversion structure. It turned out that he was closer to the middle, and once they got the bear to the creek, there was no time for sightseeing. So we went this time, taking our time and admiring the trout in the creek and the newt we found along the trail.

After that, we thought we’d head into Yosemite. Junior thought the crowds would be something he could deal with, but when we rounded the corner and saw a sign announcing a 20-30 minute wait in traffic just to get to the entrance, we turned around. We’d just passed the turnoff to the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, also a part of Yosemite, and neither he nor I had ever been there, so that’s where the truck took us. We didn’t know what we’d find, but the ranger at the entrance gave us a brochure that said there were a number of small hikes right around there. We weren’t exactly prepared for hiking; the one time I don’t bring my little day pack and we want to hike, of course. 

We drove over to the O’Shaughnessy Dam, the one that holds back San Francisco’s water supply, and were pleasantly amazed. One of the available hikes was a moderate five or six mile walk to Wapama Falls, so we had our lunch and stuffed water bottles in our pockets and went for it.

It was a good way to start getting in shape for bear season for me; just enough of a hike to get my legs wobbly but with a cool, refreshing reward at the end as we stood in the spray. The hike back didn’t take half so long, and before we knew it, we were grabbing a burger at our usual place, where the waitress doesn’t know us but recognized that we were hunters, not tourists, and wondered what we were doing here before September. Ha! Fooled her, we actually were tourists for the day, but it was pleasing not to be lumped in with the yuppie crowd we’d been immersed in all afternoon.

Sanity trips used to be a time for me to reset my internal calibrations; to not go anywhere in particular, but to pay attention and quiet the voices in my head. I’m quite pleased that they work just as well with my husband along. We kept it loose and just enjoyed the day and each other’s company, and that’s all I needed.