is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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Undue Diligence: A Life of Jill S----.
First of all, Jill is here seen wearing things that most of you will never ever see her wear in person. Hiking shoes! Clothing covered with dirt!
Because I am good at organizing trips and because I will go to such great lengths to research all the activities and how we will get there and what the altitudes of different hikes are and how we can best adjust ourselves to high altitudes and sequence hikes accordingly, and where are the places to eat breakfast and dinner and what days we should eat at the different places, etc., ad-almost-infinitum, it has been decided by committee that one possible title of a biography of me might be� Undue Diligence: A Life of Jill S----.
But Yosemite isn�t about diligence. It�s about beauty, and getting away from the swiftness and sometimes the falseness of urban living, and it�s about getting real time with my friends. Yosemite in July isn�t as great as Yosemite in April or September, because Yosemite in July is packed, packed, packed with people, and, let me tell you, there are a wide variety of human beings on this earth, and most of them I don�t want to take on vacation with me. The time we spent in Curry Village, Yosemite Valley, July 2004, was itself less than ideal, though still fun, as Evany has revealed in her diary.
Nonetheless, as I had promised to my co-vacationers, the crowd thins appreciably the higher you climb out of the valley. So that is what we did. We climbed. And we talked and read and laughed and napped on tops of mountains. And we cooled ourselves with icy waters. And we ate our lunches and took lots of photos. And then we descended and showered and ate the shit out of some restaurant food!
Also: we had good conversations. We talked about how to live a life that doesn�t fit into a template of what you or anyone else assumed a life would be. We talked about love, and boys, and girls, and such. We talked about the future, and ambition, and happiness, hard choices, and WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN? We also talked about how the waiter at the Mountain Room Bar was allowed to press anything he wanted against Evany Thomas, except charges. We laughed a lot. I love how when you can prevail upon people to change their surroundings, it will produce new themes of conversation, or will give space to conversations that are too cramped in our daily lives. I love that.
My love of Yosemite I owe, in large part, to my cousin Lloyd, who died a year and half ago. If it weren�t for Lloyd, I never would have climbed Vernal and Nevada Falls. The first time I climbed Vernal Falls, in my unsuited-to-hiking Doc Martens, it was because he guilted me into it by pointing out how rarely we had time to spend together. And, when I wasn�t sure I wanted to keep going to the top of Nevada Falls, he pointed out that I had become a lazy city person. He always was very good at getting me to do things that I either didn�t want to do or didn�t think I should be doing. I always like people who can undo my undue diligence. That day Lloyd, Gail (my cousin, his sister) and I talked all the way down from the mountain. As it turns out, those were the last meaningful moments I ever had with him. And so whenever I�m in Yosemite, and especially when I�m climbing the stretch of the Mist Trail between Vernal and Nevada Falls, and then marching back down via the John Muir trail, it�s like I�m spending time with Lloyd, too. His presence is there as a form of regret, but also as a blessing that I have a living reminder of something he changed within my life. For that I am thankful.
I once also had a very good afternoon with my Aunt Claudia on the way back down from Vernal Falls, during which neither of us spoke.
Now I am continually bringing new people to Yosemite and converting them as he helped to convert me. And so there I was all last week with some of my favorite people in the whole wide world: Evany, Marilyn, Caroleen and Jeff! Lucky girl is Jill S----! Undue Diligence indeed! Here we are at the Ahwahnee after having eaten more food than you could imagine us eating in one meal.
Who else always climbs mountains with Jill even though he is ghostly presence? Nietzsche! My thoughts as I made my way from the top of Vernal to the top of Nevada Falls (somehow having gotten way ahead of the rest of my party) were stuck on Nietzsche and his untimeliness. The necessity of thinking like someone not made for this time, that is what it means to be untimely. In order to do the work I do I have to spend at least part of my time thinking in this way. (We all do.) (Or else nothing changes.) (What else is utopia but aspiration for what is currently unachieved, or even thought to be impossible?) (And what else is utopia but the hope that there can be something better than what our current time has offered to us? Untimely thoughts!) (What else is hope but a kind of untimely thought?)
On Wednesday, Marilyn, Evany and I climbed Sentinel Dome and walked out to Taft Point and the Fissures, where we looked over the edges of cliffs and tested our vertigo and ate lunch and read books and took naps. On Thursday, Jeff, Caroleen, Marilyn, Evany and I ascended the Mist Trail to Vernal and Nevada Falls, then returned via the John Muir trail, jumped on a valley bus, and had pizza and beer in Yosemite Village. That all took about 11 hours. It was a good long tiring day. Beer is sometimes very delicious.
On Friday Evany, Jeff, Caroleen and I took a hot hot hike uphill in high noon sun to Inspiration Point, which is, I must admit, not a very inspiring place. We ventured a bit further up the Pohono Trail into a beautiful forest, but then turned back so we could make it to the Mountain Room in time for a fancy dinner. Also: pina coladas. Marilyn stayed in the Valley and went swimming in the river. She might have been smarter and much less sweaty than the rest of us, but we saw amazing views of Half Dome, and we saw Bridalveil Fall turn into a rainbow.
On Saturday the five of us drove up the Glacier Point Road to the McGurk Meadow trailhead and walked through the meadow and forest to Dewey Point. This was a breathtaking day (literally, for me, inhaler-bound person, and metaphorically for the rest). We hardly saw any other humans, we saw amazing wildflowers and beautiful pine forests and then we finally emerged at Dewey Point and sat at the edge of the world (the world as it is when it is a beautiful world, that is). Dewey Point is so beautiful that, even though it is tiring to get there, I can�t nap while I�m there because I can�t keep my eyes closed against such an astonishing scene.
Then I drove Jeff�s truck! Its steering wheel has so much play that you can motion it back and forth without turning the car at all! You can pretend you�re in an old movie, in a driving scene, where the motion of the steering wheel seems to bear little relation to the scenery passing by on the outside. Plus, Jeff�s truck�s standard transmission has a much different feel than the standard transmission of my Audi 4000. And I was learning all this on a twisty mountain road. Exciting! Dukes of Hazzard General Lee exciting. I only wish I had entered the truck by jumping in through the window instead of opening the door. Jeff might not know this, or want this, but I WILL drive that truck again.
And now I�m back home. Hans Blix (the cat, not the U.N. weapons inspector) barfed on my sheets and both my comforters. I don�t need my inhaler and I�m not sleeping in an allergen mask. And I have to write a paper to deliver at a conference on the work of Emmanuel Levinas. The work of Levinas is, of course, another major source of beauty in my life, but it is no Dewey Point. Time to get working again.
11:20 a.m. - July 27, 2004
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