When I looked out the front window, I saw a whole family running back and forth outside our house – sliding happily down the street in their plastic sleds. They’d been at it for an hour at least, and didn’t show any signs of stopping soon. Snow brings so much joy to the mountains! I consider shouting to them that there is an even better sledding street around the corner, but they’re having so much fun, I decide to just let it be.

Snow also brings some travel headaches. My plans to get up early and catch a quick ski in the morning before work, turned into an hour of shoveling and snow-blowing, only to find out that the road to Badger Pass is closed for the day due to snow. Unfortunately, when we get a heavy snow like this, the plows just can’t keep up, and they focus on keeping the main roads clear instead. Even so, Hwy 41 was listed as R3 for most of the morning, meaning that all vehicles were required to use chains, even those with 4WD (rare!), and Hwy 120 was closed entirely for snow removal.

If only the snow had come a week ago, it would have been perfect. As it is, holiday travelers are struggling to get into the park, or making decisions to stay home instead. I hope the family renting our downstairs apartment make it here safely! The conditions are going to be fantastic.

Lately, the weather keeps conspiring to precipitate on weekends only. Tioga keeps closing, and then re-opening in the sunny 60-70 degree weather during the middle of the week while I’m working. Fortunately, this weekend, the rain/snow forecast was a bit late in coming, and even though we slept in until almost noon, the road stayed open just long enough for Tom and I to hop in the trusty Subaru and take a peek.

I don’t know how many leaves this most recent storm will knock to the ground, but the autumn colors were magnificent on our drive, and we stopped, oohed and aahed, and snapped pictures. There are elderberries growing alongside the road, blue and tasty next to the reds and yellows of dogwoods and big-leaf maples. Western foliage season isn’t like its eastern counterpart. There are so many conifers here that the colors are just patches of flame against the cool greens of the firs, cedars, and pines. Not the same, but still beautiful.

When we got to Tuolumne, the skies were a dramatic blend of storm clouds and blue sky, and we walked the slabs to the top of Lembert Dome for a view. There were several other cars in the Lembert Dome parking area, but once we left the parking lot, we didn’t see anyone else. At the summit, we were treated to a few minutes of snow before it cleared up again. By the time we were halfway back down the slabs, the sun was warm on our backs again.

On the drive, we listened to the audiobook version of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. I was so impressed with Dave Eggers’ talk on Ted.com, that I was really looking forward to this story. We’re a little less than three full chapters into it at this point, and I’m afraid to turn it back on. It’s not that it isn’t good writing. It’s powerful writing. And the craziness of losing two parents to cancer inside of a year and having to raise your younger brother… hearing about it makes me a little crazy too. So, I took a break from that by reading City of Thieves by David Benioff. You wouldn’t think that a WWII story about the craziness of war in and around Leningrad would be much of an emotional break from craziness, but there it is. The introductory chapter is absolutely brilliant, and I had no idea until afterward that this is also the writer that is responsible for screenplays for Troy, X-men Origins: Wolverine, and The Kite Runner. A look at his highly acclaimed first novel, The 25th Hour is in order.

It’s a cold almost-November day, 40 deg and raining, and everywhere I looked this morning, there were photographers, with their big cameras on tripods set up next to the road, wearing their rain gear and happily snapping away. Serious photographers are a unique bunch here – it’s like they bloom when the skies turns dark and cloudy, the rain starts to fall, and other people are grousing about the awful weather. But it’s easy to understand why. The clouds and fog skirting the big cliffs make them seem that much more majestic and mysterious. And no one, not even Ansel Adams, has seen just exactly this play between the clouds and the light. Heaven.

My own morning’s photographic exploits were more modest, and more furtive. There was a tiny dusting of snow at the top of our neighborhood this morning, hanging in the changing leaves along the side of the road, and I stopped to snap a photo out of my car window. (The visitors might stop randomly in the middle of the road for deer or bear, but me, I stopped for a couple of snowflakes. I need to remember to be more patient when others see something photogenic. But, for the record, I did check behind me to make sure I wasn’t on a blind corner, took only 2 quick snapshots and was moving again before anyone else came up behind me.) Snow on the ground. Ski season is coming up fast.

Over breakfast, I read Tom’s copy of TUNA News, by a nordic ski group out of Utah. Lord knows why we get their publication – something Tom did at some point. There is new ski gear in the catalogs we receive daily in the mail, and I’m contemplating new AT boots to go with the big plans I’m making for this ski season. I’m always excited about snow, but this year I’m preparing for long weekends in the high country, in Tahoe, or if I’m really ambitious, over on the East Side. October 22nd was my 4th Boulder Day, and it seems like a long time, but I finally feel like I’m in the position to get back into ski shape. The first few years after the boulder event, I just didn’t feel like I could take the pounding, and last year there were so many house projects that we didn’t seem to be able to find the time. This year, everything is coming together.

I’m now on day 20 of my new fitness program, and already starting to see some results. I’ve lost some weight overall – just a couple of pounds – but between fat loss and muscle gain, I can see some significant differences in the way that my body looks, and those pants that were getting too small are starting to feel comfortable again. Most importantly, I’m feeling stronger than I have in a long time. Years. Long enough that I’d forgotten what it was like, and what it’s like, is good.

The program I’m on is only 30 days long, and so I’m shopping for a new program. I checked out the Mountain Athlete program because, that seems pretty sport-specific. Lots of functional movement and sport-specific exercise. Tom mentioned a guy named Eric Cressey who is well-known for building strength. Tom also thinks that between us, we know enough that I could probably design something good for me without spending a bunch of money – which is certainly true – but for some reason, I work out a lot harder when I’m on someone else’s program. So, I’m still shopping (and taking recommendations if anyone has them), but committed to finding something in the next few weeks.

A serious program might have to wait until after our vacation to Hawaii though. Can you believe it? After years of planning mountain vacations and family vacations, Tom and I are finally headed to the beach, just the two of us. Running on the beach, surfing?, hiking near Haleakala, exploring the Road to Hana, resting, reading, and relaxing. I’m looking forward to the change of pace.

The other new season that is just around the corner is NaNoWriMo. Last year, not only did I finish the challenge of writing 50K words during the month, not only did I enjoy spending hours typing up a story that no one will ever read, I also managed to learn something in the process. Naturally, I’m excited to do it again this year. November is only two days away.

Lots of new things starting for me. New season. New fitness level. New commitment to play. New exercise program. New NaNoWriMo challenge. Life is good.

Yosemite is particularly beautiful this morning. Not just the, of-course-it’s-Yosemite-after-all, beautiful, but exceptional. After the steady rain yesterday, there is water everywhere, more reminiscent of spring than fall. The Merced River has gone from being little more than a creek, to wild and full, and the thin stream from Yosemite Falls has also blossomed into spring-ish glory. You can see in the photo that the boardwalk that leads out into the meadow is flooded this morning, providing a nice reflection of the falls. What you can’t see is the clearing clouds, clinging to all of the cliffs and features.

The rain has knocked down a few of the autumn-colored leaves, but there are still many trees that hadn’t turned yet, and so these will still be good viewing in the days to come.

Well, you don’t hear that too often, but I guess there are always people out there looking on the bright side of things.

The road to our house, Hwy 41, has been under construction for most of the summer. They are doing a major re-grading and re-paving project along the entire section of road from the entrance station to Yosemite Valley, and has meant that for the entire summer, we’ve been subject to 30-60 minute construction delays (sometimes more than 60 min. although that is supposed to be the outside limit, and when we’re lucky, no stopping at all). Fortunately, that’s given us time to perfect our construction delay technique.

Construction delays are nothing like traffic jams. In traffic jams, you’re stuck inside your vehicle continuously inching along with everyone else. In our construction delays, there’s a guy with a big stop sign, and a long line of cars that are absolutely stopped until the pilot car returns with the string of cars going in the opposite direction. That means, that when you hit the construction, you can turn off your engine and hop outside and start looking around, and only jump back in when cars start passing in the other lane. Not every place along the road is as scenic as others, but there is usually something interesting to look at – wildflowers by the side of the road, if you don’t have a beautiful mountain overlook.

Tonight, they stopped us right at the juction with South Side Drive before you make the right turn to Bridalveil Falls parking. As usual, we popped out of the car and started looking around. I found a couple of interesting flowers near the culvert and started busily sketching. Tom uprooted an evil, invasive Wooly Mullein, and then set about making friends. First I heard him explaining to one guy that if he really needed to use a restroom, he could walk up to the Bridalveil parking and catch his friends as they went by there. Then, like a natural-born interpreter, I hear him making hiking trail recommendations and explaining about fire management in the park and how it helps to keep the forrests healthy. A crowd is gathering. He and his new friends are pulling out maps when the pilot car appears, and everyone has to get back to their cars.

As Tom is heading back toward the car, the man says, “Thank goodness we got caught in construction traffic! That was worth it!”

It was the strangest thing, and has been quietly haunting me ever since it happened.

We were on our way out the door to surprise a friend on his birthday, saying goodbye to a guest who had spent the night and was now on his way to Colorado, by bicycle. Tom had taken the first load of things out to the car, when he called me, and pointed out a small baby bird, still slightly downy, hopping and cheeping on our walkway. It didn’t seem able to fly yet, and could only manage a few feet in a flutter.

That was interesting, and I thought maybe I’d go out and take a picture. I sat down on the sidewalk, and started taking pictures, and the little guy (girl?) started hopping toward me. I held still, delighted to be getting a close-up view, and trying not to frighten it away. I shouldn’t have worried about that. It hopped straight up to me, and cuddled in next to my leg. When I moved away, it followed me and settled in again. It seemed cold (in spite of the down coat?), and desperately cute.

The only explanation for this one being out on its own, that I could think of, was that he’d been kicked out of his nest by a stronger sibling or something, and left without help from his parents, hopping and peeping as it was, it was probably going to end up as a coyote snack, if it didn’t die of exposure or starvation first.

Normally, I can be fairly stoic when it comes to natural selection. In nature, sometimes even the really cute little guys get killed and eaten, but then the cute little guys rarely make a personal plea. They rarely come right up and ask for a little warmth. It had snuggled up to me. It had started a Relationship.

Crap.

I know nothing about how to care for a young bird. I didn’t know what kind of bird it was, or what it would normally eat. If we fed it, would it still learn to forage for itself eventually? Even more of an issue, we were leaving for a 3 day weekend in San Diego. We couldn’t take it with us, or care for it while it was here. so, we settled for leaving an old fleece jacket on the sidewalk with the little bird, and continued packing the car. Almost immediately, the bird settled into the jacket and I was able to pick up jacket and bird and move it to a more sheltered location. Then we left.

Tom wondered aloud whether we’d really done it a favor or not. Starving to death doesn’t sound like a good way to go. Maybe it would have been better for it to have been left more exposed, to die more quickly from a predator.

We’ll never know. When we got back, the little bird was gone.

I learned later, that sometimes when a young bird is first learning to fly, it spends some time hopping and flapping furtively on the ground, with the mother bird nearby, before getting itself straightened out and getting on with its life. I choose to believe that is what happened to my little bird.

Of all the birds in Yosemite, this little brown bird is my new favorite kind of bird… or would be if someone can tell me what kind of bird it is.

After attending Bracebridge Dinner with the marketing group last year, I was so impressed that I resolved to volunteer to be in it this year. The Bracebridge organizers are (justifiably) particular about not allowing cameras during the performance, and I wanted to take pictures!

I didn’t end up taking that many pictures after all, but I did get to participate in a wonderful experience, and met some interesting people. I had corresponded a little with Pedro before in terms of updating the websites. He’s the one who put the wonderful videos that inspired me up on their site last year, and so introduced myself to him early on, and managed to nab this quick picture.

As a member of the serving party, my costume was relatively simple – a belted tunic and tights, with some buckles that went on over my shoes, and a funky floppy hat with a button in it – a far cry from the beautiful dresses that the choir wears, or even the interesting and unique costumes of the Forrest Folk. But I loved being part of this small group. Tom, Maria, Christine, Katie, Cindy, Josh, Ian, and Corey, plus the litter-bearers, Dave (our guide and mentor), Kent, Sean and John. It was funny to watch the boys pull uncomfortably at their tights, or twirl in their tunics like young girls in a brand new dress. Christine taught us some of the moves to Thriller in the lobby as we waited for our cues to go in, and even though I only volunteered for the first 4 performances, I made them promise that if by some miracle Andrea agreed to let us do the Thriller dance down the aisle on Christmas evening, that they would call me up.

As Lani told me at one point, “This is live theater, you never know what is going to happen.” I don’t want to give anything away for people who haven’t been yet, but in a performance like this, where the “stage” encompasses the entire dining hall and all of the people in it, including the audience, the potential for Things To Happen is tremendous, and I thought that the actors and singers were quick on their feet, and managed to absorb even the strangest and most unexpected things into the storyline with grace and style. Lani Spicer took a beautiful series of pictures of the “littlest guest“, a ringtail cat that made it’s way up on to the stage and sometimes stole the show.

The best thing about being in the serving party (other than the people) was that we were allowed to slip into the back of the house during scenes we weren’t involved in, and watch. There are so many things going on that I missed when I attended performance last year, that I was glad to have the chance to take it in again (and again), for example, the looks that the Chef and the Housekeeper exchange, or the reaction of the Squire to the Parson.

Plus, if I haven’t mentioned it before, the music is amazing. I’m not much of an opera fan, but there is something about the power of the human voice and that kind of music that gives me goosebumps. The music buoyed me up even through the long days that started at 8 am with a full day of work before hurrying to the Dinner performance which often lasted past 10pm, and I marched around the office with parts of the refrains running through my head and lending me energy.

Next year I wonder if I can finagle a spot as a hostess. They have the lovely dresses, and get to watch even more of the performance.

What do you see if you walk the 6-ish miles into Glen Aulin, and then instead of taking the popular trail down toward Water Wheel and the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne, you turn right along the PCT and walk in that direction for a while? The Yosemite scenery is beautiful, but it’s the lure of exploration and new places that draws me in. Tom was also excited about the peaks at the far end.

About 13 miles along the PCT, passing Glen Aulin along the way, we turned right and headed up to McCabe Lakes and hiked to the top of Sheep Peak, a mostly indescript, not quite 12K ft peak (11842 ft.), that nevertheless was a grand adventure, with a spectacular view. We took many pictures with Mt Conness in the background, and tried some panoramas with our small point and shoot. It’s hard to capture sweeping 360 views in a single frame.
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I said there would be pictures. Shauna and I returned to Sentinel Dome on Monday night to have some dinner, check out the moon and the fires. I was running late, and Shauna packed up the most amazing dinner with pasta, wine, and CHOCOLATE CAKE! We outlasted the ranger-led moonlight hike on the top of Sentinel Dome, and I enjoyed the food, the conversation and the scenery.

It’s no wonder that there are so many stories about being outdoors under a full moon. Everything about it screams magic. And then, when the food was eaten, we hiked down and checked out the Grouse Creek Fire.

It’s not nearly as impressive as it had been Sunday night, and a fire-fighter that we met at one of the pull-outs said that even Sunday paled in comparison to Saturday night when he and his hotshot crew had first lit the hillside – “a little lightin’ and fightin’” was how he put it when the wind had changed direction unexpectedly. He was so proud of what they had done, and called out one of his buddies to show us a short video of the fire. He was right to be proud. We can go ahead and put that on the list of jobs that I really could never do.

Although I brought a light-weight tripod with me, I didn’t end up setting it up for the pictures of the fire. Too lazy – although I sort of regret it now. Plus, it was difficult to tighten the mount enough and the camera kept drooping anyway, so it seemed like kind of a hassle. This is enough to get a feel for what we saw, but what I really wish is that we’d gotten some pictures earlier during the fire. Oh well – this is Yosemite. There will be other fires.

We didn’t pull back into the neighborhood until just before midnight. Good thing, because Tom was almost ready to go looking for me. I was bubbling with excitement from our little adventure, and all Tom wanted to do was go to bed. Poor guy. I sure am lucky.

We took a somewhat abbreviated backpacking trip out past Ostrander Lake June 25-27 to try out some of our new gear. The short version? We love it, and we had a great time. I also learned and re-learned a lot of stuff about backpacking. For a first trip, it was just right.

We left Thursday night around 9pm after getting off work and cooking up a yummy dinner the comfort of our own home, and hiked out to Horizon Ridge before setting up camp. In some ways I like hiking in the dark – it’s usually very quiet and peaceful. Plus, this was an out and back trip, so we got to see the scenery, and the flowers that we walked past in the dark on our way out.

In the morning we finished our somewhat circuitous route to Ostrander Lake, and circled around to walk along Horse Ridge. It was a lazy day, filled with many stops and a bit of napping. We had plenty of water so we camped high with a bit of a breeze and fewer mosquitoes, filling up when we hiked down in the morning.

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