Even old-timers in Yosemite hadn’t seen so much snow in 30 years. The storms started the weekend of March 19, and kept going through 11-15 feet. That’s right. Feet. Of. Snow. Roads closed as trees and rocks fell across the road, and plows failed to keep up with the snow. Power lines were also hit, knocking out power across the region – leaving people without lights, and without heat. On top of that, in our neighborhood of Yosemite West, our archaic water system sprung a leak, cutting off our water supply. For one night both the generator for communications and the battery back-up to that generator failed leaving residents deprived also of phone contact.

Tom and I missed most of the drama. Returning from a wonderful weekend in Bishop visiting a friend, we saw no need to wait for the convoy and fight our way INTO that situation when we had wonderful welcoming friends who were willing to host us for a few days. While friends dealt with 42 degree INDOOR temps, no hot showers, and the like, we were taking walks in the central valley sun, having dinner with friends, watching movies IN THE MOVIE THEATER – a rarity for us, and telecommuting happily from our computers, showering, doing laundry and enjoying central heat.

The thing that is really great about situations like this one is the way people come together and take care of each other. We had some renters staying in our house that first weekend, and are so grateful to all of the neighbors that pitched in to help make sure they were doing OK – raiding our upstairs apartment for non-cordless telephones that would work without power for them, shoveling and plowing, checking in, and helping to share information. (It helped that we had really cool renters too.) You can feel the community pulling together.

When we finally did return to the park on Sunday, we were greeted by many neighbors as we made our way down the single plowed lane to our house. One neighbor who’d stayed through the entire ordeal, and had been doing daily shoveling duty wandered down to our house with his shovel over his shoulder to help us dig out. Another neighbor with a bobcat plowed through the 10-11 foot berm in front of our driveway and created a spot for us to park, a third neighbor took some extra time with a plow to clear our street, and widen the mouth of the parking spot, and a forth neighbor, having finished his driveway drove down later to make sure we were doing OK. How could we not be OK with awesome neighbors like that?

That’s my Yosemite.

What an exciting week this has been!

Our planned trip to the East Side to visit a friend in Bishop was a catalyst for being on the outside of a whole bunch of crazy that has been going on in Yosemite. The stay in Bishop was wonderful. Ahough we didn’t get in as much skiing as we had anticipated, we enjoyed hanging out and being out of the valley.
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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 14 years together, Tom and I finally went to visit Tom’s parents in VT for a week during fall foliage season. Foliage season in VT is a little like the Holiday season in other towns – the hotels fill up and are charging peak rates, there’re a million people running around with cameras, snapping shots of pumpkins and other squashes, sheaves of wheat, and of course the colorful leaves.

When I asked Tom what he remembered of foliage season in VT, he said that he mostly remembered October as being rainy and grey. Sure enough, it rained every single day that we were there. Fortunately, the clouds broke enough on a couple of days that I was able to get out and see what the wash of color looked like in the sun. It was amazing.

The Sierra gets color too. I’d say that we are near peak now – several weeks after the VT foliage passed its prime. The gullies fill with gold, and here and there a bright yellow big leaf maple, or a rosy dogwood, flashes in the sunshine. Le Conte gully, in particular, is full of these small bushes that turn a brilliant shade of yellow in the fall. Stavast has a painting called Golden Armada, and I’m convinced that these are Golden Armada bushes, whatever those are. One of my rescuers recently told me that when they airlifted me out of Le Conte Gully three years ago, the rotor from the helicopter picked up a tornado of golden leaves, rising up into the air around me. Would have been cool to see.

But VT really fills with color – so much so that sometimes it seemed like my eyes were attracted to the small contrasting bit of green among all the reds, oranges, and yellows. There are more deciduous trees and fewer conifers than here, and more mountainous terrain than my home state of MN, all of which combines to create a scene really worth traveling for. We took a hike down near Waterbury Reservoir, taking in the scenery and being impressed with the people who once made a living in that steep and rocky soil. The Ricker family cemetery was particularly impressive, with three generations of Rickers, marked with headstones like the one for Phoebe Ricker who lived to be over a hundred. They must have been a hearty crew, although the nearby headstones for an infant and two other young children speaks to how tough living there really was.

Of course, the other reason to travel to VT, in any season, is the chance to visit with Tom’s family. Tom’s parents were wonderful and welcoming hosts. Denis rescued us in the middle of the night when our delayed flight meant that we arrived after the car rental desk had closed for the evening. We had a dinner with him, his family, and Steve C. one evening while we were there. Tracy, Ron and Julia drove up just to have some lunch with us. Julia’s list of 101 things to do before she graduates from high school, inspired me to try to come up with a bucket list too. I’m still working on it. Dinner with Steve and Mary is always a pleasure, and we’re hoping to see more of them on this coast now that Andrew is out here.

As always, vacation is just a bit too short. The day our departure flight was scheduled was to be the first sunny day that week, and we missed out on getting to sail in a race with Denis aboard his J-24. It’s not that I don’t love Yosemite, and being in the Sierra, but vacation is always good.

I promised myself that this is the very week that I would (finally) put something on this blog about the vacation that Tom and I took the week of Aug. 10th for our 11th wedding anniversary. We’d tossed around some other ideas, and we may have even gone to Hawaii if we’d planned ahead a little further (for people that know us, the beach vacation is a radical departure from our typical vacation mindset). It turned out that a shorter vacation to the East Side of the Sierra was absolutely perfect. Our trip had three parts. We had time to finish up some projects ahead of time so that they weren’t hanging over hour heads for the vacation, and then hiked to the top of Mt. Tyndall, wandered slowly through the Bristlecone Pine Forrest, and climbed in Clark Canyon.
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Ugh. Sick. I’ve taken a sick day from work and spent most of the day in bed. Thank goodness for nasal decongestants. At least it’s been a rainy inside sort of weekend. although Tom has managed a couple of day hikes with our guests while I slept and hid from the weather. Lots of down time means time to gather together a few loose ends over the last week.
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We’ve arrived safe and sound in Stowe, and have been spending a relaxing morning with family. The trip went very smoothly, no delays and no surprises – except that the San Francisco to Chicago flight got in about 20 minutes early.

The Fresno Airport has started putting their Giant Sequoia displays in. The California tree replica is already in place, and just needs some patching to get the joints together.

On the airplane from SF to Chicago I was seated next to a guy who was watching old episodes of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and giggling so hard that it made the bench shake.

I spent most of the trip reading from an old book of classic short stories that was published in 1941. There are some great stories in that book, and so far my favorite has got to be the one called “A Municipal Report” by O. Henry, the penname for William Sydney Porter. Not only is it a great story with compelling characters, as many of the stories in this book are, but the story is just so tight – all the elements circling back around in importance in the end. In the story the narrator stops in Nashville to engage a writer for a literary magazine. He meets Uncle Caesar, the clever, and kingly old black man that drives the coach and Major Caswell, the boisterous drunk, and finally the author herself Azalea Adair, the wise long-suffering writer and learns of the relationships between the three. It’s the kind of story that I could really see the benefit of going back to study to see how the whole thing is put together. Will definitely be checking out more of his short stories.

Bags are packed and ready to go for a lightning quick trip to VT to celebrate Easter, and Tom’s mother’s 75th birthday with family. The plan is to drive down to Fresno tonight and spend the night at a hotel near the airport so that we’ll be ready to go early Friday morning for the big day of travel. Flying across the country from one small airport to another is no joke – our flight departs at 7:31am, and we stop in San Francisco and Chicago before we land in Burlington at 10:02pm and begin the drive up to Stowe – but it will be worth it to spend the time with family on this occasion.

The last time we made the trip, we either didn’t get any pictures, or have misfiled/misplaced them somewhere along the way. I’m definitely planning to travel with a camera (maybe a couple of cameras) this time, and hopefully my picture taking will start right at the Fresno airport with some of the new Sequoia displays that they are installing there (if they don’t have the area blocked off). Plus, going back through the old 2002 pics of our nieces and nephews was awfully fun. Aren’t they cute?