Yosemite Pictures and Podcasts
My mom and I, bored and stir crazy in Northern California, needed an adventure. When brainstorming possible escapes, my mom mentioned Yosemite, as she had never been to the valley floor before. She had never stood along the Merced River staring at Half Dome, and that is a travesty in my book. So I began researching if there was a way to get into Yosemite National Park despite its limited capacity due to COVID-19 and summers generally being booked out a year in advance.
I couldn’t believe my luck at what I discovered: entrance into the National Park was guaranteed if you had a reservation to stay somewhere in Yosemite Valley and amazingly Curry Village, the canvas tent encampment in the shadow of Glacier Point, had an opening for a few weeks later. Staying in the platform tent not only got us entrance to Yosemite but put us in the intersection of a thousand pathways to adventure.
Stocked with nonperishable food (Camp Curry doesn’t allow cooking), we hit the road to Yosemite on a Wednesday morning. The first views of El Capitan after arriving at the Valley Floor were breathtaking. Driving a short distance past where the majority of people had parked to take in the wondrous granite wall increasing in household fame thanks to Alex Honnold, I spotted a small pull off with no cars bordering a bank of trees with a barely visible path. We quickly pulled off, parked, and bounded down the short trail through the trees, our view opening to an unobstructed, unpopulated vista of El Cap reflected into the Merced River. Yosemite really is unlike anywhere on earth with its stunning rock walls and ancient trees and lush meadows.
Early Thursday morning, we drove up Glacier Point Road to hike Sentinel Dome to Taft Point, encountering a bear lazily crossing the road. A group of deer was hanging out at the trailhead as we situated our daypacks. When we set off for the six-mile loop trail, there was no one else in sight. All the views, until the final lookout at Taft Point, we had to ourselves.
It felt like a dream, getting to stay in Yosemite Valley at Camp Curry in summer with plentiful parking and unpopulated trails. We walked and biked the Valley, waded in the river, and were adequately exhausted at the end of three days. Nearly six months of quarantine with little to do caused me to lose my ‘travel shape.’ Rather than having some measure of ‘in shape,’ I prefer to be in ‘travel shape.’ To me, this means thriving off of Clif Bars, full of energy early in the morning to beat crowds, endurance for staying up late to talk to new acquaintances, and willingness to walk many miles a day in the sun in an unfamiliar place saying yes to whatever adventures come.
I thought about this Thursday night standing in the gravel shoulder of Happy Isle Loop Road, watching the sunset give Half Dome a bright yellow-orange glow. There were only a dozen or so people stopped on the road or the Stoneman Meadow walking path to look at a bear and the massive rock face. This experience, a calm Yosemite Valley, would never have been possible if regular travel was possible because that would mean humanity was at its previous fast-paced and crowded mode of living.
I have little use for ‘travel shape’ lately, but Yosemite gave me a taste of the type of days I love so much–days with my feet caked in dirt, my lips tasting of saltwater or my hair knotted from the wind. Moments like these appear less often right now, but it makes their arrival more wondrous.
Podcasts are a great brain stimulator during boring stretches of a drive. Here are a few podcasts I’ve listened to recently that I would highly recommend, with or without a road trip:
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard: Jeff Sachs - Jeff Sachs is a world-renowned economist and creator of the World Happiness Report. This podcast covers poverty and economic development, the current political climate in the US, and how history has created so much of our present reality and future. Dax and his co-host Monica are well-read and engage in thoughtful dialogue with Sachs. If you want an insight into what most of my graduate courses sounded like, listen to this podcast. But beware, the more you know, the more you know.
The Chris Orwig Podcast: The Baseball Player who Surfs / Daniel Norris – This conversation between Orwig and Norris about the art of photography, van life, and baseball gave me the feeling of summer days in San Francisco at AT&T Park (now Oracle Park) during the best years of the Giants. It made me reminisce about immediately taking my first DSLR camera to an SF Giants baseball game. Listening to Chris and Daniel’s musings on the pursuit of honest art, grace, and getting rid of all the noise to focus on what’s most important has takeaways for even the non-baseball fans.
The Missionary Podcast - The reporting in this podcast series is gold, it makes me miss Uganda, and it hurts to hear how twisted faith and missions can become. It caused me to think about these questions: Abroad or at home, does our care for others put us in an unearned, unnecessary position of power? Are we working to empower others to become agents of change? Are we using faith to unduly justify what we want to do? I dream of having a summit where a bunch of people of diverse backgrounds, expertise, and faiths, meet to address the issues around international missions presented in this pod.
Obviously, travel in the time of COVID-19 must be done with consideration. There are risks with everything, but I was also confident in my own ability to protect myself in an outdoor environment with limited people by keeping my distance from others at camp, having a mask easily accessible on the trail, and sanitizing and washing my hands frequently.
A major concern with COVID-19 and travel is bringing the virus to a new place. It had been over three weeks since I had been in any high exposure environment and had not seen anyone besides the people I live with. This is life with COVID, assessing the risk not only of new environments to myself, but also the risk I may pose to others.
