Foiled!... In A Good Way.

i went solo backpacking the other day, like six months ago or something like that, and i wanted to blog about it. so sue me!

it was only over one night because i don't get much time off these days, but i was really craving some wild-nature-ness. there is something about the wilderness that draws me! i can't quite identify it. perhaps it's the way it reduces life to very understandable basic-ness. or maybe it's how nature reminds us of what's real and what's fake, what's truly important and what is insignificant or irrelevant. it could be the way that the wilderness removes a lot of distractions and enables us to think clearly, or it could simply be that God is revealed in a very noticeable, magnificent way through nature. maybe it's all of these. but still there's some mysterious, unidentifiable quality about the wild that persistently lures and entices me. i wish i could articulate it, because it really is a passionate thing within me. alas, i cannot. at least not right now. however, this "force" is what brought me to yosemite national park on this occasion.

i started out with a grand plan! it was to drive to destination A, the trailhead, then sleep in the car in the parking lot (everything was packed in my backpack and too inconvenient to unpack for an early start), wake up the next morning and obtain a wilderness pass from the forest service as soon as the office opened, then hike to destination B, vogelsang high sierra camp or vogelsang pass whichever i could reach by nightfall or by exhaustion. i thought i could probably make it to the pass which was further, because it didn't seem like that strenuous of a hike according to the map.

after that the plan was to cross country (no trail) across to destination C, the base of mt. lyell, which is the highest mountain in yosemite, and stare up at it, listening to it call out my name in the language of the mountains, a beckoning that fills me with insatiable yearning to join the lofty peaks in their heavenward aspirations!... after spacing off for a good chunk of time, i would then catch the john muir trail all the way back to destination D, my car, and wait for a better time when i could actually climb old lyell! after all it was october and it was snowing pretty hard on my way to the trailhead. which would imply that mt. lyell would be far too covered in snow to climb. especially with the clothes i brought.

all in all it was an excellent plan. and a plan is all it would end up being. i got really confused when i went farther than i planned and missed the first trail i was supposed to turn on. i thought i was on the right track the whole time until the trail started doing things not on the map, then i was really lost! i ended up backtracking and burning about two or three trail hours, and wandering around staring at the map and trying to match it with my surroundings, which were totally different, although i had no idea.

thoroughly lost, i finally ended up camping at a nearby lake because i couldn't walk any farther. my feet were blistering and sore, my back was aching because my pack was not fitting right, and i was really hungry for some warm food. so i called it a day and cooked some curry stuff with peas and ate dinner in complete solitude sitting upon a rock watching the sun set peacefully over some unnamed vista in yosemite. "good enough!" i thought.

the next morning i woke up before the sun and sat outside my tent in my sleeping bag in utter quietude waiting for the sun to rise. i ate breakfast and figured out exactly where i was. it turned out i had been really confused. i was in a very different place than i had thought the night before. so, i quickly formulated a plan B. i decided to climb the nearest/tallest peak and play around for an hour then come back and head back the way i was supposed to have come in the first place. so, that's what i did. i had lots of fun rolling huge rocks off the edges of 500 foot cliffs and watching them smash into the rocks below (i could actually feel it when the rock was big enough!). much of my time up there was spent imagining leaping off one of the peaks and soaring like an eagle to one of the other peaks miles off in the distance, effortlessly riding the thermals without a thought to the anxieties of the life below. somehow in my imaginations i took part in the experience of these majestic birds, floating above every aspect of earthly life.

all things considered, it was awesome! and strangely, a lot like life. after all, life is seldom what you plan. our feeble plans are always getting thwarted in some way. our limited vision is constantly leading us astray. and yet somehow, God helps us make lemonade out of all our lemons. and boy is it good lemonade! our lives are "bruised and broken masterpieces" that we "did not paint ourselves".

at the end of my trip i was able to put my "worth it!" stamp on that adventure, and i hope that at the end of my life i will be able to look back and say the same on a much larger scale.