You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go
Recently, after a long streak of staying close to home, I ventured out to the Eastern Sierra Mountains. I wanted to return to specific parts of that landscape, to Lyell Canyon and Rush Creek, for both personal and creative reasons. I wanted to return to a trail I'd walked seven summers ago.
It was a short trip, a turn and burn as we say; one day, two nights. Zack and I drove to the trailhead late Saturday night and parked. Half asleep we folded down the back seats, blew up our sleeping pads, unrolled our sleeping bags and crawled in to rest our weary heads. When my eyes finally closed it was 1am.
The alarm sprang to life at 4am, neither of us dawdled packing up and righting ourselves for the mountains. We were tired, sure, but tiredness is the law of the land in the wilderness; something you accept without ceremony.
We hiked southbound along the trail, guided by the faint glow of dawn. Some wildflower buds bowed their heavy heads against the cold morning air; their leaves crisp with frost, their brightness muted. I still find them beautiful, even when they were puckered and closed up. Other wildflowers seemed impervious to the cold. Golden asters and scarlet monkeyflowers glistened in dank shadows, and danced in rings around the scaly trunks of lodgepole pines. The sun felt like it hesitated just before it crested the sharp surrounding summits; but perhaps I was just eager for warmth. I was in shorts after all, and the frigid cold was beginning to chap my bare skin.
The trail meandered past lush meadowland. Frost clung to thick patches of grass and sparkled in the early morning sun, and billows of steam rose up from the wandering streams. It was beautiful and breathtaking, somehow everything like I had remembered and nothing like I’d remembered.
Time changes everything; the places we've been, the people we are, even the memories we hold most dear.
The rhythm of my breath broke into a pant and sweat poured down from the brim of my hat as I climbed my way up to, then over, 10,000 ft. The temperature shot up quickly once the sun beat down on the earth. Jeffery pines, lodgepole pines, and western juniper grew in thick clusters around the trail shading my passage. I was grateful to be in shade. I noticed a portal of sunshine up trail, I’d remembered this; the place where the vegetation thinned and the forest gave way to a spectacular alpine basin, sun drench and majestic.
As the trees disappeared behind me the sun hit my skin, then beamed into my eyes. A brilliant blue lake stretched out before me, surrounded by an amphitheater of sharp granite snowy peaks. Sun drenched and majestic. I breathed in deeply, the thin mountain air rushed through my bloodstream making me feel almost lightheaded. Zack crouched at the bank collecting water for the final push of our climb. He’d arrived moments before me.
I stood there dumbfounded by beauty. I scanned the landscape, paying my respect for the place that had become such a huge part of me. Touching into the magic of the place that somehow held what is, what had been, and what will neve be.
There was the tree I stood by seven years ago, I thought. Tears welling in my eyes as I looked on. And there was the water-crossing that I'd lost my balance on and nearly fell into the lake. And there was where..….
I paused….
I had the acute sense that something wasn’t right….
The pressing circumstances of the present nagged at my mind, like a child tugging on their mother's pant leg for attention. Legs. My legs, I thought. My legs were stinging!
I looked down.
Ahhhh!
My legs were black, covered with blood draining, vampiric mosquitos. Now that I saw them, I couldn’t not see them. They were everywhere. A black swarming cloud of mosquitoes flew on me, around me, everywhere.
"E!" Zack shouted. I jerked my gaze toward him, he was still crouched by the lake. Then he tossed me the toiletries bag. If we had bug spray, that's where it would be. The problem was, we didn't always have bug spray.
I threw off my backpack and ran around in circles, flailing my limbs like mad, blowing out big huffing exhalations, futile attempts to keep the mosquitos away while I search for bug spray. I searched and flailed for what felt like eternity while an entire continent worth of mosquitos drank me alive.
Finally, I found it! I pulled a bright red spray bottle out from the bag, and tossed the toiletries bag to the ground. I flung my sunglasses down, closed my eyes, then sprayed Deet across every inch of my body. I stopped when all I could smell was bug spray. I stood still and looked at the black cloud at is swirled around me. The bug spray kept them from landing on me in droves, but it didn't make them go away. They hovered an inch away from my skin, like bored children who hold their hand in front of your face repeating, I'm not touching you, I'm not touching you, I'm not touching you.
Most of them weren’t touching me, and that was good enough for me at the moment.
Truth be told, I hadn’t even wasted hope on them going away. I knew better than that. I’d danced the fiery dance with swarms of mosquitos many times over the years; I know they always win. And rightfully so, I suppose. I was the visitor; and however apocalyptical it appeared, they had every right to be here. I only wished for a dragonfly or two, to level out the playing field.
Zack calmly walked towards me, occasionally waving his hand, almost leisurely, across front of his face as if it were only a fly. His body was covered in mosquitos, hundreds of them. I held my arm out, pointed the bug spray turned towards him, and like a fire extinguisher to a flame, drench him in bug spray until he asked (begged) me to please stop.
"Sorry your moment got ruined." he said. "The lake must be a mosquito breeding ground this time of year."
We both laughed as mosquitos swarmed around us. Our own private bloodsucking black cloud.
"Aw, it's okay. Let's get the hell out of here." I replied.
We made our peace with the lake, with the memories, with the mosquitos, and we hurried on; onward and upward as we always say. We had 20 miles to go before sundown.
We can go back to places, we can reflect on past memories and experiences; but we can't go back in time. Time changes everything, and change is a force that touches ever single aspect of our lives. A lake that at once birthed so much vitality and purpose within me, a lake that still fills my memories with inspiration and gratitude, is a lake that births a billion mosquitoes that, if given the chance, would drain me completely.
My life is almost silly in it’s extremes. Life is strange and shocking and unpredictable in ways that only life can be. It gives and it takes away, yet somehow, nothing is ever lost.
Believe it or not, the mosquitos didn’t ruin my moment as Zack said. They reminded me that the past lives in memories, and memories are forever filtered through and changed by who I am in this moment; two truths that bring me closer to the preciousness of life.
There is grace in accepting life on life's terms, even when those terms are hard, but none in avoiding living fully for fear of difficulty. Grace is beauty and mosquitos, tears and terror. Grace is the rich memories that form around hollow absences. Grace is remembering that we are not alone in anything that we do.
Grace is knowing it is all written somewhere on the stars.
