IN MY CAREFREE AND HAPHAZARD MID-TWENTIES, I PLANNED A RATHER extended and aggressive trek through the Sierras with my baker friend, Gordon, as part of a larger quest through the western United States. We had decided to take a few weeks of the summer and hike through Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks in California; drive over to the Grand Tetons in Wyoming for a few summit climbs; then bomb our way south and hike the slot canyons of Arizona. A two-month road trip, the kind you can only take before real job responsibilities, kids, bills, a mortgage, and the burden of participating in the hegemony of a capitalist society take over your life. Before you feel bad for not having nice shoes, for having to schlep your clothes to the laundromat instead of owning a nice under-over Kenmore. Before the idea of having gas station nachos for dinner seems suspect at best. Before you buy, at full retail price, the notion that life is to be gotten on with, rather than lived with careless abandon and a decided lack of financial stability.
That’s why, when you’re traveling around, you’ll notice that rubber tramps who live in their trucks with a bunch of climbing gear tend toward their twenties and maybe early thirties; eventually, the breed dies out over time. While many graying silverbacks such as myself may glorify a lifestyle spent exploring the wild places in the world, a few nights sleeping rough in the back of a mid-size Toyota Tacoma would leave me crippled and downing ibuprofen like Skittles. But at the time Gordon and I were young, in our twenties, and tentatively employed. We struck out to explore the wilderness of the West, unencumbered by social status or any real engagement in industry or business.
Our first trip was into Sequoia National Park, where we planned to climb up over Elizabeth Pass, into a long glacial cleft called Dead Man’s Canyon, and make our way into Kings Canyon National Park. I had been to the high country of the Sierra before, and was chattering nonsensically to the normally taciturn and stoic Gordon, who took turns driving with me from LA to the Sierras as I waxed poetic about the beauty of the Sierra.
In fact, I have a photo of Cynthia, my wife, from a trip we took with students to the area that I keep stuck in my wallet, creased and folded. Have you ever fallen and stayed in love with someone because a photograph buttresses a memory so strongly it provides a kind of sustaining energy? The photo captures her against a snowy cliff face looming over the lake behind her. Her long dark hair is tied back in a handkerchief babushka-style. She looks like she could be a model for the label of some hippie-era applesauce.
Finances were tight for our Western adventure. I had so little money I didn’t buy a proper road map or atlas (for the reader under thirty, maps are these large sheets of paper with a picture of roads and cities of a particular area used to navigate. Imagine Colorado taking a selfie). I grabbed one of those free tourist maps from a gas station and we were on our way, finally arriving at a visitors area replete with snack bar and small store stocked with items marked up to stroke-inducing prices. We were deep within the park, surrounded by cascading rivers and soaring sequoia.
We got our backcountry permits at a ranger station. The ranger on duty went through a list of questions designed, I believe, to ensure that visitors intent on heading into the vast, unpeopled ranges of the Sierra were doing so with a modicum of outdoor skills and wouldn’t be found half starved a few days later. He asked me if I had purchased a map, meaning a USGS topographical map, or a guidebook at least, describing the trails and climbs we hoped to complete. I waved him off, saying we’d be fine with the map provided for free upon entrance to the park. Why spend money on an accurate map when you could depend on your hard-earned wilderness acumen?
The free map we used was sort of a cartoon map, with chubby bears cavorting along the edges rather than dragons and big, balloony, cartoonish writing. The scale was something like 1:1,000,000,000. I believe that the map covered the parks, as well as most of the western United States, and maybe the entire Pacific Rim. Up in the corner, there was a crude drawing of the sun and what appeared to be Mars. It was not, by any stretch of the amateur cartographers imagination, an accurate rendering of the landscape, nor a reliable guide to the mountainous country we were about to enter. But Gordon and I tramped off with the map nonetheless, equipped with only its brightly colored drawings to guide us.
We began the hike up into the high country, taking in the scenery. The High Sierras are remarkable, climbing among the giant sequoia, their massive, thick-barked red trunks seeming as solid as the earth they were fastened in. The trail canted up, and we were in highland meadows, with a cool high-altitude breeze chilling the sweat from the forested climb below. Blue sky stretched everywhere. High, rocky peaks were still covered in snow.
While I had visited the area before, we were heading up into the high country above the trees to a series of ridges and valleys where I’d never been. We came around a corner, and there it was. A marmot was just a few yards off the trail, happily munching grass and flowers. Its fat, sleek body gamboled this way and that, seeming remarkably spry for such a rotund little mammal. I shrieked in delight, like an eleven-year-old girl at a Harry Styles concert. Gordon, despite his Easter Island countenance, was also pleased, and flashed a rare smile. We snapped pictures, talking the whole time to the little ground-dweller, who seemed quite oblivious of our presence.
“Hey there, lil’ guy! Who’s a big fellow? Huh? You eatin’ some flowers, buddy?” I crooned at the marmot.
After about fifteen minutes of wildlife viewing we moved on, excited and feeling quite fortunate to have had what was clearly a serendipitous run-in with a shy denizen of the alpine high country so soon. We had just started hiking when a man and woman came clomping down the trail toward us. I waved crazily at them, mouthing the word marmot and pantomiming a large rodent by holding my hands in front of me and blowing out my cheeks. Not wanting them to scare away the secretive creature, I motioned at them to stay quiet, pointing back over my shoulder with exaggerated motions and a maniacal smile. Stay quiet, fellow travelers! Around the corner is a once-in-a-lifetime viewing experience! They slowed as we passed, looking at me with a sort of weary curiosity.
“Psst! Hey, back there. A marmot! He’s probably still there. Just off the trail. Check it out!” I said.
With tired, neutral expressions they walked on. Obviously not nature-lovers, I thought.
By the time the sun had set that evening, however, I had a firm understanding of our fellow hikers’ disconsolate and bitter countenances.
There were marmots everywhere. While I was pitching the tent, one of them gnawed a hole in the rainfly I had cast off a few feet behind me. A fat, cheeky little bastard stole a packet of oatmeal out of my bag. One of them chewed a hole in Gordon’s boot-tongue. There was a burrow right near our tent, and the beasts squealed and made a racket all night long, making sleep impossible. You couldn’t turn around without being face to face with ten pounds of alpine rodent. One even chased a pine marten through our camp, a carnivore that looks like a cross between a fox and a weasel. These marmots were tough, skullduggerous little buggers, and our camp was overrun with them. Before long my Attenborough-esque appreciation had given way to keen annoyance and petulant griping. The couple we saw hiking had probably, as we did, spent the night battling the bloody creatures, and our awe at the first sighting was probably the emotional equivalent of salt in the wound.
Gordon and I hiked up over Elizabeth Pass the next day. We were not prepared in a number of ways—including the fact that I was trying to gauge distances using the cartoon map—which would ultimately lead to a somewhat desperate situation. By the time we got to Elizabeth Pass, we were exhausted. The pass was just over eleven thousand feet, and the thin air and altitude sucked the energy from us and left us wheezing and bent over our knees.
We could look down into Dead Man’s Canyon, a wide, long, sweeping valley that stretched into the distance. The entire upper part of the valley was a huge melting snowfield. We stopped at the top of the pass, black spots of exertion and altitude popping in front of our eyes. Gordon and I ate lunch, then leaned back among the rocks to rest in the sunshine before the descent into the canyon.
We fell asleep. Or passed out, depending on how you look at it. Leaning against our packs, our heads wobbling on our necks like balloons, we succumbed to the oxygen deprivation and the previous night’s marmot-induced sleeplessness experiment and took way too long of a nap. Upon waking, we realized a good chunk of the day had passed, and we needed to hustle to get down past the snow to camp for the night.
We headed out across the snowfield toward the cleft of the canyon, the early summer sun blazing overhead. We were post-holing every step, our feet crunching through the snow to the rocks underneath, falling through the crusty layer of snow sometimes up to our waists. We hadn’t anticipated that much snow, because anticipation and planning had not had room in our overly enthused brains, which were occupied by testosterone and impatience. Our boots were quickly soaked, and our legs cut up by the sharp, crusty snow.
We eventually got down into the shady canyon. And the problems began in earnest.
I grew up in Vermont. I’m used to mosquitoes and blackflies. While not a huge fan of the blood-sucking insects of the world, I believed I had a solid tolerance and wouldn’t let a few winged annoyances derail a trip through a place as sublimely beautiful as the Sierra high country. I thought I was relatively inured to their sanguine advances. I believed I knew what “buggy” meant, as in, “How was the hike?” “Gorgeous, just a bit buggy.” I was wrong.
The mosquitoes in Dead Man’s Canyon were huge, fierce, and brutal. As we began picking our way through the rocky scree that had, for millennia, eroded down the high canyon sides and scattered across the canyon floor, we realized we had neglected to bring bug repellent of any kind. The trail wove in and out of trees, and the high ridges on either side shaded the canyon almost entirely. Water flowed everywhere, both from the snowfield up by the pass and down the canyon walls. It was perfect mosquito habitat: lots of standing water, cool, shady. The mosquitoes attacked en masse like they hadn’t eaten in weeks. They feasted on our backs, our necks, both on exposed flesh and through our T-shirts and shorts. I turned to tell Gordon that we needed to get the heck out of there, leave the boggy, wet place we were in. His hat had legions of gray, hungry mosquitoes perched on it, and he had a least a dozen little vampires hunched on his face, busily probing his cheeks with their sharp proboscises. It was like a scene from a horror movie.
I came up with an idea that I thought was intelligent, well-thought-out wisdom born out of years of outdoor experience.
“Run!” I shouted, slapping at my own face reflexively after seeing Gordon’s host of bloodsuckers.
We began sprinting down the trail, waving our arms madly and trying to hold off the growing swarms of bugs. It was horrible. They got in my ears, along the hairline right at the back of my neck.
“Gordon! High ground, where there’s a breeze!” I screamed, veering off the trail and starting to scramble up the boulder field toward the high canyon wall. Gordon, who I could tell was resigning himself to death, or perhaps just losing consciousness due to blood loss, weakly followed, not even bothering to slap at the mosquitoes that were sucking at his eyebrows, his nose, and his temples.
We didn’t get far up the steep canyon wall, mainly because it was a steep canyon wall and we weren’t fucking mountain goats. And it didn’t matter, as there was no breeze up there anyway. The swarm followed us. We started back down the slope, which consisted of large blocks of rock that had tumbled down the walls. As I neared the bottom, back toward the trail, I heard a snap behind me among Gordon’s labored breaths and scrabbling, scraping footsteps. I didn’t hear any footsteps after that. I turned, and Gordon was sitting, staring down at his ankle, which was wedged between two sharp slabs of rock.
“That was my ankle,” he said, referring to the snapping noise.
I helped Gordon hobble back to the trail. The bugs were really bad now, getting in our eyes, their insistent and maddening whine saturating the air. Gordon’s hat was coated in a gray felt composed entirely of insects. I’m sure mine looked the same. I had somehow lost the trail. Gordon couldn’t walk at more than a pained, aggrieved shuffle, his face grimacing in agony when he limped on the hurt ankle. At least I think he grimaced. His face was obscured by thousands of whirling, whining insects.
“Let’s pitch the tent!” I shouted. We were out of water, our mouths pasty and dry. I set up our little two-man tent in record speed, and muddy, exhausted, and bitten, we collapsed inside. I managed to fill our water bottles from the stream nearby, and treated the water with iodine tablets. No time for pumping water through a purifier. I’d be sucked of all my blood in minutes. The hoard of insects settled in a thick gray mat, furring the screened door of our tent, waiting for us to emerge. We climbed into our bags, muddy and lost and wet, to sleep. We stared out at the darkening forest, welts raising on every inch of skin. Exhausted, hungry, and seriously questioning the logic of outdoor activities in general, we fell asleep.
I woke in the morning and for a moment forgot where I was. Rolling over and catching sight of Gordon, I thought I’d had too much to drink the night before and had a one-night stand with the Elephant Man. But it was just Gordon, still comatose in his bag. His face was swollen with bites, his eyebrows especially puffy, making him look slightly Neanderthal-ish and dim.
We roused ourselves and inspected his ankle. We had not raised it, or wrapped it, the night before, and thus his body’s natural protective swelling and inflammation had advanced unabated through the night. Gordon’s lower leg looked like a pink python that had mistakenly swallowed a volleyball. The joint was enormous and grotesquely swollen. He winced at the slightest movement, and looked at it with a strange mixture of resignation, horror, and remove, as though such a disgusting thing couldn’t possibly belong to him.
Though barely dawn, the bugs were back out. They were all perched on our screen, waiting, patiently yet malevolently, huffing our exhaled CO2 in the hopes that we’d emerge to become breakfast. Which, of course, I’d have to. I had to go find the trail that I’d lost in our mad dash the night before.
We figured we were close to what was labeled as a “Ranger Station” on our map, highlighted by a cartoon of a smiling female ranger in shorts sniffing a flower next to a log cabin. Help was near, I hoped, as I wasn’t sure how, exactly, we were going to move Gordon. His ankle looked very likely to be broken. He couldn’t walk on it, couldn’t put weight on it.
I sprinted out in the early morning, wildly waving my hands around as I cast about for the trail. I found it. Back at the tent, we wrapped T-shirts around our faces and necks. Wore long sleeves and pants, though the temperature was climbing. We couldn’t wrap Gordon’s ankle—our med kit didn’t have the right stuff—but he wore a double pair of socks and we tied his boot laces as tight as he could stand it to immobilize the joint. I shifted as much weight as possible into my pack from Gordon’s, and we scurried off as fast as his ankle would let us.
Luckily, we cleared the swampy section relatively quickly, and that, plus a strong, beaming June sun, spread the little bloodsuckers thinner and thinner. We made it to the ranger station, which by its unkempt appearance had last housed a ranger during the late 1970s. The windows were shuttered fast, and the door was locked with a brutal and large clasp-lock. Looking at my Looney Toons map, as Gordon soaked his hideous ankle in the freezing, snowmelt waters of a river that ran along in front of the vacant ranger cabin, I realized that we were a solid dozen miles, in any direction we chose, from the nearest road. Whatever we did, it would have to involve some other way of moving about, as Gordon could barely walk, and the exertions of the brief jaunt that morning had already put him in considerable pain. The closest place where I felt I could reliably find help was a big campground and ranger station deep in Kings Canyon National Park. It was up and over a break in the mountains called Hurricane Gap, and it looked to be about ten miles, though I was beginning to be suspicious of the reliability of my map.
Gordon and I talked it out and decided that I’d head up over the gap to get help. My thought was that I would commandeer a mule or two, as I knew there were pack trains that crisscrossed the mountains. I figured it was standard protocol in the mountains, and some code of the outdoors would entitle me to a little donkey or two to get Gordon out of the woods.
I packed light and headed up into the gap. I left Gordon with the tent, food, and the stove. He sat at the river, floating his ankle in the water and looking rather forlorn. After a few hours of hiking, I began to approach the open V of blue sky that was the apex of my journey; the rest, as would be blessedly welcome, was downhill. As I hurried up the hill, concerned about getting up and over and down into the next valley where the road, campsite, and ranger station was, my breath came in harsh, ragged, altitudinal gasps. I could hear and feel the blood pounding in my head. I felt tired and dehydrated.
One of the things you quickly realize about hiking long distances is that at first the long stretches of time with nothing to do but plod on stir deep thoughts about the meaning of life. Quickly, though, as you tire, you begin to focus exclusively and obsessively on fantasies involving large, carbohydrate-laden meals and putting your feet up. It’s only after the whole ordeal is over that you realize the meaning of life is eating carbohydrate-laden meals with your feet up.
The bear surprised me. I was hiking up a steep slope, hands on my thighs, staring only at the ground at my feet. Briefly looking up, there it was, coming down the slope. A shaggy, cinnamon-colored bear. We passed each other in broad daylight, no more than thirty feet apart.
I’m not going to get metaphysical and spiritual here. I’m not looking to star in Herzog’s Grizzly Man 2. But I will say this. I passed a sentient being. We were so much the same, both mountain commuters with pressing business to attend to. When that bear looked at me and our eyes met, I didn’t see the cold and fierce gaze. There was a self-awareness there I found familiar. I saw a creature that I could relate to despite our obvious differences. Like if we could just sit down for a while with a beer, we could reach a friendly understanding, a shared mountain-trekker camaraderie. I know that we’re different on an evolutionary continuum—that in terms of cranial capacity, tool use, language acquisition, and the ability to get through a New York Times article all the way to the end, we are separate and distinct beings—but in that moment, I had this feeling that the bear understood me and I it. I had the sense I was in the presence of a thoughtful creature.
The bear’s expression was a slightly hurried, commuter-on-a-busy train sort of glance. For the brief moment we locked eyes, it was not unlike the unintentional eye contact one makes with another diner in a restaurant, a slight emotional double-take that flickers in a stranger’s eye when you hold their gaze for a disconcerting and socially unacceptable long time, followed rapidly by a flash of awkwardness when you quickly look down to study the menu with the focus of a rabbi studying the Torah. I think we were both a bit embarrassed, is what I’m trying to say. I think the bear was as surprised as I was at the unexpected meeting, and we both decided to keep going about our business in an attempt to gloss over the embarrassing inter-species moment.
And then it was over. The bear continued on its journey down into Dead Man’s Canyon, and I headed up over the pass. The next day, I would discover that the same bear walked by Gordon as he sat in camp. Gordon, however, did not attempt to commune with the beast, but scrambled into the tent to hide. Which is something I’ve never understood. If a bear wants at you, I’m guessing the least formidable defense is a millimeter of nylon between you and 250 pounds of angry ursine rage.
I made it to the campground at nightfall. I headed directly to the ranger station. I clomped up onto the porch, where a mustachioed, sinewy, and graying ranger met me at the door. The parking lot, store, and campsites behind me were filled with loud, noisy people, barbecuing, talking, laughing. RV air conditioners hummed. It was bizarre, to have been so remote that morning, and now to be amid the chaos of vacationing America. I won’t say I wasn’t relieved.
The ranger patiently explained to me that the mules I was requesting would cost $450 for a day and a night. Plus guide fees, as they didn’t just hand out mules to people who said they had friends who had busted an ankle. I was shocked. I assumed that was what rangers did; they ranged about, looking for people to save.
“What do you mean, I have to pay? My friend is hurt. His ankle is probably broken. Isn’t it your job to go and help him get out?”
“No,” the skinny ranger said.
I was also told that I could airlift Gordon out with a local helicopter service for the bargain-basement price of $4,500. I passed.
They finally took pity on me. I suppose I was kind of pathetic, ascribing to modern rangers a sort of backcountry ethic that only exists in movies. The whole point is to not take unnecessary risks, so you don’t get in a jam you can’t get yourself out of. The rangers explained to me that it was the responsibility of the backcountry trekker to figure out how to get out of the wilderness, unless it was a real emergency, which, apparently, a busted ankle is not. I was somewhat appalled, but also understood the logic. If they rescued every jackass like me who went into the backcountry unprepared, then all the jackasses like me would think it was okay to go out there and mess around without taking into account the consequences, knowing that the rangers would swoop in and save them if needed.
The rangers told me I could raid their first-aid supply closet and food pantry, and sleep on their porch without having to pay an overnight fee. I felt, oddly, beholden to them. Though I had imagined myself returning to Gordon at the head of a train of mules packed with vittles, waving a beaten cowboy hat in the air in greeting and hunkering down to a crackling fire to fix up some varmint stew, ready to haul him out donkey-style, I had to accept crutches, some splints, various wraps and instant chemical ice packs, and some MREs (Meals Ready to Eat), surplus army food in big plastic blocks that tasted like big plastic blocks.
I hiked out early the next morning, back over the pass. We took two days to get out, wrapping Gordon’s ankle in a splint and ACE bandages and having him limp out on crutches. It turned out, they informed us at the hospital, that Gordon had a largish fracture but didn’t need a cast. We continued our epic summer quest undeterred, visiting the Tetons and various points east of Los Angeles. We drank beer a lot more than we hiked due to Gordon’s ankle, but with such a tale to regale our fellow imbibers with, it was a pleasant enough summer after all. And that bear, somehow, in the most surprising moments, is still with me.