The Parks Service has done a pretty good job of arranging things so that all these people can get there and park their cars and pitch their tents and hike the trails and find something to eat and a place to pee, and leave happy with their their Half Dome T-shirts and their cameras full of pictures. But there's no getting around the fact that three and a half million people is a heck of a lot of people.
You're driving along and suddenly traffic slows to a crawl: every third car is pulling over so someone can get out, walk ten feet out into a meadow, take the same incredible picture a thousand other people have taken since the sun came up this morning, and wander back to the car, still gaping up at the looming rock faces like Iowans in Manhattan. You board a shuttle bus packed with REI-clad straphangers speaking three different languages, listen to the driver reel off the many breathtaking attractions at every stop, and hope you can remember where you parked your car at the end of the day. You can't help imagining what it would have been like to come upon this valley alone, unspoiled... You wonder whether John Muir would be appalled by all the asphalt or delighted that so many people have come to cherish this place... And then you wonder how many visitors have had those same thoughts since the sun came up this morning.
With only a day and a half to spend in the park, we were able to pull off one hike on Sunday and a couple of short jaunts on Monday before we had to head back to the Oakland airport.
The news that we were planning yet another supposedly "fun" hike was greeted with dismay by Simon, who had been hoping to spend the day engaging all of his second cousins in a series of contests entitled "Livingroom Olympics." Yes, it's true: inside, he was bouncing off all four walls nonstop. But somehow all that energy drained away in the great outdoors.
The hike we chose wasn't so long -- three miles round trip. But it takes you up 1000 feet of elevation gain to the top of Vernal Falls, along what the guidebook described as a granite staircase showered in mist. We wondered if the granite staircase might be metaphorical -- but no, it's actual. And so is the mist! As we climbed steadily higher, the people coming back down toward us got progressively wetter -- wiping their glasses, folding up their umbrellas, full of encouraging words. "Almost there, son! Totally worth it. You're doing great!"
It was about here
that Simon finally stopped muttering "This is not my idea of a good time..." (a comment that echoed my own childhood verdict on cross country skiing: "Daddy's fun is all hard work!") and started looking around. "It looks like Narnia!" he announced. And so it did.At the top we spread out on the flat rocks to eat our sandwiches. Some of us ventured a little further up the river to see yet more wonders:
Before we headed back down, Josie and I joined the casual, unobtrusive line of people waiting to go out to the edge and look over the rail at the churning 300-foot drop. The line was actually so unobtrusive that oblivious arrivals often blundered right out past it, peered down at the falls, and then turned to the people they'd inadvertently cut in front of and asked, "Would you take our picture?" Mostly the cuttees obliged. It's hard to work up much in the way of dudgeon when you're surrounded by granite and glacial waters doing such beautiful things to each other.
The man who took our picture had an accent I couldn't place. I watched him wait patiently as a Chinese couple spent rather more than their share of time taking pictures from every angle, waving away anyone who approached to take a peek over the falls behind them. When he finally got his turn he looked over the edge for a long moment and then looked back at us and beamed.
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