Late in the fall one year, I
hiked up steep switchbacks for two hours from the valley floor to Glacier Point
in Yosemite. The wilderness was surprisingly quiet and still at 8,000 feet.
A forest of sugar pines was
behind me. In front was Half Dome and a view that stretched over the gray granite
peaks and domes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains
No one else was here. The
summer crowds had gone home months before. A few tiny people walked around on
the valley floor far below. Except for a few squirrels and one Steller’s jay,
no other creatures were letting their presence be known.
The breeze hummed lightly as
it twirled the needles on the pines. There was a hush as the wind flowed over
the nearby mountains on its way east. Now and then when the breeze shifted, I caught
the sounds of Nevada and Vernal Falls.