And We Unpacked Our Adjectives

Here's today's poetic offering from the Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor from publicradio.org. I get a daily email from this site and generally find some interesting information about writers and musicians, plus some occasionally great poetry:

Poem: "Becoming" by Jim Harrison, from Saving Daylight. © Copper Canyon Press, 2006.

Becoming

Nowhere is it the same place as yesterday.
None of us is the same person as yesterday.
We finally die from the exhaustion of becoming.
This downward cellular jubilance is shared by the wind, bugs, birds, bears and rivers, and perhaps the black holes in galactic space where our souls will all be gathered in an invisible thimble of antimatter.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves.
Yes, trees wear out as the wattles under my chin grow, the wrinkled hands that tried to strangle a wife beater in New York City in 1957.
We whirl with the earth, catching our breath as someone else, our soft brains ill-trained except to watch ourselves disappear into the distance.
Still, we love to make music of this puzzle.


Next:

Know what I'm really tired of? What makes my eyes roll (and not in the good way)? What makes me wanna bite my own face sometimes? No? Well, allow me to tell ya:

When I call someone and they don't answer, do I really need to be subjected to a menu of options longer than the novel-length menu at the Cheesecake Factory? Seriously, by the time I finish hearing the dizzying array of possibilities available to me - leave a message, have the person paged, send a fax, rent an airplane towing a message banner, send up a flare, triangulate the coordinates via GPS and drop a note tied to a rock, have a series of electric shocks administered to their armpits - I've forgotten who I was trying to reach in the first place. And as for the purpose of my call, well that's now anybody's guess. So if you don't get a message from me, you'll know why. Blame the technology you've chosen as a means of "connectedness".

Also, I don't need to be instructed to leave my message "after the tone". I've worked that out. My IQ is above-average at least. I've yet to begin leaving a message while the automated voice, or the voice of the intended call recipient, is still saying its piece. That's would just be plain rude. Everyone knows that.

Further, I don't need permission, or a reminder, to "hang up" when I'm "finished recording" my message, if at this point I even leave one (and technically, I'm not recording anything. The system is). Are there people out there who, not given such information, would stay on the phone a few hours perplexed as to what to do next with their lives? Oddly, I can easily imagine there are. Maybe we do need this after all, if for no other reason than to keep our country's productivity up.


Now, by popular demand, it's time to take you back to Yosemite for...

Day Three: He Was A Hairy Bear... He Was A Scary Bear!

Tuesday June 12 - After taking the boys up the Mist Trail and exhausting them on Monday, Ralph and Joe requested that Tuesday be a "light day" (insert obligatory feminine hygiene joke here). I figgered this was a good idea so we could save our legs for Half Dome or, as Joe repeatedly referred to it, Half-a-Dome. He sounded like the storekeeper from the old Abbott and Costello show... I decided to take them on a leisurely stroll to Mirror Lake with intentions of going off-trail a bit to Hidden Falls, a spot that's a park employee favorite but remains little-known to tourists. For some reason, employees seem to go to Hidden Falls for the express purpose of taking naps. I'm not sure what that's all about, other than that I recall it being kinda difficult at times while working in the Valley to find much serenity during the day in all the usual places.

Ralph on the trail

Me on the trail

We got our directions to Hidden Falls from our buddy Morgan at the front desk and set off a'strollin'. Hidden Falls turns out to be very aptly named, 'cos Ralph and I couldn't find it. We were, however, able to find every starving mosquito--or rather, they found us--for a fifty mile radius. This made stopping to eat lunch kind of annoying: bite, chew, swat; bite, chew, swat; screw it, run. Joe left us midway through the hike/stroll/meander to keep an appointment with a massage therapist, as he was feeling residual achiness from the day before. The Mirror Lake loop was less leisurely than we'd hoped for, but worth doing and certainly one of the least strenuous options available.

Mirror Lake

On the return end of the loop, I was hiking ahead of Ralph and heard a rustling sound in the woods ahead and to my right. Suddenly, a deer leapt out onto the trail and began trotting toward me. My first thought was, "Cool! A deer, and so close!!!" As I watched him approach, my next thought was, "Uh... antlers. Maybe not so cool..." My mind sorted through my Yosemite files and pulled up the information that the only animal-related human fatality in the park, to my knowledge, was caused by a deer. It seems a child had been feeding potato chips to a buck (feeding the wildlife in Yosemite is a big no-no, and for very good reasons) and they got into a bit of a struggle over who was gonna keep the bag. Sadly, and I'm sure inadvertently, the deer fatally gored the child. With this story flashing in my mind, I moved aside as much as I could to let the deer pass, all the while cooing niceties at him such as "Ooooh... pretty deer. Aren't you a pretty deer? Or is that 'handsome'? Ummm... you're a pretty, handsome deer..." He passed me close enough that I could have touched him, but I kept a respectful distance. I saw that Ralph was standing uptrail, ironically, like a deer in the headlights, so I calmly suggested he move to the side to let the buck pass, which he did.

Different buck, but you get the i-deer

I figgered that was my wildlife interaction for the day... but I was wrong. Not five minutes later, I heard another sound of something moving through the underbrush and, as I came around a boulder and looked to my right, I saw a brown furry ass running away into the woods (when I told Gabby the story, she asked, "Did you think it was a shaggy hiker?" She funny!!!). I ducked back behind the rock for a sec, peeked back around and was face-to-face with a California Black Bear (yeah, they're really brown, but that's what they call 'em anyway). He was prob'ly 50 or so feet away, and I'm glad 'cos I wouldn't want to be much closer to one of these guys. This fella was easily 250-300 lbs (or more. Who knows? I didn't have time to size him up on my Watch Out, There's A Big Ass Bear On The Trail chart), so the further away, the better. We looked in each other's eyes for a few seconds and I moved back behind the rock in the hopes that, like a two-year-old child, he'd think that since he could no longer see me, I'd ceased to exist. Good plan, Keith.

When you get to Yosemite Valley, they take great pains in trying to make you Bear Aware. Here's some of the tips you might hear, read or see on video:

If you encounter a bear:
Bears sometimes bluff their way out of threatening situations by charging and then veering off at the last second. If this happens, do your best not to scream or run. The bear will probably retreat as soon as she has made her point (this is her territory) and scared you senseless.
Never approach a bear. Give it plenty of room to pass by. Most black bears try to avoid confrontation when given a chance.
Do not run from a bear. Running away from a black bear may stimulate its instinct to chase. You cannot outrun a bear. Instead:
Stand and face the animal.
Make eye contact without staring.
Talk softly in a monotone and back away slowly.
If you have small children with you, pick them up so that they do not run or panic.
If there is more than one person, stand together to present a more intimidating figure, but do not surround the bear.
Give the bear room so that it can avoid you.

That's all well and good, but here's what happens in REAL LIFE when you (ok, I) encounter a bear:

Your hands go numb.
Your legs shake.
You run your ass off in a direction opposite the bear, find your friend uptrail and babble semi-coherently, "Bear! Bear on the trail! There'sabearthere'sabearthere'sabear. Bearbearbearbear!" And do a lot of pointing. And nearly soil yourself.

I know that conventional wisdom suggests that a human cannot outrun a bear, but here's where I beg to differ. Had the bear given chase, I guarantee that I would have been the first person in recorded history to fly unaided and would have easily avoided being mauled/eaten/bear-raped. I think my strategy for any further bear encounters will be the following, since this is almost what happened anyway:

I will immediately shit my pants.
I will reach into my pants, quickly gather my own shit and throw it at the bear in the hopes of either a) repelling him in disgust or b) giving him something distractingly interesting to focus on whilst I make good my escape. I'm vegan, after all, so there's plenty of nuts, seeds, berries and other bear-attractive goodies in my, uh, scat (I'm not sure whether this works to my advantage or against it. Just how keen is a bear's sense of smell again...?)

I believe this plan will work, and that it will be included in future Bear Awareness literature. When you see it, remember me!

Having had all the stimulation we could stand, Ralph and I headed back to base camp and then over to Yosemite Lodge "food court" for din-din. While waiting in line for my plate of pasta with vegan marinara, I overheard the women ahead of me discussing the Half Dome hike, so I asked if they'd done it and for their impressions of the hike. [Now over the years, I'd heard or read dozens of people's stories of hiking Half Dome but as my chance to do this hike drew closer, I wanted to hear some more. Particularly, I was interested in how people thought the hike to the top of Upper Yosemite Falls (rated "strenuous") compared to Half Dome (rated "very strenuous"). I'd hiked the Upper Yosemite Falls trail in 2000 and it was by far the greatest test of physical endurance I'd ever put myself through. After 4 hours and 2000+ feet of elevation gain in the middle of a hot August afternoon, my body threatened to contact an attorney and sue me for abuse. But I made it, and I made it back down.]

The women in the pasta line told me what it was like going up the Half Dome trail - nothing I hadn't heard before - but when I asked, "And coming down?", one of 'em said, "Don't ask!" and they all turned to look at a smallish woman in their group. I looked at the quizzically and the stared-at woman disclosed that a few years back, she'd been on the 45-50 degree vertical cable descent from the top of Half Dome when a freak hailstorm hit. She slipped on the slick granite, lost her grip on the cables, fell/slid a scary distance and injured herself quite severely. As she recounted the story, I quickly realized that I had read online here about her accident shortly after it had happened, as it appeared in a Yosemite group in which I'm active. In fact, I'd even sent my wishes for a speedy recovery to this woman, Brigid.

Brigid showed me some of her scars (devastating) and told me of her lengthy hospital stay (months, if memory serves), physical rehab, learning to walk again, etc. Prior to the accident, she'd been a triathlete and had run something on the order of 20 marathons. I'm sure her physical conditioning is what allowed her to recuperate, recover and return to Yosemite the very next year (!) to make the same hike again (I found out on Wednesday that a woman fell on the cables on Tuesday, hit her head and died later the same day. Eerie...). We talked for quite a while and she took my email address and phone number, but I've yet to hear from her. I sincerely hope she stays in touch, as I felt I'd met a kindred spirit in Brigid. If not, I'll cherish the experience of our paths having crossed.

We all retired to our cabin, having had another full and satisfying Yosemite day.

Coming soon! Tune in for Installment 4: God Give Me Strength