Men and kids, drunk and drugged, rode bikes through the streets like zombies high on death. Cops sat at the Walmart, making arrests. There were more arrests at a liquor store. When I returned to my room at a Motel 6 on the same block, a security guard stood on the balcony, watching the parking lot and street. The next morning, I went to a coffee shop, where a dude was nodding out at a table beside me.
Everyone looked ravaged by the world. No one really looked happy. No one looked healthy. So this is the other side of California. This is Fresno.
The irony was that for a solid month, I had been rushing around, leaving places that I’d fallen in love with, telling myself and everyone else, “I wish I could stay longer, but I’m gonna need at least a week to explore the Sierra Nevadas—preferably two!”
I wish I could’ve gone back in time to spend more of it with all those people and places I loved so much.
The irony is that when I was at one of the biggest wilderness areas in the country, there was no where to camp. I guess it was peak tourist season or something. Oops.
When I arrived on Thursday, leaving the Pacific Coast and driving through Bakersfield, I headed straight for Sequoia National Park. At least, I thought I was headed there. GPS took me down some random road that never did link me to the park. I didn’t see any sequoia trees. There weren’t many cars either, just the occasional truck during some five hours of winding up and down mountain roads. And the occasional cow in the road, who would stare at me with a look that seemed to say, “You look lost.”
“I am. Thanks for pointing that out.”
Eventually, after climbing more than 5,000 feet, I turned around. There clearly was no camping, just more mountains and ranches and fields stretching out to infinity. I drove back down and out, which took hours, arriving back at sea level, where it was 100 degrees again, and stopping at the first town, Porterville, to get a bed for the night.
I felt defeated, but I was determined to use that motel wifi and find campsites not just for the next night but for the next week. Except that when I got online, I saw that they were all booked. Like, for weeks. For the whole summer. Everything. All the national parks—Yosemite, Sequoia, Kings Canyon—and all the public and private camping in surrounding towns. Basically the entire mountain range.
The next day, I headed for the mountains again in search of the real Sequoia National Park. And I found it. There were signs everywhere, a string of cars and RVs heading in. I was just one of many in a long line, stopping at the turnouts to take photos, being a tourist although I couldn't relate to it. Only one campground had vacancies, a ranger told me at the entrance gate. It was 45 miles down the road, i.e., a few hours. So I drove. You couldn’t call ahead; you had to show up and hope for the best. I stopped a couple times to take in the beauty of the sequoias and mountain streams, and then I arrived, and it was full. And the walk-in campgrounds were booked, too. I asked two rangers what they suggested. They suggested I make reservations in advance next time. It’s like I'd found the Walt Disney World of nature.
A friend had suggested I do what he did while in Yosemite: park on the side of the road and walk into the woods with a sleeping bag. I don’t have an issue with the legality of it, but I promised myself a couple months ago that I wouldn’t camp anywhere where I wasn’t within screaming distance of another human being, and I made that promise for a reason. I'm too sober (literally) at this point in my life to sleep alone in the middle of hundreds of acres of wilderness. Not to mention, I don’t think I’d get any sleep. There are bears. Mountain lions. Wolves. Possibly some murderers. Who knows. I have faith in the Universe, but I’m not crazy.
Suffice it to say, basically it was a repeat of the day prior but with some real sequoias thrown in. If there’s no camping, there’s nothing to do but turn around. So I made my way back west again, out of the Sierra Nevadas (there are no roads that take you out east) and toward phone service and the nearest town, the setting sun blinding me and making my elevation headache throb even harder. It was over 100 degrees again. I was tumbling down into misery me. I could feel it.
The nearest town was Fresno. I looked for the nearest motel on my phone and landed in a Motel 6 again. But this one was, as I’d explained earlier, sketchy.
I felt defeated. And angry. It was the first time since my travels had started that I felt really let down, and the second time that I felt as if I’d been thrown off the wave. I was starting to think, “fuck a Yosemite.” Was it really worth all this? Killing my car, my body, my brain, only to be exhausted and ill with elevation and sleeping in some shitty motel? I would've been perfectly fine lounging at LA's beaches for another week.
I woke early to the sounds and vibrations of people walking on the balcony and flushing toilets on all sides (except for mine; mine didn’t flush). I took an aspirin and fell back asleep until 10, dreaming of three birds who’d gotten trapped inside my motel room, and I didn’t know how to free them. It seemed symbolic.
I’d like to say that I was determined to see Yosemite and hike amazing trails and find a pristine camping spot that day, but I was still in that mode where my car and my body felt totally worn down by this leg of the journey. I felt depleted of vital nutrients. You know how sometimes you just feel like that? Like you’re missing something important? Perhaps you can get it from the sun and fresh air and your feet in cold mountain streams, those things that replenish you. But at the time, I felt my life force quite weakened.
I wondered, too, how much of my weakened spirit was related to sleeping in motels for two nights in a row. When I sleep outside, I always wake up refreshed, in tune with the natural world, a part of it again. I feel that connection even more so when I wake up at dawn, as if the earth cleansed and grounded my energy field in a way that a motel, even a nice motel, never could, with its wifi and energy bodies moving all around, in and out, each unknowingly carrying their own baggage.
So I was not so headstrong about setting out into the mountains for a third day. In fact, I stayed in bed longer partly because I was procrastinating all of it: the long drives in 105-degree heat, the crowds of people, the sudden rises in elevation that my body doesn’t acclimate to very well (headaches, dizzy, nauseous).
I was starting to think, why bother? If I’m listening to and following my heart, my new credo, my heart is saying, Turn back! Forget your plans and what you think you “should” do! Go toward the path that feels warm and full of life and nurturing! (My intuition often speaks in exclamation points. My apologies.)
I just felt that it was something I had to do. It’s Yosemite. And I’m right fucking here. For the record, that reasoning is never actually solid. It feels solid, but only solid in the sense of the illusion of something being solid, i.e., “I’m gonna break down all barriers and obstacles to get what I want.” Not solid in the sense of being in any kind of divine flow of things and letting a path light up and unfold as I go, moving with the current.
I decided to go anyway.