Back Home in the Sierras

I stayed up late to watch the Perseid meteor showers flashing across the 3-D drive-in movie screen above my campsite. I leaned back in my stargazing chair, bundled up in my New York Winter of 2025 puffy jacket, wrapped my chilled legs loosely in a fleece blanket, and waited for the show to begin. 

Turns out, Nature’s Viewing Guide and mine didn’t align as The Big Show didn’t begin until 3 a.m. . 

Still, I thought I’d catch a coming attractions preview so I waited past my camping-in-the-cold bedtime and catch a sneak peek.  

9 o’clock. Nothing. 

10 o’clock. Nothing.

11 p.m.

Was that one? A faint one, to my left?

Over there, near the treeline, I’m sure that was a meteor. 

The Eastern Sierra’s temperatures dropped to the upper 30s. 

And then it happened: A glittery, rabbit tail streak right over my head. And then another. And to the East, yet another. 

Like my more than three decades camping at Tuolumne Meadows in mid-August, the annual meteor showers was yet another reminder that us humans are not in charge; we are mere guests of Planet Earth. 

Waking up early or late each morning—the retiree’s prerogative—having something to do, something to think about, something to create, improve, appreciate, someone to help, people to love, is a privilege. 

Living in the wild of Yosemite’s bold terrain, even if just for six days, is the reset I needed.       

Thank you planetary fireworks show. 

I have journals upon journals filled with musings about Tuolumne Meadows; the beauty, the peaceful quietude, the ping pong memory dance that resurrects while I’m here. Ghosts and flashbacks—the last trip before Mom died, my two-year-old’s diaper rash eased by a brisk snow water sponging, my grandson with his watercolors painting Lembert Dome, ranger-led campfire songs, and the Tuolumne Meadows Annual Poetry Festival, the reason I’m here.

I haven’t attended the Festival since COVID and the campground closed due to a massive renovation project a decade in the making. They did a good job; the once lumpy roads and ancient bathrooms are 100% better and while they’ve eliminated most of my favorite campsites in Loop A to lessen the human impact along the fragile riverbank, I appreciate the beyond-my-lifetime vision. The campground opened last year, briefly, as sort of a soft launch at the end of the summer season. Had I known, I would have been here. 

I need this place. 

Being here, sitting along the river with my stainless steel thermos, sipping maple syrup-sweetened milky coffee, watching a pair of fawns cross the water with no fear of me and I of them, being immersed in the soundtrack of the gurgling water as it plunges over the polished rocks—the same rocks I’ve sat next to, and on, and tried to paint no avail —well, it’s hard to explain what it means to me. It’s an assurance, a reminder, a gift, that validates what’s lingered in my dusty soul is real; it’s not my imagination. 

The purity of this place welcomes all to participate in ways that tickle one’s sense of adventure; unfortunately, it’s the opposite of what most of us experience day to day, the take, take, take crush of originality and playfulness. 

Being here activates my pores, cleans out my waxy ears, loosens my joints and packs my backpack with hope and possibilities. Being here in this rugged corner of Planet Earth insists that I and others who visit Yosemite be agile, preparated, adaptable and accepting as I was challenged to embrace upon my thunderous welcome yesterday when the skies opened and a flood watch was issued. Fortunately, the typical crazy Sierra Nevada weather did not last the entire day and by sunset the sun appeared reminding me that change is good given my drive up the 395 where 103 temperatures soared. 

So many metaphors. So many lessons. 

If I can’t get “it”, what’s important as I saturate myself in in the beauty of the Sierra Nevadas, then I’m a lost cause. Residing in Nature is the ultimate patient teacher: I long to hang out in her classroom when school’s dismissed and be her student forever.

Apparently, I’m not alone in this longing as Mary Oliver articulates in “Lingering in Happiness”:

After rain after many days without rain,

it stays cool, private and cleansed, under the trees,

and the dampness there, married now to gravity,

falls branch to branch, leaf to leaf, down to the ground 

where it will disappear—-but not, of course, vanish

except to our eyes. The roots of the oaks will have their share,

and the white threads of the grasses, and the cushion of moss;

a few drops, round as pearls, will enter the mole’s tunnel;

and soon so may small stones, buried for a thousand years,’

will feel themselves being touched.   

Thankfully, I have five more days to appreciate God’s glorious cathedral. Like yesterday’s traveling rainstorms that nourished the tender meadows, reminding the gooseberries and tall grasses of Spring, I, too, am in the process of regenerating. 

I am the same person 

with the same baggage, 

prioritizing,

 re-evaluating, 

what to take and what to leave behind.