Thursday, May 12, 2005

Sequoias look good in morning light. So, when I woke up at 6:00 a.m., I resisted the strong temptation to roll over and extend my sleep time. A pot of coffee later, I was on the way to the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias with a promise to myself to return mid-day for a few hours of catch-up nap time.

It was well worth the effort. Eastern beams filtered through the slumbering giants, painting soft highlights on their surfaces and raising small clouds of steam where the warm sunlight struck damp bark.

Gnarled trunks of incredible scale rose from the forest floor, towering over all lesser plant life like adults in a children's playground. Fallen comrades, some horizontal for the past 300 years, extended out along the ground for the length of a football field. One named Fallen Monarch carried grafitti scars with dates in the 1920s and '30s.

I spent almost three hours hiking through the trail system, admiring huge specimens with lovingly granted names like the Faithful Couple, Clothespin Tree and Grizzly Giant. My lack of sleep was quickly forgotten, over-ridden by the intrigue of discovering new variations in light, shade and immense scale.

After a quick sandwich at the Wawona Hotel, I drove back to the cabin and spent a few hours of horizontal time myself, awaking again around 3:00 p.m. to head down toward the valley.

The direction of the late afternoon sunlight led me up Route 120, where I revisited Cascade Fall and collected images of the now-abundant wildflowers, including the succulent pictured at the right, living on a vertical cliff overlooking the highway.

Finally, once again lured by the promise of a sunset, I returned to Tunnel View to see how the colored light treated Yosemite Valley's monuments. Half Dome and Cloud's Rest were surprisingly clear (typically shrouded in mist/clouds), but although the setting sun illuminated both, the light turned warm but not red. When it finally faded, I headed back to the cabin to begin creating this journal entry.

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