Author: Nell

Having visited the Giant Forest, Moro Rock and Crescent Meadow in Sequoia National Park, the third day of my John Muir-inspired pilgrimage into the Sierra Nevada brought me, finally, to Yosemite Valley.

My partner John and I were welcomed by the “Tunnel View” as we drove out of the tunnel that leads between Wawona and the Yosemite Valley. The famed granite domes of El Capitan, Half Dome, Cathedral Range and the Bridalveil Fall—gushing with delicate yet powerful streams of springtime snowmelt—greeted us in unreal majesty.

We continued into the valley and visited Yosemite’s Greatest Hits during the morning and afternoon. Numerous roadside pull-overs offered clear meadowed views of the aforementioned sights, and we followed short trails to Bridalveil Falls, Lower Yosemite Falls—the foot of which was home to John Muir’s cabin for two years–and Mirror Lake, where we were treated to a classic tree-framed view of Half Dome and Mount Watkins.

John Muir spent weeks on end exploring and contemplating this landscape in relative solitude. I  saw some of what Muir saw and got a glimpse into his world, but I haven’t experienced it in the remarkable way that he was able to. Even in the middle of a weekday and early in the season, tourists crowded the roads, the viewpoints, and the free park shuttles that brought visitors between trailheads, campgrounds, and the Village (home to gifts shops and eateries). At about a mile wide, the valley floor itself is fairly intimate and traffic, buildings, and paved paths often felt omnipresent. A deeper communion with the landscape and the wildlife would necessitate moving away from the roads and tourists and getting up into the trails—and on this particular visit, I had neither the time nor the physical skill to take on many of the hikes leaving from the valley (such as the trails up to Upper Yosemite Falls or Glacier Point).

On our way out of the valley we took the moderately nerve-wracking drive to Glacier Point to view an astonishing panorama of the valley from above the height of Half Dome. Every landmark, small and large, was visible in the distance like miniatures on a movie set, including the camps and buildings on the Valley floor. The waterfalls moved slowly in the distance as we shivered in the cool high-altitude air and, wishing we could stay to watch the sunset but eager to make the long twisting drive to Wawona before nightfall, continued onward.

Read the next post in the series (Day 4)

Return to the On the Road to Capture John Muir’s Yosemite to view the other entries in this series.

“With your heart aglow, spangling Lake Tenaya and Lake May will beckon you away for walks on their ice-burnished shores.” —John Muir (Read  Muir’s descriptions of his favorite excursions to these spots in The Yosemite, Chapter 12.)

On my second full day in Yosemite National Park (and the fourth day of my John Muir pilgrimage), my partner John and I visited a region of the park much beloved by Muir. After a long winding drive from our base at the Wawona Hotel (about 2 1/2 hours to Tuolomne Meadows) taking the Tioga Road northeast of the Big Oak Flat entrance to the park, we followed a short, rugged road to the May Lake trailhead.

There we hiked up through the stark, rocky terrain leading to a gorgeous, medium-sized lake beneath the peak of Mt. Hoffman. The cold, fresh mountain air and white sunlight were restorative. I could almost imagine myself in the midst of one of Muir’s two or three-week journeys of climbing and botanizing. Passing long chains of sturdy horses carrying supplies up to the High Sierra Camp at May Lake (and and a few very comical yellow-bellied marmots munching on the horses’ droppings), we reached an elevation of 9270 ft. Unaccustomed to the thin air, we were winded but inspired: this trail rewarded us with some of the most incredible vistas of our trip.

After walking back to the trailhead and dreaming about someday returning to spend a few nights at the High Sierra Camp, we drove onward to enjoy the view from Olmsted Point, then Tenaya Lake. I was particularly taken with the lake, the largest in the park and a stunning pool of bright blue sky-reflections beneath spare granite peaks.

We continued onward to Muir’s beloved Tuolomne Meadows, one of the locations I’ve been most looking forward to visiting. There the Tuolomne River travels gently through a broad carpet of lush, emerald green ringed by pines and bounded by stunning, craggy granite peaks (featuring the distinctive Cathedral Range and Lembert Dome). It felt as though we had crossed through some barrier and entered a mountain paradise. In his turn-of-the-century language, Muir described it as:

“…the widest, smoothest, most serenely spacious, and in every way the most delightful summer pleasure-park in all the High Sierra.”

This was not a solitary paradise, of course: we ate burgers in the parking lot of Tuolomne Meadows Grill alongside groups of long-term backpackers following the John Muir Trail or the Pacific Crest Trail through the vast swaths of the northern Yosemite Wilderness, a conservation area inaccessible by vehicle.

After visiting Soda Springs, a natural spring from which Muir and others acquired naturally carbonated water (although beautiful, it didn’t look too tasty to us) and walking on looping paths through the meadows, we tore ourselves away to make the long drive back to Wawona before dark—agreeing that if we could have an extra few days in Yosemite, we would have likely spent it at these and other sights off of the Tioga Road.

Read the next post in the series (Day 5)

Return to the On the Road to Capture John Muir’s Yosemite to view the other entries in this series.

“Hetch Hetchy Valley, far from being a plain, common, rock-bound meadow, as many who have not seen it seem to suppose, is a grand landscape garden, one of Nature’s rarest and most precious mountain temples…

Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people’s cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man.” —John Muir (Read more of Muir’s essay against the damming of Hetch Hetchy.)

Hetch Hetchy was the subject of a controversial conservation struggle within Congress in 1908-13, in which this valley north of the Yosemite Valley—to which it bears great resemblance—was ultimately dammed and turned into a reservoir providing water to the San Francisco Bay Area, to the great distress of John Muir. (More recently, the organization Restore Hetch Hetchy has been fighting to have the reservoir removed and the valley restored.)

In my journey to experience and record sites important to Muir, I had to visit Hetch Hetchy to contemplate what the place is today, what it was like before the valley floor was flooded, and to try to wrap my head around the fact that I have lived much of my life off of the pure Tuolomne River water channeled from this former valley (among other reservoirs) and into the taps of San Francisco.

The place was beautiful, placid, quiet, and a bit haunted. The parallels that Muir describes in his essay are visible: Hetch Hetchy’s granite domes are like the cousins of Yosemite’s, with identifiable equivalents to El Capitan and Half Dome. Due to the flooding of the valley floor, there is really only one way to explore Hetch Hetchy: a wildflower-starred trail that leads around one side of the valley to its two stunning waterfalls, and continues along the rim. We trekked through the hot weather to the Wapama Falls (its companion, Tueeulala Falls, was dried up when we visited) and basked in the cool spray flying off of its powerful, roaring flow.

Later that afternoon we returned to the Yosemite Valley to get a last look at Yosemite Falls, Bridalveil Fall, the peaceful Merced River, and the granite domes. Golden light bathed the landscape as we watched from Tunnel View, taking my final photographs alongside the throngs of tourists and trying to contemplate how this Yosemite trip seemed to have both sped by and occupied a huge amount of time, since we have been so headily immersed.

Read the next post in the series (Day 6)

Return to the On the Road to Capture John Muir’s Yosemite to view the other entries in this series.

The morning on our way traveling out of the Yosemite National Park and back to San Francisco, we took a quick visit to the famed Mariposa Grove: the largest grove of giant sequoias in Yosemite Park (although the Giant Forest we visited in Sequoia National Park was similarly impressive). There we saw the Grizzly Giant, the Faithful Couple, and other monumental ancient sequoias, including the California Tunnel Tree: carved out in the 19th century to create a “drive-through” tunnel in order to attract tourists, it is still alive and healing the massive wound to its trunk.

We were also treated to an up-close show of a Douglas squirrel, aka chickaree—one of Muir’s most beloved creatures, to which he dedicates a vivid chapter of The Mountains of California:

“Though only a few inches long, so intense is his fiery vigor and restlessness, he stirs every grove with wild life, and makes himself more important than even the huge bears that shuffle through the tangled underbrush beneath him. Every wind is fretted by his voice, almost every bole and branch feels the sting of his sharp feet. How much the growth of the trees is stimulated by this means it is not easy to learn, but his action in manipulating their seeds is more appreciable. Nature has made him master forester and committed most of her coniferous crops to his paws.” —John Muir

Check out the gallery below for photos of Mariposa Grove and a video clip of the Douglas squirrel chirping and collecting sequoia bark for its nest:

Over the next several months I will be crafting the photographs and videos I’ve captured into an immersive multimedia installation for the web bringing together these visuals with John Muir’s writings and my musical interpretations. (See this post for more information.) Stay tuned!

Return to the On the Road to Capture John Muir’s Yosemite to view the other entries in this series.