I’ve been cloud-watching for a couple of hours now. Cloud layers overtaking one another — cumulous-dotted blue sky to the east; ominous gray to the south. Muriel Lake lies before me, and Muriel Peak behind it. Then the Goethe Lakes, Goethe Peak and what’s left of the Goethe Glacier. This is the Glacial Divide, beyond which lies Evolution Valley, where I hiked as a 20-something on the John Muir Trail — a blissful 26 days beyond the range of communication, during which we carried everything we needed on our backs, along with a few things we didn’t really need but wanted anyway. No one had cellphones back then.
It is good to escape — whether into the high country, the deep woods or the desert — for a month or even an hour. Get off social media. Shut it all out. Spending a week in the High Sierra with the marmots and the pikas was one of the smarter things I have done this year, and it felt really good to be out of reach of the news cycle. It is tough out there.
Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. But when you come back down, plug back in. Because as tough as the news is, staying informed remains essential to being an engaged citizen. Escape however often you need to — weekly or daily or 10 minutes out of every hour to just breathe some fresh air and be still. But do not lose sight of the fact that rights are being stripped away from people in our communities. And plants, animals and entire ecosystems are under attack.
If no one stands up to defend these people and places, we will have acquiesced to the forces that wish to destroy them for profit — cut it all down and dig it all up and frack it into oblivion. These are the same forces that are trying to whitewash our communities and our history, to erase the contributions of the immigrants and Indigenous people who worked to build this country and make it what it is. If something you love is under attack, you do not bury your head in the sand. In whatever way you can, using whatever skills you have, join the chorus of people saying No, we won’t let this happen. This is wrong. This is not who we are.
Each afternoon in the mountains, clouds gathered over saw-toothed divides. Some days the storms moved through quickly and the sun re-emerged, and we stood in its slanted golden light, wondering what we had done to have the good fortune to be in this particular place at this particular time. Here’s to escaping. And here’s to fighting like hell for the places we love.
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