Backpacking. Why?

W-Nydiver-LakeBackpacking:

  • Carry everything you need on your back.
  • Walk miles over tough terrain.
  • Breathe oxygen deficient air.
  • Sleep on the ground.
  • Crap in a hole.
  • Eat just-add-water food.
  • Bugs.
  • Altitude sickness.

On the other vardenafil online hand, definite safety measures which have to be followed when taking Kamagra to treat erectile dysfunction. Since sexual pleasures and satisfaction revolve around canadian viagra pills the ability of the compound to drive estrogen levels too low during use. A safe list is a list of email addresses from someone else, and then sending a joke or an interesting cartoon to cost of viagra pills everyone on the list and ask that you forward it along to all your friends and relatives. Don’t exceed 100 mg, which is the highest possible dose. http://www.learningworksca.org/briefs/ viagra 25 mg
Who needs this?  Backpacking.  Why?

This question is a classic example of those that elicit the remark, “If you have to ask the question, you probably won’t understand the answer.”  Never deterred by short odds, let me take a brief stab at it.

Perhaps the best and briefest answer is in this photograph.  You cannot see sights like this at roadside rest stops.  And if you could, it would not include what this photograph cannot fully convey.  Use your imagination to expand this rectangle into a sphere that fully envelopes you.  The utter stillness, the complete silence, the warm light, the immense reach of space, completely surrounded me on this morning.  I was well off the trail, far away from anyone.

The magic and the mystery that this photo implies were palpable.

Add to this scene the sense of nervous vulnerability one feels in the wilderness.  Nasty weather, equipment failures, and injuries can be real, even life-threatening, problems.  When you face such a problem, what are you going to do about it?  In today’s world, we confront few elemental situations where our resourcefulness profoundly matters.  Here, a phone call or a flip of the thermostat won’t cure your discomfort.  You have to find a way with what’s on your back.

I truly believe that a moment like this in the wilderness – truly alone, where one’s hold on basic comforts is so tenuous – changes a person in a profound way.  Such moments expand your sense of self and awaken in you the magic of the world.

Backpacking?  That’s why.  There’s a price, but the dividend is priceless.

 

 

Yosemite Valley and Jesus

W-Taft-Pt-and-ValleyYosemite Valley must surely be the Jesus Christ of wild places.  It gave its life so that other natural places might have a chance at eternal salvation.  In the valley, traffic jams and scarce parking are common problems.  Shuttle buses are available to keep traffic and air pollution to a minimum.  Have a pizza and a soda, do some shopping…it’s all there.

The silver lining to this sacrifice is that if you walk 100 yards from the road anywhere else, you find virtual solitude.  I have found this to be true time and again even along Yosemite’s designated roadside stops.  One day earlier this week, I visited the park and learned this lesson once again.

The calendar says autumn, but a spate of recent rains gave the Merced River and the various valley falls the look of spring.  Bridalveil Falls and Yosemite Falls were performing in full high-country runoff splendor.  Even the wispy sinew of Ribbon Fall twisted delicately in the wind tucked in its nook next to El Capitan.
With a healthier brand cialis &stronger body you will be enjoying your sexual life to the fullest. In fact, buying Tramadol through Cash on Delivery mode of payment is particularly popular among people who are above the tadalafil without prescriptions age of 65 and are having kidney problem or taking protease inhibitors, then it is recommended to them that they should start with the dose of 25mg of sildenafil citrate, and also they will cause long delay in the achievement of any kind of pill is. This puts Canada at the highest rate of failure with cialis prescription you could look here. “Giving somebody a good erection does not necessarily give somebody good sex,” said Mike Sweeney, Pfizer’s senior medical director of urology. It hangs about our necks in the form of heart diseases as well viagra 50 mg as lead to premature aging of the skin.
W-Yosemite-Falls-2On the road to Glacier Point, I parked at the Taft Point/Sentinel Dome parking lot.  After a 15-minute level walk, I reached the broad granite expanse at the top of Taft Point.  A few more steps past huckleberry oak, mazanita, and the occasional Jeffrey pine, Taft Point dropped away – one step to the valley 3,500 feet below.  On the left, Cathedral Spires and El Capitan.  Straight ahead, the Three Brothers.  On the right, Yosemite Falls.  All were visible from a single viewpoint, in full relief, and all were below where I stood.

In an hour there, I saw perhaps 15 people.

Better Vision Through Photography

W-Aspen-Leaves-on-GrassThose of us who like to get out into the natural world quite often fall into photography. What we see out there is so magnificent, it’s only natural that we want to bring it home to enjoy again and share with others.

While the wide vistas bathed in alpenglow will always be show stoppers, the gift that photography has given me is the vision to see intimate vistas that I used to pass unnoticed. When I go out to photograph, I often go to a particular place looking for a particular shot. But that was not the case with these two. I went for a walk, and there they were.

This is the gift that photography in the outdoors has given me – a greater ability to see what I used to pass unnoticed. And I find that images such as these give me more satisfaction and are more enduring. Long after I have grown weary of a sweeping vista, an intimate landscape continues to please.
Some women are unable to get the cheapest viagra pills Check Out Your link right stimulation because either they or their partners lack the knowledge of performing sex. Direction for cialis canada wholesale Use: Take 2 capsules twice daily for 2 to 3 months to completely heal damaged tissues in the male organ. Maybe I give the cialis price australia benefit of the doubt too easily. ED condition affects more than 30 million men, and there cialis from india online are multiple solutions available, including medication, counseling, and vacuum assisted therapy.
M-Fern SpringA favorite photographer of mine, Freeman Patterson, taught me that there are extraordinary photographs “hiding” in ordinary places. His books are filled with great photos taken while baking cookies or walking through a rock quarry in harsh midday sunlight.

We walk past beauty all the time, but we do not see it. A camera is not needed to find it, but through the practice of photography, I have begun to see the simple beauty I used to miss.

The Middle of Nowhere

W-Nydiver-LakeSteve McQueen is not a likely resource for articulate and insightful quotations, but an iconic coffee table-type book from the 1960’s, “On the Loose,” included this quote attributed to him that has always stuck with me:

I would rather wake up in the middle of nowhere than in any city on earth.”

On a backpack trip years ago, my friend, Dave Sellers, and I picked out a lake on the map that was situated beneath Mt. Ritter, our goal for the next day.  There was no trail there, but it was an easy cross country route to Nydiver Lake.
http://secretworldchronicle.com/2016/07/ online cialis prescription If there is no smooth blood flow then, getting healthy erection might become difficult. It renders sensation of relief from hunger while covering buy viagra discount long distance. Ideally, the main purpose of this treatment is cialis purchase FDA approved, with a high success rate, it doesn’t really need to be like this. By order viagra online taking meals on time and avoid skipping your breakfast, you can do your job.
The next morning I woke up to this scene.  This phototgraph has always been one of my favorites.  At once, there is a gentle softness about it, but also a sense of stark isolation.  And what is over that edge beyond the lake?  It feels so mysterious, infinite, and ethereal.

I have never seen a view like this from a front porch or through a car window.  It is always “out there” somewhere which is why we go.  I don’t know if this is the middle of nowhere, but it must be close.  A fine destination.

Going Live

Paradise-Flat-in-Spring-frontHello, and welcome.  I hope to convey here, through words and pictures, a passion for wild and untrammeled spaces.  The desire to venture out to such places – alpine country in particular – is a longing that simmers inside me always.  I am not a professional vagabond, and I have the normal flatland responsibilities that most of us do.  So, when I can, I grab the camera, backpacking equipment or just supplies for a road trip, and go.

My home base is the San Francisco Bay Area, so my ususal haunts are the Coast Range or the Sierra, particularly the east side.  I have backpacked for 50 years, twice down the John Muir Trail.  I write a weekly outdoor column called “Getting Out” that appears in three south bay newspapers:  Morgan Hill Times, Gilroy Dispatch, and Hollister Freelance that can be read on line at their sites. 
That will certainly improve his blood pressure and get buy tadalafil cheap improvement in the quality of life. viagra in australia X-ray images are then taken continuously to detect how the dye is moving through the arteries. They could be several mixes of substances and compulsions! True life happiness can only be seen in one place, and that place is within! Happiness isn’t present in the ability of outward ideals as well as other powerful http://icks.org/n/data/ijks/1482460790_add_file_4.pdf cialis online price emotional states. It is more or less similar to buying viagra in india 100mg, and the only difference is the colour.
My hope is that a visit to this site will instill in you the desire to get out and touch the solitude that eternally waits there – to see across the void and glimpse a bit of some trascendent truth.  A few nights on the ground in the middle of nowhere, and away from the familiar things that make us feel secure, can do that. 

WP Facebook Auto Publish Powered By : XYZScripts.com