At 14, I am told I was pretty mature. That is not to say, however, that I was not just as oblivious as the next adolescent, I just hid it better. One thing that was lost in the fog of those years was the John Muir Trail. Oh I had heard a lot about it: I even started out to do the southern 15 miles or so of it, in late August of 1964. An early, freak snowstorm cut that trip short at Trail Camp. At that point, of course, Whitney was the immediate focus, and my dominating image of that trip, and the Sierra for years to come. I could see Whitney from the trail, from the road back to Lone Pine, and in my mind all the way back home to Connecticut, and up to the recent past.
The leader of that aborted trip, Bernard Clayton, was later a food writer of some renown, and at the time was my introduction to John Muir. All through the three days we spent together, he regaled the group with his intimate knowledge of Muir's writings, and seemed to have a Muir quote for just about any occasion, including such moments as our observation of a water ouzle at Trailside Meadow. By the end of even this short trip, I was fascinated with two things about the Sierra: Mt Whitney and John Muir.
Three years later, I summitted Whitney with my parents. I am sure I read all the trail signs, including the enamel plate at the top, but I have no recollection of any realization that I had just done the first two miles of the JMT.
It wasn't till years later that this trail, named after my chosen hero, emerged from the fog. In 1970 or so, I went along on trip with some college friends, as it turned out, to Little Yosemite Valley. It was not until we got to Happy Isles, and I read the TH sign there that I put two and two hundred together. Epiphany! So that's where it goes! The storied John Muir Trail runs from right here to my other favorite place in the world, Mt Whitney.
The JMT immediately became my Road Not Taken, as Robert Frost warned:
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.
Well, indeed, way did lead on to way, and I never did get back to the JMT, until two years ago, when I finally realized that if I didn't do something soon, I would never come back, and lest
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
I would have to act.
Except that I took the road more travelled by, and am not now telling this with a sigh, but with a whoop: I am going back, and starting the JMT, SoBo from Happy Isles, a week from today.
