A Girl...

On Fall Holiday

This weekend Dylan and I are whisking ourselves away to Yosemite National Park for a short anniversary vacation. We will go in search of leaves changing colors, we will climb up hills, using found walking sticks for balance, we will see impossible rock formations and picturesque mountain valleys carpeted with grass high enough to lay down in and not be seen. We will feel the tiny twinge of guilt and the mighty throb of rebelliousness when we give raisins and peanuts to a variety of furry little woodland creatures. We will go to a ranger talk around a campfire and learn about the trees and the stars while snuggling into the coats and hats and knit mittens we haven't worn since January. We may even blow twenty bucks to attend an outdoor presentation of "The Tramp and The Roughrider," a dramatic rendering of the first meeting between John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt, performed with all the earnestness of the best community theater company. We will eat somewhere that has a salad course, a main course, and a dessert course. I will think of Yellowstone, before, after, and during the fires of 1988, and he will remember his last trip to Yosemite, when he pulled off the side of a canyon road to watch Independence Day fireworks explode over a flat black lake and then woke up early the next day to go skiing. We will envy the well-shaped calves of sixty-year-old men we meet on the hiking trails. We will put fifty cents into a machine that will stamp a penny with a tiny embossed Half Dome. We will spend the night somewhere that looked much better on the internet than it does in real life. I will tell the story of how Yosemite got its name through a misunderstanding about grizzly bears and cannibal Indians. Our camera will be in our hands more than in our packs. We will not regret the practical work we didn't get done. We will hold hands everywhere we go and we will make sure someone takes our picture in front of a waterfall.