We’ve only been living out here for about, oh, 14 years or so, and we’ve never been to Yosemite. No sense rushing into things, is there? So we finally packed up the kids and the camp box and went to check it out.
WOW.
It’s so hard to put up a photo of it, since no picture can convey the sense of depth and suspended breath you have when you stand in a site like this. Part of you stands on the bridge or trail or precipice looking out, and another part of you just soars out into that incredible space. There was something else about it – when you are in a building or site where thousands of people pass, such as a busy terminal or city corner, it seems you can always feel the movement and footprint of those people, even when it’s a quiet time of day. In Yosemite, I was struck by the knowledge of its thousands upon thousands of visitors, contrasted with the vast untouched feeling it gives. There is a power to the landscape that absorbs all our noise.
Here is where we stayed, in Curry Village:
We traveled with some great friends, and stayed in two of these cabins that had a shared wall. The kids quickly came up with a system of knocks on the wall – three knocks meant “come over for breakfast,” four meant “come over for a story,” and so on. This was no morse code; when they decided that ten knocks would mean “can I come to your cabin?” I started to wonder if they might benefit from some pauses or syncopation.
The cabins were terrific – we’d gone with a camping mentality, so the fact that they had electricity, heaters and beds with sheets made us feel like we were really living large. Fortunately, the sheets slipped off easily to reveal rubbery mattresses and the heater was like a temperamental dragon, so we had a hint of roughing it. Hotwheels called it the ‘cabinet’ the whole time we were there, and once we’d unloaded every single item from the car (I knew we had to remove all food because of the bears, but I never knew this extended to car seats and wipes and every last movable item in the vehicle), it really did seem like a bit of a cabinet. Each meal we had in there was a choreographed event.
We hiked to waterfalls and biked down long dramatic lanes – it was like living in a storybook for four days.
Of course, no road trip is complete without a little knitting. Here’s Glacier Point meets needle point:
It’s incredible to believe that this wonder has been just four and a half hours away from us all these years, but I’m looking forward to making up for lost time!