Life

Recently on the share your photos thread Bluevictim identified one of the pictures of a cliff I had taken in Yosemite as the one roughly below Glacier point in a friendly and helpful way just in case I might not remember where I took the picture. The feeling I had was exactly like the one you experience when someone you're talking with at a party politely introduces you to someone without realizing that the person they're introducing is one of your old and dear friends. There's something so charming and delightful about being re-introduced to someone you know already. It often makes you reflect on that friendship and reminds you of old memories. In this case Blue fortuitously re-introduced me to a spot on this earth I think of as an old friend, and I realized that I had a whole cluster of memories around this cliff, some of which might be worth sharing in this entry.

Every year since I was four years old my family has spent a week in Yosemite valley. We rent one of the little one room cabins near the back of Camp Curry directly under the shadow of the cliff in question. I have memories stretching back to childhood of lying on a large flat boulder next to the cabin and gazing up at this cliff. From that perspective it looks something like this:



After hours of gazing up at the granite, I've come to understand that there is something profoundly appropriate in calling it the face of a cliff. The shape of every cleft and crevice and variation in color has become as familiar to me as the planes and wrinkles of a human face. In the spring there is a small waterfall that comes down about where the snow melt is falling in the picture above to feed the creek that runs near the cabins we stay in. You wake to the sound of the water pouring down the cliff face and open your door to the morning sun clothing that enormous granite face in light. At night the sky is filled with an impossible number of stars (quite a remarkable thing in itself for a girl coming from the LA area) and the cliff is an inky black outline crowned at the top with the best lights heaven affords. If you take about a fifteen minute scramble uphill through the woods you can come to a broad ledge at the base of it and sit with your back against the granite warmed by the sun, looking out just over the tree line at the valley below, and looking straight up at the imposing vertical wall that seems to stretch forever. It is impossible to describe how huge this cliff is, or how beautifully it makes you aware of your own smallness.

Of course, this cliff did think about killing me once. One summer morning (I think about ten years ago...maybe '99?) my family was up by the cabins near the base of the cliff enjoying a peaceful and idyllic morning, when we suddenly heard a tremendous crack like a thunderclap, or a sonic boom. We looked up to see that a large swath of the cliff face was covered by what looked like an enormous low lying cloud, and there was a thundering sound that shook your insides like a choppy earthquake. Then we realized that there were boulders, some that looked at least the size of a large SUV, sliding at great speed down one of the large shelfs on the cliff face. The rocks probably stopped falling in less than a minute, though it seemed much, much longer as such dramatic moments tend to do. The dust cloud lingered for some time before it slowly dispersed in the gentle breeze. The rock slide was among the most amazing things I've ever witnessed, and humblingly terrifying at the same time. I also lucked out because my dad and I had been thinking of going up to the base of the cliff that morning to a spot where, we later discovered, we almost certainly would have met a dramatic end.

A few years later the same cliff was the setting for a happier tale of romance. While walking about the forest area behind the cabins, I heard the unmistakable sound of a drum coming from somewhere deep in the trees and beating out a steady tattoo. Despite having watched enough B films from the '50's to realize that no good often comes to those who follow the sound of drums in a forest, my curiosity got the better of me and I followed the sound of the drum beats up to the base of the cliff. There, on the aforementioned flat ledge at the cliff base, was an attractive young man enjoying the mid afternoon sun as he beat (as I was soon to discover) a small drum from Kenya. The fellow in question was not from Kenya, but was a gentleman from Georgia who subsequently took me out for a couple of great dates to a hidden waterfall and on a night time picnic in the middle of a meadow where we kissed beneath the stars.

My most recent memory in connection with this cliff is from a night this last summer when the moon was unbelievably full and illuminated the entire valley with the unreal luminance of moonlight. The view was a part of the cliff a little to the east (at least I think it's east unless I'm remembering the direction wrong) where glacier point is:



Picture that whole cliff in a silvery light with the biggest full moon you've ever seen in your life in the space to the left. I was out walking and enjoying the moonlight when I came across a group of Japanese music students who had formed a circle around a stump in a clear area. One of them stood on a the tree stump playing his violin in the moonlight for all he was worth. Among them was the exquisite Massenet meditation from Thaise (youtube link for those who don't know the piece or just want to hear it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXuzLRVi6qk ). The whole experience was one of life's interludes of pure magic. Now whenever I hear that piece I can see in my mind's eye the silhouette of a young violinist against the bright orb of the moon and the outline of that part of the cliff in poignant relief.

So it is that this one imposing monument of nature has alternately played backdrop to scenes of quiet contemplation, of terrifying drama, of summer romance, and of inspired artistic expression. Just as all of us invest places in our lives with the emotions we experienced in their shadows, I've stored away a range of emotions in the cracks and clefts of this enormous cliff. Its face has played witness to a handful of significant experiences. These experiences have in turn given me memories which I can use, not only to relive particular moments, but as points from which to access and recapture some of the expansive grandeur and beauty of that granite in whose shadow the memories were formed: a beauty of far more permanence than any of us can ever hope to attain to.