Astrid was thankful and gracious for the adventure and challenge of every journey she took, but some days and places were more impactful than others. On this particular trip, she loved the car museum, appreciated the observatory, valued the experience to tour obscene, crumbling wealth, but when submerged in nature, on a trail, moving through releative wilderness, she was most content and happy. It was her decadent pleasure.
It was a slightly cool morning, with a grey-cloud dappled sky moving overhead when they pulled into Pinnacles National Park, into the tiny lot nestled at the foot of a mountain by a creek.
All woods lure a rambler onward …
Robert Louis Stevenson
Once on their way, the family moved through lush valleys, up trails leading to rocky, dry mountain tops opening to wide craggy valleys. The trail was pleasantly pocked with wild flowers, monumental boulders and babbling streams. A sweet subtle wildflower smell, cool and rainy, saturated the air on a constant murmuring wind and Astrid breathed deeply.
At one point, the trail lead to steps lined with hand rails chiseled into boulders by CCC workers (Civilian Conservation Corps work relief program from pre-WWII) so long ago. Mid way through the hike, a dusty trail climbed to high heights and panoramic mountain vistas where about a half a dozen hikers were watching for California condors.
Astrid spotted the giant majestic birds gliding in the cool breeze for a few fleeting seconds, but the ravens playing in the updrafts around the edges of the vast valley were more visible.
A little bit on Condors: At the top of a mountain, the family encountered a woman carrying a radio antenna of sorts, looking for condors wearing radio collars. The California Condor (Gymnogyps californianus) had never been on Astrid’s “Bird Radar”-she never saw one, and didn’t know their story. It is a very big bird-the biggest in North America (by a few inches in wing span), and came to the edge of extinction in the 1980s. They are vultures, and vultures eat dead things, a very useful thing in the wild. But the poor birds, though they fly beautifully, and are the crucial garbage collectors of nature, are not beautiful … at first glance.
Astrid tries to describe nature’s beauty with words, Bjorn tries to capture it in photos, symphonies try to emulate it in concertos, but none ever unlocks the numinous awe humans sometimes feel when confronted and engulfed in natural settings.
“It is not the physical objects that I am speaking of, but that indescribable something of which they become for a moment the messengers. And part of the bitterness which mixes with the sweetness of that message is due to the fact that it so seldom seems to be a message intended for us, but rather something we have overheard. By bitterness I mean pain, not resentment. We should hardly dare to ask that any notice be taken of ourselves. But we pine.”
– CS Lewis, The Weight of Glory, HarperSanFranciso, page 40.
The awe of nature overwhelms sometimes. It sings down from heaven, surrounds you in a downpour, infects you through breath, subtly assaults all senses at once, echoes in the stirring of wee animals or the flight of a feathered miracle. Its mysteries surround us as we step out into the new and unknown, small and sporadic, lapping the edges of our senses.
The positive effect of humans being in pleasant or moderately challenging natural settings is psychologically therapeutic. Biophilia is defined as literally, “love of life”, but more specifically, it describes the seemingly innate need to interact with the natural world around us. That interaction with “nature” has the power to benefit humans, physically and mentally.
After five or so miles on the trail, Bjorn used his camera less often. The pace quickened because the density of nature and the inability to take it all in overwhelmed. Astrid gave up capturing the penultimate shot or finding just the right words, and she just existed as any other mammal making its way through the unbuilt, natural world.
Along the way were signs Astrid had never noticed before, of symbols she didn’t recognize. Eventually, with Snorrie’s help, she figured it out: climbing opportunities. Pinnacles National Park is a small national park, but judging by the number of pictures Astrid took, it held much more interest and awe for her than any stop that week.
If it were a Middle Earth trek, Snorri would be up front, striding ahead, like Aragon. Astrid, stout and sturdy trodding along in the middle, was like Gimli. And coming up behind, introspective and observant, with a wide rimmed hat, would be Bjorn as Gandalf.
Snorrie/Aragon lead the fellowship as if he had been there before, by cryptic signs, over hidden paths, persevering, even when it looked like the trail ended, through to Moses Well and Thallus Cave, through dripping, running water and eventually up steps hewn out of the rocks, up past a raging water fall to a manmade lake. It was a very good hike.
As the family drove out of Pinnacles, Astrid was still aglow with awe from the overabundance of nature with which the hike showered her. They left the way they came in, among gentle sloping hills, bright green with Spring’s rain. They traveled north, then south again on CA 1 (there was a bridge/road out somewhere which complicated their navigation along the coast), with the Pacific on their right, they drove over Bixby Creek Bridge to get sunset pictures over the ocean.
The day ended at Big Sur Lodge, under giant trees and campfire-smoke scented air. It was dark, but cool when they checked into their little cabin room.
Not I 