It's Never Too Late To Pursue Your Dreams

As my friend and Times colleague Mia Navarro said recently, "It's never too late to pursue your dreams. Jose Saramago started writing in his 60's!"

Well, that's what I've been doing since I left my staff position at the New York Times - pursuing my dreams. Please try to imagine, if you will, how liberating it is not to have an hourlong commute over Coldwater Canyon every day! First you must picture stop-go bumper-to-bumper traffic winding through a narrow canyon. It's as if my mind has cracked open with ideas now that the grinding oppression of daily traffic is no longer in the sched. And to be emancipated from nine to five slavery for the first time in over 20 years is like being reborn.

A colleague wrote to tell me that it takes courage to move on into the unknown. She's right. But by the time I took this step, I wasn't afraid anymore. I already felt reborn. I was starting each day with a morning walk that lasted as long as I wanted it to, and the ideas were flowing. I pitched my first story to the Studio City Sun and within 10 minutes, the editor told me to go for it. No, it's never too late to pursue your dreams.

Kearsarge Pass, For Myself

Once upon an autumn time in the Eastern Sierra Nevada, when snow had covered the slopes and ice had formed on alpine lakes and Jan was still my love, I made a promise to myself on an old Indian trading route now known as the Kearsarge Pass trail that I would come back someday and hike to the 11,861 foot summit for views into Kings Canyon National Park. In my younger days, I'd been a passionate backpacker and spent many summer weeks exploring Yosemite, the Hoover Wilderness, and the Ansel Adams Wilderness. That day with Jan on the Kearsarge Pass trail was my first foray into those mountains in nine years.

My love affair with the High Sierra began when I was fourteen and my father took me on a camping trip to Tuolumne Meadows. We took a hike on the Glen Aulin trail, where I swam in a pool beneath a roaring waterfall and thought I'd found paradise. After Dad died, my high school friend Desideria encouraged me to join her in a backpacking class with a visionary teacher named Jack Wright. A whole world of Sierra backcountry adventures followed until an poorly-planned trip to the Humphreys Basin in 1994 did a number on my knees.

But the knees seemed fine on the day Jan and I hiked up the snow-covered Kearsarge trail to discover Gilbert Lake at 10,800 feet, frozen in its tree-lined bowl beneath the towering granite slabs of University Peak. And the knees were fine as we navigated the steep descent back to Onion Valley after some impromptu ice-skating on the lake - the wisdom of which I questioned until Jan assured me his winter experiences on Dutch canals conferred expertise in identifying thin ice. As we continued our descent, I felt a yearning for future wilderness adventures. My soul had been Sierra-starved for too long. I would return to this trail when the lakes shimmered green-blue under summer skies and climb to the top with the man I loved.

And then I slipped on the ice. I landed hard. At the same time, I had a dreadful, perhaps irrational, feeling that the mountain was somehow angry with me. Was I dreaming dreams with the wrong man? Deep down, I knew the answer to that question was yes, though I could not yet admit it to myself. Perhaps that's why I let out a scream of rabid frustration - a scream that no doubt intensified Jan's ever-present feelings of ambivalence.

Over a quiet dinner at the Still Life Cafe, a French culinary gem in Independence with only a Subway for competition, Jan was mostly silent until hesitantly stating he intended to sign up for the Sierra Club Wilderness Travel Course. "Great," I replied enthusiastically. "I'd love to do that with you!" I hadn't updated my backpacking skills since high school. And I wasn't going to let a fall in the ice thwart my awakened appetite for mountain adventures.

But Monsieur Jan had different plans. "I don't think you can handle it," he said with an expression that mixed guilt with arrogance. My eyes must have flashed murderously, for his vague blue eyes slithered down to the table as he continued hastily, "And anyway, you've already had wilderness adventure experience. This is something I need to do for myself."

For himself. There seemed to be a preponderance of things that he did for himself - like inviting me to share Christmas with him and his family in Amsterdam the year before then changing his mind for no good reason other than his pathological ambivalence then telling me once he was overseas that he wished I had come. I was getting weary of fighting for authentic partnership with the man who'd passionately initiated our romance, only to now hear his bizarre suggestion that wilderness experience was somehow a thing of the past for me, while his lay grandly in the future, spread out under fresh blue skies like Tuolumne Meadows, full of promise. A great big bubble burst as a dream deflated and a fast-churning knot of tears choked my throat with feelings of exclusion and invalidation. I knew I'd never climb any mountains with him. That he was not a true partner. That my dreams would never come true.

At least, not with him.

I never forgave him for that night at the Still Life Cafe, for the ego-wounding exclusion or for later suggesting that I should take the Wilderness Training Course and pitch someting about backcountry travel for the New York Times. "But you said I couldn't handle the class," I reminded him. He scoffed, "Oh, you could definitely do it!" Apparently he had no recollection of what he'd once said or any idea how it had impacted me! Relievedly, he is now at a safe distance in Ireland.

But Kearsarge Pass remains.

For Labor Day weekend, I booked a room at an old 1927 hotel, the Winnedumah, down the street from where Mary Austin once lived and wrote "The Land of Little Rain." I lucked out with Room 131, probably the best in the funky hotel, with its views of the Sierra Nevada and walls painted the purply-rose color of the Sierra at sunrise. Of course, I fortified myself for the next day's ten-mile hike with a delicious meal at the Still Life Cafe, where I met a couple in their 70's. The man had just come down from a solo backpacking journey in the Rae Lakes area while his wife of fifty years, who can't handle the climb anymore, did her own thing in town. They were obviously still in love. Any bitter memories I may have had of Jan's insensitivity that long ago night were swept away by the inspiring example of this aged, big-hearted, active couple with sparkling eyes.

I tackled the hairpin turns and dizzying drops on the road from the Owens Valley at 4,000 feet to the Onion Valley trailhead at 9,000 early the next morning. Though it ascends gently at first through the boulder-strewn desert plain with dramatic views of the Sierra wall to the south, Mt. Williamsom looming over the old Manzanar Japanese concentration camp site, and Mt. Whitney deceptively reduced in the further distance, it soon makes a sharp ascent thousands of feet up into the granite face leaving only space behind.

I kept my eyes on the road.

At the trailhead, I pulled my pack full of water, sport drink, munchies and weather layers onto my back, gripped my trekking poles, and took a deep breath with lungs that had been smoke-free for nearly four years. I told myself that if I didn't have the stamina to reach the top or if elevation sickness struck, it would be okay just to hang out at one of the lovely alpine lakes along the way.

But after numerous lengthy switchbacks and a 1,730 elevation gain halfway up the mountain - exactly at Gilbert Lake, to be precise, which I'd last seen frozen under a bleak November sky with the most ambivalent man on earth - I knew I was going to make it all the way. Here's my first view of the lake.


After another 1.3 miles and significant elevation gain via stony switchbacks and far fewer trees providing shade from the relentless beat of the sun, I stood well above Heart Lake for this shot.

And here's Big Pothole Lake, the last before the summit close by, from a slice of trail that traverses a mountain of scree. By this time I was nearly at 12,000 feet and feeling some dizziness, especially when I took a quick look ahead and saw the jagged edges of the Kearsarge Pinnacles slicing into the sky from behind the soft boulders at the pass, beyond which lay nothing but air.


Approaching the summit. Note how the trail traverses the mountain at a substantial slant. If it had been a cliff plummet, I'd likely have frozen with vertigo. What dizziness I did feel could not deter me. I saw specks at the pass that I knew to be humans, and I was determined to be among them.


At the summit. Wow! Kings Canyon National Park and Kearsarge Lakes lay behind me. About a dozen other hikers and backpackers shared their exhilaration, stories and laughter at the top. I hung out up there for over an hour. This shot was taken by a gal visiting from New Hampshire on her way to Mt. Whitney with her husband.


Here are some other shots from the summit with Bullfrog and Charlotte Lakes also visible.





This is a view of the Owens Valley on the descent.



Afternoon showers and some good-sized hail fell upon me by the time I reached Gilbert Lake on the way down. My feet were hurting by then, reminding me to get arch supports (mine are unusually high) for my Vasque boots. I hope that will solve the problem of 8th-mile-syndrome (feet killing me), because I intend to get a new tent and sleeping bag for some serious future backcountry travel. I'd like to see if I can actually do that on my own.

For myself.