Once again, my inner child has been awakened by the power of nature
and the exuberance of the human spirit.
I left Kava Island on Monday at 8:30 am, drove south to Bridgeport,
and camped by the Virginia Lakes at 10,000 ft. On Wednesday morning,
I met Tom and Liev in Yosemite Valley on their honeymoon. I had
skipped their wedding in North Carolina to be a pirate. Now I gave them
a pair of CamelBaks and led them up the Yosemite Falls trail for
their first experience of the valley (without trams and busses). We
stopped for lunch 3 1/2 miles up the face. There was a huge
explosion. Since Tom is from North Carolina, he instinctively looked
around to see who had bagged a ‘coon. I looked up and saw an orange
cloud raining down from 1,000 feet above. Orange?
We ran for our lives, leaving our packs on the trail.
I watched a basketball-size rock strike the trail where we has been
sitting and bounce another thousand feet to the valley floor. It took
about two minutes for the vertical cloud to disappear. We called out
to a nearby group of hikers, who were in the trees on the other side
of the explosion. Then we all retrieved our gear and headed down the
trail.
A search and rescue team passed us, climbing the trail with
astonishing speed. A helicopter hovered. At the trailhead, a ranger
was waiting to write down our stories. He said that a Sequoia had
toppled off the cliff and fallen until it smashed against a jagged
piece of granite and sent part of the mountain down. The orange cloud
was the vaporized Sequoia.
Not a bad way to go–getting bonked on the head by a Sequoia going south at 180 mph.
After the big bang, we had about 5 sec to clear out of there, of which maybe one second was taken up organizing our thoughts. The color orange was puzzling. And I’ve done a lot of hiking, but I’ve never been chased out of the woods by a tree before.
So that’s one life down, eight to go.
No, then there was that psychologist in college who shouted “I’m going to kill you!” as he banged my head against the floor. Seven.
Oh, and when they burned down the Congress of Micronesia building after I wrote that speech about independence for Sen. Domnick. Six.
And I suppose when I slid the motorcycle sideways to avoid the car in Florida, that would be five.
Hey, I’m a pirate, I’m more than halfway to the finish line and I still have five lives. That’s pretty good!
***
It’s Thursday night. I sleep 16 hours and wake up to the memory of
the crackling howl of the waffle in flames and the swirling orange
fire that almost scorched our faces, as if the sculpture were the
nostrils of a dragon rising from the lake beneath us and we were
witnesses to its rage. I had played a small part in a great story
about love and creativity and hope and fear and possibilities.
Exhausted, I feel stronger.
Thank you, mates. We’ll sail that dusty sea again.
Douglas Gillies
