I was trying to remember the first time I went to Yosemite, and that had to have been in 1964 when I was six years old.
I found a red bridge across the river below Mirror Lake, and this I walked across, but because I was such a little guy, on my return trip, I could not see the bridge from the trail! I got “lost.”
Up and down the trail I went. I even yelled to my step-dad from across the lake, but the damn fool could not find the bridge from that side either. He was mad at me!
I was so confused and frightened, I used my Baby Super Powers to get rescued by a kind family on the road about a half-mile down. (I visibly and vocally wept by the side of the road, is what that means. It took three seconds to land my rescue family.) Small enough to stand on car seats, I was as we rode back to where my own family was.
We let kids stand on car seats in those days, but then, we drove about seven miles an hour too.
That was my first trip to Yosemite.
Years later, I figured out how I could not see that bridge from the trail from my extremely low angle of view, but at time at that age, my reality was half-in and half-out of this world; honestly, it was. It was perfectly plausible that the bridge had simply disappeared. That seemed realistic to me. It was perfectly plausible that I had been transported across the river by elves, and they put a memory of that bridge in my mind. I considered these things at that time. I remember trying to be “logical” about it all. I knew my fearful emotions were interfering with pure observation. Where had that bridge gone? I felt a bit hysterical. My decision to walk down to the road was calculated. The bridge was gone. I HAD to improvise. I did.
Yet, I was never really in danger. Yosemite is a safe place. The Spirits were fucking with me. They do that with the ones they love. I had been welcomed. I was to be fucked with again and again by the Yosemite Spirits. They do that. You have been warned.
Here is a photo I call, “Where The Tripod Marks Are.” It is such an overworked composition that for sixty-two years I never used it, but here it is on a dull day in flat light in a place where dull days ad flat light are still out of this world grand.
I love Yosemite.