Yosemite National Park

My daughter, Emily, and took I a trip to visit my mom who lives in Oakhurst, California which sits just outside Yosemite National Park. We decided to visit the park and as we stood waiting for the shuttle to take us to the Ahwahnee Hotel for lunch, I thought I had better grab a photo of where we stood...proof of our being there. My mom has cancer so our time in Yosemite this day would be short.

I've spent so much time in Yosemite Valley that every turn of the road, every shuttle stop, every campground, every granite outcropping, and every patch of dappled sunlight is filled with comfort, connection, warmth and remembrance. I'm sure there are places I have not stood in Yosemite, but I've visited this sacred place throughout my lifetime. There are photos of 5-year old me sitting on wooden steps that lead the way into a canvas tent set at Camp Curry. 

Our family returned every summer to Yosemite Valley. As we became "of age," probably around 14-years old, we were allowed to venture out on our own as long we took a friend and checked in with our parents. In those warm summer days we explored trails, rode bikes, visited park stores to choose that special souvenir, met boys, and jumped off Stoneman Bridge into the freezing water of the Merced River. 

Years later I found myself working in Yosemite at Yosemite Lodge where I performed maid duties and cleaned small cabins and other hotel rooms...it was 1969...the summer of love. I'm afraid I can't put in words the feeling of the place that summer, except to say I met my first love there. The days were warm, the nights were cool, the smell of pine always in the air, Steller Jays always noisy, first kisses on the bridge at Lower Yosemite Falls...mist filling the air, standing in a grassy meadow as the Fire Fall was pushed from above off the cliff at Glacier Point, and laying in tall grass in Tuolumne Meadows eating licorice are just a few of my memories from that summer. 

We all know summer comes to an end and most of us went home and back to our regular lives, but even now as I visit Yosemite National Park a melancholy feeling washes over me as I walk across Stoneman Bridge or stand at the edge of the meadow where I watched the Fire Fall for so many summers. A piece of my heart resides there still.

Yosemite Falls