Back from Vacation

I'm home. Finally. A good trip. I've come home with some great memories as well as a new sense of who my father is at this time in his life. Traveling and staying with him for the week was revealing in many ways.

I grew up camping and fishing in the eastern Sierras. We would drive up from Southern California along 395 and camp along Lee Vining Creek in trailer or tent. I have no memories of my mother up there. At first, I believe, because these were strictly fishing trips, she wasn't interested and secondly, after her first heart attack, the altitude was too much for her. My uncle often came and later I brought my own children. Little has changed in the region. The newest addition to the whole area is the "new" Mono Basin Visitor Center which was built at least ten to fifteen years ago. And so, over the years, the area remains just like I remember it. I end up picking up a lot of trash and broken glass and tangled fishing line so that it stays that way.

I have always come up into the region with my father and we always did the same things. We fished the same lakes, camped in the same campgrounds, saw the same sights. The pattern of the day was to get up early, fish, come back to the campground, have afternoon coffee and build a campfire around four. I often fished the creeks around any of our campgrounds, adding to our count of fish. We would bring home a dozen or so trout for a big fish fry on our return. When I finally went to the Sierras on my own four years ago, I discovered how little of this area I had actually seen.

The Eastern Sierras are the backgate into Yosemite National Park. As I set my father's way of camping and fishing the Sierra's aside, I took up a trail book and headed out into the mountains and found an incredible high mountain world of glacier ponds and deserted mines. Timberline wind and majestic spires. It's always been there and I fell in love anew with something more than the happy memories of my childhood.

And so, on this trip, we combined the two: We fished what we could eat in a day and put the trout on ice as we pulled out the packed lunches and headed out. I got to share my newfound sense of place with my dad – share the exploration of this land that I knew so well and yet had barely scratched the surface of. And he loved it. And he knows that he probably won't get back into some of those areas ever again. Whether he likes it or not, he is seventy one and the altitude was affecting him.

A good trip.

I'll post some pics in a couple of days