Yosemite Murmurs: Heavy Waters

It was a day for heavy trails of jet streams, they continued to criss cross the skies above the Yosemite Valley and from my vantage point they made quite the spectacle. I have observed many jet streams in my life, however none quite so perpendicular as this one. It was as though the pilots were flying messages in the sky just for the Guests of Yosemite National Park. Now I know that is not really so, but it is not everyday we are given this extensive of an ariel display. It looked as though they had made a great big pizza pie in the sky, and designed it for service of four. Man made. It was beautiful. A member of the EPA might wonder what effect the vapor trail gas after dispersal upon the natural environment of the area.

The Dogwood are out now and blooming more and more everyday. In the winter it was the white of the snow and now it is spring and we have amazing white blooms floating about in mid air from the symmetrical branches of the Dogwood Trees. The flowers grace the branches before the the leaves are fully developed. So when you look about the forest you see these peaceful dove like air born blossums lighting up the foreground against the background of dark green everygreen boughs. Perhpas it is the delicate white flowers with their pale greeness and centers of forming in yellow that are the fore runners of the gardens of Yosemite that create a natural fairyland.

Inside the Winter Club Room the shadows dance and play their mystical tunes against the dark burnished woods of chairs, tables and Hardwood floors...singing such lyrical tunes that one can hear the sweet rhapsody of song moving through the changing morning shadows as they touch each silent object making it take on a life of its own.

This chair is toe dancing in the light, posed perfectly with its burden of shadow and waiting for the next change of notes to move and tilt and take on another movement of form. The chair contains harmony without question and gives its answer by the offering of its stately presence.

This enormous mushroom popped up and sat for a few days in the earth shaded in part by three guardian ferns. As you can see it has a wee bit of earth on its crown where it exerted some tremendous effort to push its life forth out into the open air and streaming light. So far I have seen one mushroom growing off a dead wood stump and a small purple fungal type of mushroom, now since deceased. This particular mushroom also has sucuumbed from some unknown means. I suspect either a child or a hungry adult, or perhaps one of our meandering foraging mule tail deer.

Off in the distance Half Dome sits, regally surveying the scenery below. Meanwhile in the foreground we have the Yosemite National Park SARS team preparing the helicopter for a rescue off of Turtle Rock. Many people gathered in this effort. This is the second such rescue I have wittnessed in the last couple of weeks. The first one was a helicopter rescue off of the Royal Arches where a climber injured a leg, this one is the second and yesterday we had the third. Sadly I write that a young San Diego man fell 600 feet while climbing up near the Royal Arches. For the young climber, it was his last climb, as his rope frayed, he slipped and fell, passing on in sudden impact. The Valley sadly grieves the loss of vital life.

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It is a place that demands respect by the very nature of its beauty and existence. Danger without forethought abounds and wisdom is the call of the wild everywhere we turn. And when the sounds of the thunder subsides, and the white snow melts, and the afternoon winds have sung their messages through the pines and cedars and furs and the water has spoken from its secret places as it courses over stones and granite rocks writing melodic notes for our ears to hear...we close our eyes for but one moment as though times before never were and our future drifts in eternity.