I left my Heart in San Francisco, but my Soul is in the Sierra Nevada

An ode to my favorite mountain range, the Range of Light!

Kennedy Meadows South to Crabtree Meadows (~65+ Miles)

In which I finally develop my trail legs as I climb higher and begin to feel back at home in my familiar High Sierra surroundings.

Sunday June 13th, 2021

For 10 years now I’ve made this range my home. And that’s just what it feels like, walking back home into these montane meadows, a stark contrast to the desert with new colors of green juxtaposed with the blue sky, birds chirping and flitting about.

If you’d ask me why of any place on God’s green earth would I make California my home, well right now it’s a bulletproof inspiring group of friends in the Bay Area. Also my amazing and inspiring Aunt Myrna, who has taught me everything I know about water colors and my perspective on Bay Area hiking and California natural beauty. But I would always say the Sierra Nevada is where I leave my soul.

Every step and upwards skip through here has me literally jump for joy! I love summertime in these mountains.

At night I lay my weary head on a bed of dried pine needles, supported by sand and decomposed granite. I have traded my neighbors for bushy tailed marmots scampering over cracked granite boulders and I awake to the chorus of song birds chirping across from giant pines and cedars (although my morning birds that sing to my meditation routine in Berkeley hold their own).

It’s been over 8 days in now without a shower and I’m starting to smell like a petting zoo. I think I’m finally getting used to this thru-hiking thing, my daily rhythms and routines starting to normalize.

I made a choice to stop and jump into Chicken Spring Lake, the first lake of the high Sierra, and made some awesome new friends who I look forward to hiking with. Hopefully more watercolors and lakeshore giggles to come!