Walking with Ghosts

Found a connection.  I don't know whose, but I'll write while I have it.

On the recommendation of my friend, I took a different route than I normally to to get from S.F. to Yosemite.  Got lost and went the wrong direction.  The highway just started petering out.  I went through a small town and the highway turned into a road with my last name which isn't a common one.  Hmm.  Then a hairpin turn and the road narrowed so that two cars would have to be careful passing one another.  Then it turned again and was dirt.  Nope, this was definitely the wrong place.  I turned around and drove back to town.  It was Mexican by and large with a gas station/mini-mart/McDonalds.  I had gone west instead of east, I found.  An hour out of my way.

Got to Yosemite later that afternoon and went to my friends' place.  I haven't been here since babyland began.  One and a half years and two and a half months.  Oh. . . it is a different world.  And so I joined in with my new family.

To make things easier for everyone, they had set up the camper van for me, a Volkswagon pop-top.  I've slept in it before and it is plenty comfortable.  Except this year with the new carport, the van sits at about a fifteen degree angle so that during the night the mattress moves downhill every time I turn.  Halfway through the night, I have to get up and pull it back to the top.  But the nights turn cool and I have to sleep under a down comforter.  And I sleep long and later than I do at home.

I've been climbing.  Worried, waiting to see how I'd do, waiting to see if I am decrepit now.  I am not.  I climb as I did before, or almost, and am not sore beyond reason the next day.  So all is well on that account.

But as I said, I'm dealing with demons and ghosts.  Climbing alone, there is only the pain and the thinking.  I'll tell you something I've not before.  I was married once.  We had a wonderfully long honeymoon that started in San Francisco and came to Yosemite.  We climbed for a week.  As it turns out, and completely unplanned, I came out the same day as we did so long ago.  And as I climb, I am taken back to that time.  And too, more recently, to the woman from my last relationship who also came out and climbed these trails some years ago.  Now alone, I think of that and think of me--and those are the ghosts.  The demons are inside my head which I must walk and walk and walk to exorcise.  And maybe that will happen, too, or at least to a degree.  I walk and walk in the dry heat on ancient granite, tough pines and lupine surrounding me, up, up, dizzyingly.

And at night, I am back at the kid ranch, cooking and playing until nine when everyone turns in.  And then in the early night, I might read a bit or try to write, though the writing is not so good here among the basinets and brightly colored toys surrounding me.

I try this morning but my concentration wanders with "Rock-a-Bye Baby" playing from the swing chair speakers.  I will try again.  Later.  We'll see.