On Swollen Knees

I'll admit it.  I'm not a nature photographer.  I'm not a wildlife photographer.  It takes special skills. . . like wanting to get up at four a.m. and be out the door so you can catch the first light on the mountainside or the early morning deer as the graze in the meadows.  It isn't me.  It takes tripods and special filters to make a good outdoor photo.  I know how to do it. I just can't figure out why I would want to.  I see the fellows out there smoking pipes and wearing vests. . . O.K., I'm being a butt.  But I don't want to.  Yosemite is full of young girls wearing short-short shorts and bathing suit tops.  They have long, long legs and charm bracelets and parents.  Oops.  But the valley and the meadows are crawling with them, and I'm glad.  They are without iPhones and computers for the time, and they look happy and healthy.  Oh.  And they are European.  I swear, the Euros who come here are tougher than shit.  They make all the difficult things look easy.  And beautiful.  I think I may have said this before.

I, on the other hand, am a badass with a broken knee.  I tried hiking today and felt my right knee falling apart with every step.  Sometimes, everything would go black with pain.  Then something would shift and I could go on.  By the end of the day, though, my knee was stiff as a board and swollen tight so that I could not bend it.  I will have to see an orthopod when I go home, and I have already had the conversation in my head.

"Doc. . . it hurts when I walk up mountains."

"Well, maybe you shouldn't do that."

Then he'll do an MRI and say, "I've never seen so much arthritis in a knee before.  It is a wonder you can walk."

"Well. . . what can you do for it?"

"Not much, really.  If it gets so bad that you can't walk, we'll have to replace it."

Etc.

Not long afterwards, I become a heroin addict.

I don't know if I'll be able to do any hiking tomorrow, so I agreed to go to an 8,000 foot high lake with mom and the kids and their friends.  It will be good family fun of the mountain family kind.  They were all fun before kids, but there will be none of that now.  We can't smoke pot and drink and run around naked now.  Oh, no.  We'll watch the children and eat grapes and hummus and talk about the lack of decent education in Yosemite.  And I'll take my camera just in case there are any Europeans.

My walk today was downhill through a grove of giant sequoias, then further down the valley through country that did not interest me.  I like granite, but there was none here.  Only giant trees and marshy streams and small undergrowth.  But one thing of interest occurred.  I heard something and thought I knew what it was but stopped and listened as the giant wind bore down the valley through the trees.  It was an especially hard wind and suddenly the giant sequoias and redwoods were dropping cones and bark and things of all sorts so that I had to look out for some deathly projectile.  A giant redwood cone falling from that height can crack your skull really good.

The rest was all just pain and agony in my knee.  It was a long way back up the mountain.  I was alone and saw no one the entire morning.  I was living in my head, which is a place you probably would never want to be.  Not so much to tell.

After the walk, I drove up to Tuolumne and stopped at an overlook because I was falling asleep at the wheel.  At 8,000 feet, I ate my lunch and then put my seat back and fell asleep.  I could hear the tourists walking around and talking as I dozed in that sleep that isn't sleep, and then I woke and drove further up to the meadows for a hike.

Then it was a long drive back to the valley and a stop at the Yosemite Valley Lodge cafeteria.  I have a fondness for the place.  The food is consistently good for a place that probably serves several thousand people a day.  I had a bowl into which a pretty girl scooped mashed potatoes and then ladled a ton of beef stew on top.  It was what I needed.  It was good.

It is not as hot tonight and I will go to sleep on the couch in a little bit.  I have bought a peaty whiskey that has not slowed me down at all, and now it is time for water so that I won't wake up with such a dry mouth come morning.