After the hike ...

I've been back a month now since I walked 78 miles on the John Muir Trail. Photographer Mark Crosse and I walked more than 15 miles on the last day. We had this magnificent glow when we reached the four-wheel drive for the ride home.

I have to write about the glow -- the one you get coming out of a long-term backpack through a place as wild and remote as the Sierra backcountry in Kings Canyon National Park.

It is simultaneously the best and worst thing about extended backpacking. I crave it. Then, when it departs, I swear it off. Ever have a real bad hangover? You hurt so bad that you're sure you can feel embalming fluid scavenging every vitamin in your blood, and you would shoot the sun for being so bright. That's how it feels.

Sadly, we were unconcious about the glow when we returned, and that may be the thing I regret most now. This happens every time I spend more than three days in the wilderness. With all the planning and work and nature, I just forget about the glow afterward. I get so bummed about losing the glow that I'm not sure I even want to get it back.

When we got off the trail, we ate greasy cheeseburgers, drank beer and drove the two hours back to Fresno. Then, strangely, I found myself staring into a steaming shower. It was like I just woke up. I must have stood there five minutes before it sunk in: This was not a dream. I actually did this backpack. And, now, for the first time in eight days, I would actually get clean in a hot shower. I had been washing off in freezing creeks and lakes for days.

I went to bed after talking an hour with my wife, who marveled at my beard and my skinny body. I dropped eight pounds. I am 5-11, 155 normally. At 147 with a shaggy graying beard, I had a real wino chic thing going.

I didn't sleep that night. My lungs burned from being in the polluted San Joaquin Valley. I had been breathing above 10,000 feet for more than a week. But my sleep problem was more than that. I was still stoked and glowing from the backpack. And I did not understand, nor did I expect it.

I drove my wife to work the next morning and drank a sweet latte while staring at the sky. The glow was really going on. I heard birds. I noticed insects. I looked at trees, shrubs and other vegetation. I was smiling at strangers. I was not the same person as I was before I trekked those 78 miles.

Apparently, I cannot spend that much time outside in an unspoiled place like northern Kings Canyon National Park without acquiring this glow.

Unfortunately, this flatland madness set in again several days later. I was at work when I realized what was going on. My editor was asking about my story. The phone was ringing. Someone stood behind me with a written message. The artificial lighting surrounded me. I was doing three or four things at once. I wasn't on a natural high anymore. The glow was gone. And I was living again in this place filled with barking dogs, worried bosses, screaming children, angry drivers, fibbing politicians ... and on, and on. Frankly, I was depressed.

Now I definitely don't want to spend another eight days in the wilderness. That's too long for me. I just got too much of the glow.

Nope. Not going back for a long backpack any more. Not going to do it. Wouldn't be prudent. Wouldn't be worth it. Not a chance.

OK, OK, I am so lying. I'm weak. I'm a hopeless junkie. I'm looking at my maps and wondering where I can go next summer. I'll go five days. Maybe six, or eight or something.

Maybe I'll take the maps with me in December when I go snowshoeing. I can get out there and consider my next trip on a cold afternoon in the Sierra. I can fall asleep on a rock next to a frozen lake, as I did last winter, and be in the outdoors while I plan to get outdoors.

Gotta go. Hands are shaking now. Withdrawals. Heaven help me.

I gotta know ...

The company manual probably doesn't cover this. It's the perfect public relations storm. The utility bill arrives. It's $200, almost triple what it was last month. The mercury rises to 112. And the power goes out for three hours between 3 and 6 p.m.

I'm sorry, PG&E, but I would not want to be the guy who explains what happened to me on Saturday.

There was the usual stuff -- dampened cotton clothing, desperate calls to the utility god. I have tossed and turned all night thinking about the right literary approach to describe what happened. Here goes: It was like eating spaghetti sauce with cankers in your mouth. Think blood and micro-tears in your gums when you chew your food.

Another bead of perspiration runs down my torso this morning as I write this. But the air conditioning and power obviously are back on. On the internet, the National Weather Service says it was 92 degrees at 5 a.m. Rockets and shells are battering Lebanon. A judge tells a woman, hey, it's too late to sue over her frozen embryos.

I don't know the embryo woman and what's the difference if it's 92 degrees or 90 degrees? But here's my admission for the morning. I am totally lost without electricity and the internet.

Both will be gone while I'm backpacking the John Muir Trail. Now you've got me. That's my Achilles heel. That's the modern convenience I will miss most when I'm gone a week on the JMT. I can load up on sugar and salt, no problem. But what am I going to do about my information addiction?

It's a step back in time for me. I lived without information at one time. I was kind of normal.

In the late 1960s, when I was a young teen, you didn't get news from the internet. Or even television. We had 12 channels coming through the brand new cable connection at our house. TV news was OK, but radio was where I heard things first. World Series. Landing on the moon. What happened at Woodstock. The grisly body count in the 'Nam.

More often than not, though, I listened to rock 'n' roll on radio and waited for the newspaper to come in the afternoon. I obsessively read major league baseball box scores, the comics, the obituaries and crime stuff. (Is it any wonder I've been a daily journalist for 30 years?)

Now I'm so addicted to knowing useless tidbits about what's happening in the moment that my hands are shaking when the power goes out for three hours. I crave white sugar, salt and a heaping helping of information. Twice an hour, please. I gotta have it. I gotta.

No, I'm not kidding. Yesterday, when the house got hot enough to bake a meat loaf, we took off. We had to go out to a bar to drink a strawberry margarita and eat potato skins (alcohol, salt AND sugar) so I could cool off and listen to whatever information was streaming out of the TV.

My hands stopped shaking fairly quickly as the sugar around the glass mingled with the rush potato skin salt in my blood stream and the TV droned with a meaningless drivel about the Tour de France, a world-famous bicycle race in a country I've never visited. I almost floated away in peace.

"This part of the planet is way good," I told the waitress for no particular reason, staring in the direction of the TV.

"Is he OK?" she asked my wife.

"Just bring a damp cloth so I can wipe up anything that falls out of his mouth while he's eating," she answered.

Maybe you really didn't want to know

When you last visited this space, my wife was soothing my fears about elevation sickness. I won't turn into a bleeding pumpkin head, she says. She's a registered nurse. Lucky for me.

Then she started giving me one of those listen-up-buddy looks. She spoke quietly and steadily, meeting my eyes intently. I've been married to this woman 29 years, so that was enough to stop me cold.

When she drew a deep breath, I almost didn't want to hear it.

"Do you really think this is a good idea?" she asked. "Taking this backpack? Being gone all that time in August?"

You see, my father is quite ill -- so ill that I'm going to be with him in Maui next week before a perilous surgery. I am going to spend a little more than two weeks with my mother and my father. My wife and teen-ager will join us at the end of July.

I have nothing but good thoughts about my father's ability to recover from cancer, and I am trying not to worry about his surgery. But my wife, who has been a nurse more than 25 years, has worked with many cancer patients. That was her job at one time. She understands the diagnosis and the percentages. I understand far more than I am willing to think about at this point.

My wife, being my most precious friend, also understands how much I'm avoiding, which is basically everything. She knows nothing will ever be quite the same if bad turns to worse for my father -- whether it happens now or 10 years from now. I am not willing to think about that yet.

"I feel like I'm 7 years old again," I told her. "I had no idea I would feel like this."

"What if you need to be here during the time that you're gone?" she asked. "What will you do if something happens?"

"I'll hike out the way we planned," I answered. "And I'll deal with it afterward."

"Are you sure?" she asked.

"No."

"Maybe you should think about not doing this," she said.

I kind of zoned out, thinking about my father. He was the guy who led his platoon through hellacious fire fights in Korea more than 50 years ago. He survived some of the toughtest times coming back from that war and getting his life together.

He was always the most loyal, powerful figure I could remember. I saw that man hold on through adversity that would have crushed lesser men. He taught me more about life and living than he will ever realize.

"Maybe I should think about not doing this," I said. "But, believe me, he wouldn't accept that, and I don't think I will either."

On the level

Alex was on the subject of award-winning British authors. In the 1930s. I hate that. I'm really old, staring death in the face, dodging the reaper on bad days. But I'm not old enough to remember the 1930s. Still, I consider myself nimble, quick-witted. That means I keep trivia books around and cheat.
The winning question was "who is George Bernard Shaw"? I forget the answer, which is really kind of the question in "Jeopardy," but it had something to do with "Pygmalion." I was clipping my toenails at the time, working over my in-grown honker on my right foot, and I went ballistic at the TV.
"I knew that answer!" I cried. "I knew it. If someone had mentioned Rex Harrison, I would have smoked that answer, baby!"
"Clean up your toenail mess and come to dinner, sweetie," my wife said.
Still stinging from my defeat in final Jeopardy, I cringed when my wife raised a subject that my keen, Jeopardy-slaying mind had missed this summer. She mentioned that my leg of the John Muir Trail hike in August would be preceded by a trip to see my parents in Maui.
"Yeah, so?" I asked. "I'll have a good tan. I will be filled with lattes and fish tacos. What up?"
"Well, the last I checked Maui was at sea level," she said.
"On the mark," I replied. "My love, nothing escapes you. Maui is at sea level because it's on the beach. My toes are tapping now. Where are you going with this?"
"Honey, aren't you climbing a few 12,000-foot passes in August?" she asked.
I almost dropped my toenails. I finally saw what she was getting at. It was like watching a car accident in slow motion. High elevation can give flat-landers a headache, nausea and a lot of other problems. You need to aclimate to the elevation so you don't have those problems. Going from sea level to 12,000 feet in a couple of days might give me a monster headache or worse.
"I am toast," I said.
"No, but you'll need to prepare by taking aspirin a few days in advance," she said, adding that aspirin will thin the blood and reduce the impacts of high elevation.
"But I am still toast," I said. "First I'm down at sea level, then I'm at 12,000 feet. My head will be the size of a pumpkin. I'll bleed out my nose. I'll breathe hard, cramp up, fall over. I'll ..."
"Sshh, dear, don't make a fuss," she said. "Eat your your chicken, and I'll get the children's aspirin. You can start taking it now."
"What? And bleed to death shaving?" I asked. "It will thin my blood."
"You'll be fine," she said. "Put those toenails in the garbage and relax."
I sheepishly dumped my nails and smiled at my own panic. What else could go wrong? I sat down and she looked me in the eye.
"There's something else you should be thinking about too," she said.
Now I was worried. I can't bring myself to tell you until the next blog entry. Sorry. If Diana Marcum can give you a cliff hanger, so can I.

Real life is enough

A backpacking guru I know told me I should be out on the trail in preparation for my 55-mile haul on the JMT this August. No way I can get ready down in the flat land, said he.
"You need to be at elevation," he advised me. "You need to be walking up a trail with some weight on your back. I don't care if you're a tri-athlete. You can't do all that from down here."
Wrong.
I'm not trying to be obstinate, but I put in my training day by day. I NordicTrak in my garage -- 40 minutes a day in a garage that's sometimes quite warm. I lift weights. I run miles. I have taken up Yoga.
I've been involved in workouts like these since I played high school sports. Richard Nixon was still in his first term when I was in high school. Why am I this crazy? I'll save that for another time. But there are many people just as crazy as I am. I'm not that unusual, nor am I an exceptional athlete.When you use your body every day for physical activities, you're ready for fairly strenuous stuff.
Yesterday in my everyday, flat-land world, I jogged two miles at 5:30 a.m., then helped my daughter and son-in-law to move from one rental to another. Of course, I had no idea none of their friends would be there. So guess who the heavy lifters were? You got it. A 25-year-old stud boy and little old me, the 50-plus nut case.
Turns out, I wasn't paying attention enough to anything yesterday. They told me everything was packed. I should have checked to see they still had full closets, bathroom, kitchen and bedrooms to empty and pack.
I thought it would be a pleasant 98 degrees. That's what the TV guy said on Tuesday. It was 103, and yeah, five degrees makes a big difference.
And, I thought a newly wedded couple wouldn't have much stuff. I kind of underestimated them. They have more clothes, shoes, computers and just stuff than we do and we've been married 29 years. Stuff, stuff, mega oodles of stuff. This, that, the other thing. Times about seven. These kids have stuff. And a beagle, just to show you it's not all about material things.
For 10 hours, we lifted, walked, hefted, walked, grunted, walked, sweated, walked, turned slightly comatose and walked. I've had workouts like that many times in the mountains. Most often, they don't last much past about eight hours. Darn few times has it been 103 when I've done these kinds of workouts in the mountains.
I've felt livelier after I've run half marathons, which usually take me about an hour and 50 minutes to run.
When we dropped the refrigerator some time around 5:30 p.m. during that blur of a day, I felt grateful that it was the last large appliance or piece of furniture that we could mess up while loading the truck. Then I realized we would have to unload the truck.
As the waning sunlight drifted into a stuffy, buggy evening, I remember hearing my name and having a Dr Pepper thrust into my hand.
"I don't know whether to drink or pour it on my head," I told whoever it was who handed me the fizzy stuff. I filled my mouth with the soda and let it dribble down my shirt. Felt really good.
The next morning, I got up at 5:45 and ran two miles. Every old injury I had in my legs came back to visit me.
It felt just like the second day after the start of a long backpack.
Trust me, I'll be ready when it's time to hit the trail.

A bad moon rising

In this dream, I can't seem to get the vice principal to see things my way. He wants to suspend my 12-year-old. This was five years ago, because my 12-year-old is a junior in high school now. Just so you know the setting, this child is the last of our three -- the other two have basically gone through college and moved on. Our last little guy is warming up in the bullpen for college, as I often say.
Anyway, I have to settle this dispute before I can backpack this lovely mountain glen in the Dinkey Creek area. My little guy is supposed to go with me, but I can't very well reward him for getting suspended from school.
And, he really did something that was quite creative, though totally unacceptable. For his own reasons, he decided to wait until an entire gym class was watching him and he showed them an unclothed view of his rear view. I have no idea what inspried him, but I had trouble keeping a straight face when he told me.
"I didn't do it very long," he offered.
So there I am talking to Vice Principal Wormer (OK, that's not really his name.)
"You shouldn't make him stay home for this," I said. "It's like a reward."
"Mr. Grossi, we can't have him stay in school," said Wormer. "Everyone who saw his foolish prank will consider it an invitation to do something more foolish."
"So, let's get this straight," said I, "he drops his drawers on Thursday. Takes off Friday to play some video games at home.Then brags the whole weekend about his three days off. Am I getting the math right? Hey, why not have him isolated and studying all day in the library? He would hate that."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Grossi," he said. "You'll have to keep him home tomorrow. We have a no tolerance policy."
To quote middle schoolers everywhere: whatever.
In my dream, as in real life, I never win the argument. And I put off the backpack. It's more of a punishment for me than him. But I do it, like a responsible dad.
Then, I take him on the backpacking trip a few weeks later. School was almost out for the summer anyway.
I teach him about nature. I show him how to handle a camp fire safely. We sleep at 9,000 feet at about 45 degrees that night,while the rest of Fresno sizzles.
When I wake up from that dream, which is just a replaying of reality, I remember what a valued time that was. I remember we had the long talk about expressing himself in other ways. And it worked. Now, when he's angry and he wants to say something to the world, he gets his garage band together, invents some kind of loud, incomprehensible statement and we get a visit from a cop.
What am I going to do when my last little guy leaves?

Fresno ... yeah

My heart rate just came back to normal, and it wasn't from a workout for the backpacking adventure on the JMT. I killed another black widow spider on my green waste container. This time it was inches from my forearm.
Thanks to the Fresno City Council, I no longer have unsightly refuse containers in view of the street. Now they're in the spider-breeding ground in my tiny side yard. You literally have to wear gloves and swat like crazy to throw something in the garbage.
The city passed a law saying you have to hustle your refuse containers back behind your fence on the day the big trucks come around to dump them. You get fined if you don't follow the law. No problem if you have a large side yard. I barely have room for a gate, so I no longer have a skinny, little side yard. I have a jammed, smelly, spider-ridden mess.
And that mess is what I will remember when the time comes to vote for city council members and the mayor.
This fine idea is another in a long line of reasons why Fresno is not just your garden variety wanna-be LA or SF. This place is full of half-baked ideas. But, just so you know, I like Fresno and so I will swat the black widows.
I need to warn you about a few other negatives -- beyond our forward-thinking leaders. Fresno has some of the worst air pollution in the country. Raise a child here, and you're asking for an asthma diagnosis and an inhaler for your little one.
It's oppressively hot in summer. It's drippy, moist, foggy cold in the winter. For some reason, it's still getting expensive to buy a house here.
When I moved here from the East Coast in 1986, I thought the drivers were the slowest bumpkins I had ever seen. That's over. They have caught up with Boston, land of the bashed-in side panel.
OK, let's review, backpackers. Fresno's air is dirty and dangerous, summer is an inferno, the houses are expensive and the drivers can scare you right off the road like any other city in America. And, hey, you better bring up those trash bins or suffer the consequences.
So why live here?
Well, I like the heat and 275 days of sunshine each year. I like the farm fields all around. I like the mellow sunsets on the dusty, smog-laiden horizon. I grew up in Bakersfield. This is like life in my childhood, except there aren't any oil derricks and darn few Buck Owens tunes.
But the biggest advantage is that you can get to Kings Canyon National Park in 75 minutes. And the Yosemite National Park south gate in a little more than 90 minutes. In late March, you can drive through lupine and California poppies in the foothills and 45 minutes later see snow and a half frozen lake.
If you want to backpack one of the prettiest high-country settings anywhere, you can get there in just a couple of hours driving. Yosemite, Kings Canyon and Sequoia national parks, along with Sierra and Sequoia national forests, are some of the best reasons to live in Fresno.
The John Muir Trail, at the spine of the Sierra, gets you four of those five places. Yeah, backpackers, I'll take Fresno.