July 1, 2016
0 Miles No pictures today, sorry. Since Lindsey was going to join me in Bishop in a week and hike with me to Tuolomne Meadows, the plan was for me to hike north from there, and then Lindsey’s parents would pick me up at Sonora pass and drive me back down to Bishop (they had planned a long weekend at a lodge there to help with transporting Lindsey’s car up to Yosemite). The bus was leaving at 7am, so I awoke at 6. I hustled, but I just couldn’t get everything packed in time. My executive function (the part of the brain responsible for making decisions, planning, and organizing) had clearly atrophied, and I found myself struggling and stressing over simple decisions like which piece of equipment to pack up first, or whether I should go to the bathroom or brush my teeth first. They were decisions that didn’t matter, and yet I found them overwhelming and impossible to untangle. I’d find myself holding on to three things and trying to pick up a fourth because that, too, needed to go in my backpack right now. I finally cut through the gordian knot by deciding to pick up one thing at a time and put it away. After I finished the trail, I would continue to use this minor trick to process my inbox and clean up my house, and it would do wonders for keeping my stress levels lower. I got to the station at 7:10, but the bus had already left. I went to Schat’s bakkery, recommended by a friend on facebook, and filled up on pastries and coffee. The next bus didn’t come until 9, so I had time to relax and read on the patio outside. I continued reading when I got on the next bus and made the long drive up highway 395 to Mammoth Lakes. I would have liked to explore the town a little, but a YARTS charter bus was waiting for us, and it would be the last transfer until the evening. When I arrived in Tuolomne Meadows, I picked up my resupply from the general store and bought a beer and a pack of postcards to send to friends and family back home. There were several thru-hikers hanging out at a picnic table under a copse of pine trees, some of them eating expensive food from the grill, some drinking beer, and some just sticking around for the conversation and camaraderie. I finished up my postcards and engaged in conversation with the closest hikers. One of them, trail name Miles from Nowhere, was probably in his mid-fifties and had a slight Texas drawl. He had noticed Lolita in the outer, webbed pocket of my backpack, and wanted to talk about literature. He had a strange way of discussing it, like he was more interested in the historical impact of books than in the art itself. It’s a mistake I feel I often make as a music teacher: I list a bunch of reasons why a piece of music is important instead of sharing my passion for the music itself. I ate a late lunch from the Tuolomne Meadows grill, then looked for a place to set up my tent in the backpacker’s campground. It was packed. Most campsites had three or four tents, and some as many as six. Miles from Nowhere was building a campfire at a site with a covered hammock and only one other tent. He saw me and invited me to join him, then told me there were some extra beers in the bear box if I wanted them. After I set up camp and did my camp chores, I cracked a beer and chatted with him by the campfire. It turned out he was a teacher, or rather, a tutor. He had his own business teaching students accelerated learning techniques, such as memorizing cube roots to make them faster at particular math skills. The way he explained them, it sounded like a grab bag of tricks rather than a system of teaching kids to think. Not that tricks don’t have their place. For a kid who struggles with believing in their ability to learn, a good trick can give them a boost of confidence and motivation, making it easier to teach them the concepts that lead to real learning. Unfortunately, it sounded like his teaching never went beyond the tricks, and he was more interested in the marketing than the teaching. Whoever had the other tent (Miles had the hammock) never came out of it, but a fourth hiker, Chan, showed up and set up camp after we had been talking for about an hour. He was a quiet and polite hiker with limited English who was soloing the John Muir Trail. He joined us for a while, but said little, and went to bed as the light was just starting to dim and I was making dinner. Miles and I continued to talk into the dark, each of us recommending books that touched on whatever subject we happened to be talking about. It was clear that he had had an education, but it seemed like a checklist education, like he knew a lot of facts but hadn’t synthesized them into understanding. This became more apparent as our conversation became looser in the firelight. First arrogance, and then hints of misogyny and homophobia crept into his side of the discussion. Strange comments he had made about some of the classics we had discussed earlier started to fall into the context of a distorted worldview. When I pushed back on his more offensive statements, he was dismissive, blaming my relative youth on my “inability to see the world as it is.” I eventually decided I had had enough, wished him a good evening and went to bed.
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Nick is a teacher, writer, and amateur adventurer. Archives
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