Journey East 3 - Sierra Nevada - Fall 2022

9.25.22

I am still copying and pasting my writing from 2022 on the Sierra Nevada sojourn:

Time to venture out. Day 1, Saturday September 25, 2022. The front desk provided this map… Which happens to be printed upside down for North:

Sand painting and earth offering. Hard to see, easy to feel when there.

Rock Creek

Magical Fairy Trees, which I later learned were Aspens

Lake feet at Rock Creek Lake

Doing this walk, I was able to get acquainted with the conveniently absent mileage scale from the upside down paper map I got from Rock Creek Lodge…

I am not a selfie person, but I am trying to be better at that now…

Good way to fill shoes with sandy silt.

Back to home base.

9.26.22

I have no more notes from my previous writing attempts to copy/paste. I have a feeling this will largely end up being a photo-monologue, but there are a few key things I do want to share with you in a little bit.

My second full day in Rock Creek. The routes outlined in the upside down map shown above are not very long in terms of mileage, but they getcha with their elevation gain combined with steep and loose footing… Worth it for those sweeping views and cold lakes to dip tired feet into!

It’s too bad photos do not capture hill increase. This one was pretty much all straight up to the lake!

High altitude lupine. The folliage is smaller for the plants bold enough to try to make a life for themselves up here.

I am loving these magical fairy trees SO MUCH!

Their leaves shiver in the wind, reflecting white light back at their admirers.

Their sound is a delicate reminder to relax.

Their bark is a dusty softness that I occasionally used as sunblock by rubbing it on my hands and neck.

Daily despatcho. My shamanic teacher later had said I misunderstood her and that her instructions were to do one despatcho upon arrival to the land, but that having done these everyday was extra juice so it’s fine I did it. Ha!

Guess maybe I needed it then…

Despatchos are basically an offering to an element like the earth, wind, fire, water, etc and asking for something in return.

Happy, pretty tree

I have reached my destination. The lake is COLD. No real surprise being ~12,000 feet above sea level!

Look at those dirty feet! The fine silt really works its way in through the shoes and socks up here!

Never enough photos out here.

I also think it is funny how I have zero interest in editing the photos I have, so there are wonky horizon lines from time to time. :-)

Somewhere down there, the valley sits at roughly 10,000 feet above sea level. Wonder how high I am right now. Earlier I guessed 12,000 feet, but not so sure now.

Obligatory selfie

The flowers are tiny up here, but they sure have an olfactory punch!

This little flower caught my olfactory attention. I immediately went into a brainstorm on how I would capture the scent of this flower.

I spent a couple of weeks looking up perfumery and perfume classes. I found that there are 30+ varieties of rabbit brush and they all smell differently. I ended up being enrolled in a perfume class in Scotts Valley - a town in the mountains above Santa Cruz, where I was living at the time. And I had a few rabbit brush plants on order from nurseries that were 100 miles away.

And then a brick hit me in the face one morning, where I realized I could probably find essential oil of rabbit brush on the internet.

I found it from a surprising amount of purveyors, which piqued my curiosity, so I started to look up a lot of random plants and turns out there seems to be someone making an essential oil for just about any plant one could think of. Nuts!

Always take a photo with your hand in it, if you’re planning to identify a plant later. It’s useful for scale.

And always capture the foliage and ground around the plant for identification as well.

Then send images to people to figure out what the plant is…