This idea of home.
Tonight, K is upstairs catching up with a couple of her best friends. Every so often, like tonight, I carve out some time to continue pulling together a sort of massive photography book about the Sierras. J and I have spent a decade returning every year to hike them. Two years ago, my friend Matt and I did a high route from Kings Canyon to Yosemite, and last year we (along with a mutual friend, Ben) hiked another high route from south of Sequoia into Kings Canyon.
Right now the book is just shy of two hundred pages. This is from one of the spreads.
I think this is the shot. I took a lot of shots on our trip. Two thousand nine hundred and sixty, apparently. Or maybe that’s not a lot of shots. I’m not sure. Amongst those couple or almost a few thousand, there are some of clouds, some of rainbows and storms. Dark and gloomy, bright and sunny. Sunrises and sunsets. Some of joy and a few of defeat. There were trails and no trails, rivers and water, passes and valleys. Mountains. I haven’t often photographed Matt, but I have a couple shots of him where his expression or, in this case, not even his expression, just his body language, is perfect.
That’s why this is the shot.
It was a tough trip. Not impossible, full of triumph and only a hint of despair. But tough. I was trailing behind him at this moment, enjoying the last bit of wilderness before we would go over the pass and return to civilization. Behind me lay the Horse Creek valley and the mighty empty northern escarpment of Yosemite. Behind us, the thirty-three other passes we had climbed. Then I noticed him pause, look up. We weren’t on a trail, we were hardly ever on a trail, so he was likely just getting his bearings. Like he, like I, had done thousands and thousands of times over hundreds and hundreds of miles. It’s just this time there was something about his posture. His arms slightly outward, trailing just as slightly behind him. I could tell he was looking up at the pass. Instinctively, I grabbed for my camera and fired off a couple of frames.
What I couldn’t tell, and why this is the shot, is what I couldn’t see. Only surmise. So I filled in the blanks and wrote my own story for Matt. A story about a trip we spent walking two hundred and forty-seven miles together. I could see his expression, without seeing. Across it was written all of his emotions, which, at that moment, were my emotions, too. Wonder, awe, sadness, relief. The thing about mountain passes is I never know what lies on the other side. So I feel all of those things. Wonder at what lies beyond. Awe at what I have already seen. Sadness for what I leave behind. Relief for nearing the end, having seen the clouds, the rainbows and the storms, the dark and gloomy and the bright and sunny. The sunrises and the sunsets. The mountains.
Beyond all of that, this idea of home. His van, a shower, and a meal that night. His house for a couple more nights. Then a flight north for me and, finally, at long last, this pass already almost a distant memory, the arms of my wife and the laughter of our toddler. For me, home.
