I stood under the approaching twilight. The early morning air tasted like the breeze of an open fridge in the midst of noon. The caws of crows gliding overhead echoed welcomingly. The sun was barely over the horizon; Her radiant rays grasping the remnants of dawn like gentle fingertips unveiling the grandiose skyscraping granite ramparts of Yosemite.
After the momentous entrance, I made my way to the Valley Lodge to get onto the Yosemite Grand Tour. I knew commuting between landmarks would have been too tough for a solo tripper without a car. so cover more grounds I opted for this tour that will bring me to the biggest highlights of Yosemite Valley: Mariposa Grove, Glacier point, and the valley floor itself.
I found the tour bus and made myself comfortable in my bus window seat, ready to gorge gorgeous views I’d be seeing today.
Our bus’ diesel engine roared and I felt its pistons whirring boisterously at the same beat as the excitement in my heart. The man in jungle hat and a light blue uniform, seemingly the bus driver and tour guide simultaneously, introduced himself as Will Fontana. Will began the tour by warning us that a grizzly bear was sighted just this morning in the car park ahead of us. He implored us to keep a lookout for it.
Then all of a sudden he bellowed:
“There! There’s the bear on the right!!”
The whole bus turned our heads right, in anticipation of a big mighty beast looting a car for food. Then some of us chuckled, as it was merely a grizzly bear cutout Will was pranking us with. It took awhile for the rest of us to realise, but in the end our bus was teeming in laughter. Will said that he pulled this prank so rather than only paying notice to things he points to, we will proactively seek out the sceneries as we move..
As we rode down the valley, Will narrated the history of Yosemite. Back in California’s gold rush, thousands of colonists risked everything they had, hoping to change their lives through gold. The rush spread inland Eastwards into native indian land. Naturally, they got into conflicts with the pre-existing native indians. Ugly altercations ensued but the colonists prevailed, leaving 90% of the Indians dead; and the rest homeless without any rights.
At first it’s easy to mistake Yosemite as a hypocritical park. The colonists were vying for conservation of the land, but what about the native people who lived in it the past thousands of years? Well, people make mistakes and the past happened the way it did. Today, the federal authorities defends both the native and the park just as fiercely. What we can hope to focus on is the perpetuity of conservation, not for the sake of keeping the beauty we behold, but also for the harmony of all that lives.
Scores and ranks of pine trees populate the roadside. Thousand columns of pines later, some of the trunks seemed to swell in size and height. Our bus came to a halt and Will announced “Welcome to the grove of giant Sequoias!”
I gaped in awe as I witness for the first time, trees with trunks so massive and tall. There might even be a gold egg laying goose at the top!
-To be continued-
Dashing Heights 