Sequoia Moments

Ok, so here it is. Its a little rushed in some places because I started to run out of time. I left out so much that should be described but wasn't, but I hope for the people who have the desire to get through this ramble that you get a sufficient idea of the joy of Sequoia!!

In less than two weeks my family is heading up to our favorite place on Earth for our annual weekend among the giant Sequoia trees. Almost every year since I can remember - actually, since I was first brought into the world - my family has made the four-hour drive to Lodgepole Campground in Sequoia National Park. I think we've only missed one summer since I've been alive. I was even up there when my mom was pregnant with me!

Naturally, for me and my siblings, Sequoia is home. But better than home, I think. Home has always been my family; I love and crave being with my family, no matter where we are, but when we're all together up in Sequoia, ah, are there words to describe it? It seems we all get giddy upon our ascent of the mountains, and the giddyness doesn't leave us until we've left Sequoia's heights.

Growing up, Hunter and I would start eagerly anticipating our weekend in Sequoia even three or four months before our scheduled weekend up among God's awesome creation. Well, I guess I shouldn't use the past-tense, because we still do. It is this anticipation that caused us to begin a favorite past-time that we call "Sequoia Moments," during which one person has the other close his eyes and listen to a vocalization or description of a familiar event, sight or even mood experienced in Sequoia. One of our favorite "Sequoia Moments" is waking up to the sound of the distant, roaring waterfall as the altered color of the sun's light pours through your tent's fabric, muffled voices and the unzipping of tents telling you that others are ready to begin their fun-filled day in the mountain environment. Another famous "Sequoia Moment" is the time late in the evening long after the sun has set, when campfires have sprung up all around you and the guitars start coming out, fast-paced card games are played on the always tilting picnic tables under the light of a whistling kerosene lamp.

The fun of the Sequoia trip begins three to four days before we leave, when my mom goes grocery shopping to get the ingredients for our favorite camping snacks and meals. My little brother LOVES to go with her on this trip, and I'm glad that he does because he persuades her out of buying things like Albertson's Hot Orange Drink instead of the truly good stuff: Tang (It HAS to be real Tang, or else no orange drink at all!). Every year the car comes home almost overflowing with our yummy treats and ingredients, and its such fun for me to help unpack the groceries and organize the camping goods on the kitchen table, ready for the day we pack them back into our car for the trip up the mountains.

The greatest fun of preparation for Sequoia is the evening before we leave, when the whole house is bustling as everyone makes sure they have plenty of socks, a swimsuit, jacket, shorts, sleeping bags, flashlights, books, candy, etc. Packing is a blast.

The next morning before we leave is always a little stressful...its kind of a family joke. Us kids have always had the dream of waking up at like 4 am and setting off at 4:30 in order to reach the campsite by noon, but seriously it has NEVER turned out that way. My dad loves to start PACKING the car at oh, say, maybe 9 am? And then by the time my mom has the cooler ready its 9:30, and then ALL of us are running around doing last minute things like making sure the pets have enough food for the weekend at home, stuff like that. So, we usually end up leaving at about 10 or 10:30. Its always worked out great, though.

Pulling out of our complex and getting onto the freeway is the best feeling in the world, or one of them, at least. MY favorite cd to listen to at that moment is the soundtrack to the first Shrek movie..such happy-go-lucky, fun and crazy songs that SOUND just the way you FEEL. Hunter starts digging into his signature gummy bears and sour strings, Heather either mans the music we listen to, reads, or takes a nap, Harrison either likes to talk, read, or nap, my mom likes to talk or nap, dad is focused on the road and will make an occasional comment like, "Hunter, get your pillow down from there, its blocking my view," and I try to read, sing to the music, and eat candy. I usually do end up sleeping though.

About two hours after taking flight our car exits the highway and pulls into the Wendy's parking lot in Porterville. Junior Bacon Cheeseburgers, fries and frosties have been a tradition on the way up to Sequoia since as long as I can remember. And oh, I'm remembering the feeling now: getting out of the car and feeling the WARM sun on your skin, str-eh-eh-ETCHing and realizing just HOW cramped you really did feel in that car, and then promptly walking into the fast food restaurant (I am shocked that I am talking about fast food this way...its an annual tradition, ok?), greatly looking forward to the taste attack that will soon reach your tastebuds.

Wendy's is the place and time that my mom pops out the dramamine. Taking medicine isn't usually such an exciting thing, but in this case it is because not only do you get to swallow it with a yummy chocolate frosty, but it also just shows you how close you really are to the twists and turns of the ascent up the Kings Canyon Mountains.

Man, I'm really giving you ALL the gory details. Is it too much? All the little things really add up to the wonderful memories. :)

Even though the car seems to have shrunk during our time in Wendy's and is much less organized than when we first entered it back home, we all enter the car again with excitement because of what awaits us at our next stop.

After lunch I usually doze off for about a half hour, only to wake up and see the car gently rushing past so many familiar landmarks that tell me the ascent is about to begin. And slowly but surely, the incline gets steeper and steeper and the curves and winds come more and more often. It is usually at this point that either Crosby, Stills and Nash or Simon and Garfunkel gets put into our stereo system, and the car goes silent as we all gaze out the window at the increasingly beautiful landscape. Every once in a while one of us will make a comment at the beauty, or we'll exclaim our excitement at passing the sign that tells you you've just entered Sequoia National Park, and no one can seem to keep their mouths closed upon the first sighting of the great Moro Rock.

The road continues to get shadier and shadier as the trees and bushes get thicker and thicker. Then here and there we spot the first Sequoia Redwood trees...man that means we're HERE! At this point I just love to GAZE, drink in the beauty, marveling at the fact that this is a CURSED EARTH? What in the world is Heaven going to be like then? Eventually the road takes us past the Four Guardsmen, four of the great redwood trees that take an austere but welcoming stance along the side of the winding road.

As the car finally turns in to the Lodgepole Campground, such a feeling of familiarity and satisfaction comes over me. The whole family starts eyeing one another with little smirks because of the funny memories we've shared with the event that comes next: checking into the campground and finding out to what campsite we've been assigned.

Driving to our exact campsite is such fun, especially when we find out that we've been assigned to one RIGHT on the river, close to the waterfall, and at the edge of the campground so that the probability is great that a deer or bear might wander close or even through our site!!

Opening the car door: You FEEL the cool mountain air and the kiss of the sun's rays, you HEAR the roaring waterfall and gurgling river, excited children, distant guitars, you SMELL fresh mountain air with pine trees, campfire smoke, absolutely NO city air pollution (it pleases your lungs to breathe up there), you SEE, well, for us, we see home, actually. So familiar, so pleasant.

Unpacking the car is even way more fun than packing was. Setting up tents, helping get the food securely in the bear lockers, making sure there is NOTHING in your tent or bags that are scented or edible by any means (you will have furry visitors wanting to join you in your tent at night, otherwise), arranging chairs around the campfire. Mom usually immediately starts dinner, for some reason the first night we always have tostadas. As mom starts cooking, I might help the boys go up further in the woods to gather firewood, or I might help mom with dinner, or I'll just go find a nice high rock in the river and read. And pray. You can't help but thank and praise God for the beauty around you when you're there.

It starts getting cold pretty quickly after dinner, so we're so thankful that dad knows how to build such an awesome fire. I don't know if I've ever seen anyone else who can build a fire like him (besides my brothers, but they learned from him), boy scouts really paid off there. As the sun sinks lower and lower water gets put on our camping stove to boil, hot chocolate and tang come out, cookies if we have any, and dad's signature camping "trail mix," M&Ms and peanuts. (I usually just steal the M&Ms, until people start complaining that I need to take equal amounts of each. :)

Getting ready for bed up there is a challenge, but such a fun one. The campground bathrooms only have toilets and sinks, no lights even. So its best to go up in groups so that you can make efficient use of the gas lit lamps. Washing your face....brrrrrrrrrrr brr brr brr brr. The water is SO cold. But so fresh! Its refreshing mountain spring water. As Heather and I walk to the bathrooms, we usually spook ourselves out by wondering if maybe a bear had wandered in (the door is always open) to rummage through the trashcans..we like to think of what we would do if we did come across a bear in there.

For me, the most challenging part of Sequoia is staying warm through the night. It certainly takes a strategy...one of the most important things for me is making sure to wear skin tight sweatpants underneath my bulkier ones to keep the heat trapped tightly or something. Snuggling down into the sleeping bag after making sure the tent is tightly zipped and the flashlight off and in a handy location in case we're called out of the tent for a bear sighting, I usually am slightly dismayed but always a little tickled to find out that once again, I'm sleeping on an uncomfortable pebble. After shimmying into a new more comfortable position on the dirt floor, I close my eyes and fall to sleep to the sound of the waterfall.

Quite a few times we've woken up in the middle of the night to the sound of a bear checking out all the stuff in our campsite, checking to see if we've made any mistakes in leaving food outside of the bear locker. Most the of time we'll at LEAST poke our head out of the tent to get a glimpse of Mr Bear, but there have been times when I was too sleepy to do anything about it. There was one night that Heather and I heard the heavy breathing and stepping of a bear walking RIGHT next to our heads outside of our tent, a few moments later only to hear him banging around our disappointingly CLEAN pots and pans on the table. Fun times.

P.S. The reason we aren't scared of the bears up there is that they're California black bears. They're mostly interested in vegetation and fish to eat, and are actually scared of humans, especially when we start banging pots and pans and shouting at them. My family has learned to just keep a respectful and quiet distance from them, therefore being able to have the fun of observing them in the wild. (Unless, of course, they're getting into our food. Then out come the pots and pans.)

The next morning feels so great. So FABULOUS to wake up in Sequoia, knowing that there's such an adventure filled day ahead of you. One of the first things I do when I wake up is go to the bear locker and get a donut to snack on until mom makes the fabulous French toast, eggs, and bacon. Hunter is usually up before me, and if we're the only ones awake, we usually play a card game. This is total slap-happy time. I'm getting a giggle tickle in my throat just thinking of the memory of how everyone looks this early in the morning in Sequoia. Hunter's face is always smiling/laughing, but a little puffy from sleep, hair disheveled, bundled up in sweatpants that he hasn't worn or seen in over a year, therefore they're usually way to small for him. And when Harrison gets up, the party really starts. Its laugh after laugh as Harrison makes silly comments and stories in his deep, crackling wake up voice.

After breakfast I usually get out of my sweats into summer clothes and head down to the river with my Bible and head phones, listening to Christian music and then reading the Truth of the One who made everything and all beauty surrounding me.

Us kids like to hike around on the river in the morning, going to familiar spots that we've named over the years (a few of the names are Rivendale, Table Rock, The Cave). Most of the time the whole family or just the kids head off on a long hike to some of our favorite destinations, talking, laughing, marveling, spotting wildlife, swimming along the way. However we spend our day, we all come back to the campsite in the evening much dirtier then when we had left, ready for a tasty dinner. After lingering at the picnic table following our fabulous dinner, a common occurance is to pack into the car and head off to probably my mostest favoritest place on Earth: Crescent Meadow. Its rare NOT to see exciting wildlife at Crescent Meadow. Deer are more than common, and its especially exciting to see male deer and their handsome racks. Crescent Meadow is a very marshy meadow, so were it not for the giant sequoia tree that fell right across long ago, we would never be able to get out into the middle of the serene landscape. In the center of the meadow, if you lean over the log a bit, you can peer down in the water and find little minnows, tadpoles and many times frogs! Hunter loves to catch the frogs.

Our last day in Sequoia has always been a Sunday, as far as I can remember. Only recently has there been a Christian organization up there called A Christian Ministry in the National Parks which provides Sunday church services for the campers. My family loves to attend and support them and worship God with fellow believers. But when the service ends, sad times begin. Tearing down the campsite. Packing up the car again. Saying goodbye again to the place in which I feel like I want to live forever!

Coming home is always bittersweet. There are always things to look forward to (even small things like a stop at In-N-Out for lunch on the way home! :), but you always feel slightly disgusted to come back down into the hot, smog-ridden Valley.

That's a short description of a Sequoia camping trip! And a whole new dimension is added on when we bring friends along...we've been up quite a few times with my best friend and her family, my sister's best friend and her family, one of the coolest times was when we brought along the Archers because it was so awesome to see Clint's excitement at seeing a bear in person (besides the awesome fireside theology talks)!

Thank you God for providing such getaways and for preserving your Creation for your creatures to enjoy! Please let us always turn blessings like this back into praise!