2025, August
We were trying to figure out the last creek we could get water from before starting our climb. My best friend Holly and I were on the John Muir Trail, the 211-mile route between Yosemite and Mount Whitney, and about to hike up the “Golden Staircase,” a notoriously steep set of switchbacks from a river valley up to an alpine lake basin. A hot August day, we wanted to make sure we had enough water for the ascent. We passed our friends Kim and Amy whom we’d met on the trail. They pulled out their phone and opened an app that uses GPS to tell them their exact location. The app claimed we still had four miles before the climb, but according to our paper map, we should be approaching the climb soon; something wasn’t adding up.
Holly and I kept hiking and finally came across a creek. Was this it? We threw down our packs, sitting on top of them, and pulled out the map again. By our read, the last creek before the climb should have another creek coming down the valley directly across from it. We turned around to look for it and there, only a few feet away, was a marten. The beautiful, cat-size weasel stared at us, connecting us briefly to the nonhuman world, before bounding off into the forest.
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