Notes from Segment 3: The Mokelumne

A huge, light tan, rectangular figure glided noiselessly through the moonlit distance. Opposite, across the lake, the mountain glowed with the color of bone, intricately woven with deeply filigreed shadows in the lunar light. In the next days, we would be stung by bees and gouged by an endless procession of protruding manzanita branches. A startled rattlesnake would slither to the side of the trail and warily coil nearby. A mountain lion would slouch ephemerally up the mountainside.

We were descending through the Mokelumne River canyon, in one of the remotest areas of the central Sierra. Decades ago the powers-that-be stopped maintaining the trails here, making it necessary for us to find our own route through the forest and over granite outcrops, with occasional help from animal trails and “ducks” left by previous travelers. There were abundant treasures to be found: a refreshing, multiple-pool swimming hole carved in the granite; a stunning view upstream to a geometrically proportioned, stairstep cataract in a hanging canyon as we descended into the Enchanted Forest.

For two days we encountered only three other hikers. What a rare and unusual privilege it was to be in this isolated grandeur!

This was a physically demanding – even exhausting – three days, but magnificently rewarding, and every step for such a worthwhile cause.

I am left with a final, lingering image. At the end of our thirty-mile Segment 3, as most of us gratefully and wearily climbed into our cars to drive down the mountain to a hot lumberjack lunch, our leader Annette continued on in the rain, moving forward to Segment 4 and a journey of another fifteen days, 120 miles to go.