One day a friend of mine suggested that we drive to Yosemite. It sounded like a good idea. It was November, and we decided to drive up on Friday night and stay for the weekend. I had a brown suede jacket with faux fur on the inside, so I was prepared for whatever might happen!
The four hour drive took us seven hours . . as a harbinger of what was to come when a neophyte, naive, recently-from-Hawaii native tries to take on the Sierra Nevada mountains, which, by the way, was where the Donner party had to self-nourish each other to keep from starving . . in the freezing COLD.
We were in my blue, soft -topped MGB, no less, which, at times, was pulled down to really experience the mountains.
We arrived at the campground, and it was really, really cold. This wasn’t like camping at Hanauma Bay! I tried sleeping on the ground, in a tent that was half put-up because we were too cold to figure out how to finish the operation. It did serve the purpose of keep us a few degrees warmer because it was like an impermeable blanket.
Finally, after hours of shivering, the sun started to come up and we went to the public bathroom. I turned on the water and put my hands under the stream to warm them up, but it was too hot to touch! And, that was the cold water!
My friend and I had some memorable experiences. Once we were out on a frozen lake when he decided to see how thick the ice was. He kicked the ice, and he sank into the lake . . fortunately, we were near the edge of the lake, and he sank in up to his knees. Knees-down he remained frozen for the remainder of the trip.
I was glad to be heading home with dreams of one day camping out at Hanauma Bay again
When I was younger I was adventurous to the extent of being really stupid. I was testing the boundaries. I wish this were the only really inane thing I had done when I was younger . . but, alas no. I could, and will, regale you with other stories of my adventurous foolhardiness.
While incredibly stupid, it was also the age when we tried new things, and, if we lived 🙂 , we learned and pushed boundaries and expanded the universe. Fortunately, or unfortunately, this passed, and we settled into what was more comfortable as we headed into the turbulence of midlife.
I realize now that great change was possible during those years. After 30 or 40, not so much.
Which brings me to this thought. We are older, less-changeable, and more conservative and, worst of all, living longer 🙂 . This means that we vote and hold onto the values of the past instead of testing the boundaries and seizing onto the ideas of the future.
Maybe that’s why we are seeing the resurgence of bigotry in the South or the resurgence of ancient ideas from simpletons like Donald Trump take hold. Thirty percent is a lot of people to want to hold onto the past with such force that they are willing to forget the ideals of our constitution and the dreams of a better future for our children and our peoples, for a return to a time when America was filled with unrealized hate and injustice.