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Buteo lineatus
This is what it all comes to, isn’t it? A pebble in the boot, sweat stinging eyes, your pulse drowning out the wind. A patch of soil at 2200 feet, inclined to the west. Gray pines make sparse shade. The eleventh time this year I make the summit of Diablo, but I don’t yet know that. This afternoon I chose a new, steeper route that adds about 500 feet of elevation gain to my usual hike, and I am halfway up a pitch one guidebook describes as “absurdly steep.”
My route today will take me in a circle around the mountain, a hike known locally as “the Grand Loop” and considered one of the more strenuous dayhikes available in the Bay Area, but I add seven miles and 1500 feet of climb to it today by hiking in from the north. At the summit I will feel light, almost impatient for more climb, but this stretch of road is tiring and I pace myself. Sometimes, as now, that pace falls to zero. I salt the fireroad with my back.
There are riders on the mountain today. A hawk flew into their picnic at Deer Flat as I approached. Two appaloosa mares quivered flanks against the flies, and I stopped when the hawk landed on a limb not twenty feet from my head. An old man — another old man — asked me what it was. “A red-shouldered,” I said. Birding once with a woman I did not know, I saw a Steller’s jay from the corner of my eye, and it dove for cover in an oak. “Steller’s,” I said, and she asked how I knew. “It looked like one,” I said, suddenly unsure of myself. We peered into the thick oak canopy; she keyed it out. “A Steller’s,” she said, and then the jay burst into view, scolded us and flew off unmistakable. I bird by feel, mostly. I am no expert. When the other old man at Deer Flat asked if I was sure the bird was not a prairie falcon, I said “no.” There are a lot of falcons on Mount Diablo. “Is that a Digger pine?” he asked. I wondered whether to offer the lecture on racist nomenclature. “Yes, Pinus sabiniana, I said.
“Three needles?”
“I honestly don’t remember. You don’t need to remember it here though: go by form. It’s loose and rounded, sparse shade, and so it’s either that or a Coulter pine, and Coulter pines don’t grow here.”
And then the bird spooked, flashed me with its underparts, and the distinct stripes across breast and wing plain as 144-point type, and I knew it had happened again, that I had doubted myself unnecessarily. Unless we were both wrong and it was a sharp-shinned.
The litany of old man plaints has followed me. The aching knee, the hamstring threatening a cramp, the odd stitch in my right side. That last usually manifests in the final two or three miles of a hike, and I have nine more to go, much of it uphill and absurdly steep. Coming into Deer Flat I considered the better part of valor. I could turn around! At eight miles round trip and 1500 feet of climb, the mere jaunt up Mitchell Canyon to Deer Flat is already more hike than anyone I know has done today, possibly excepting Matthew. It surprises me sometimes to look back down the canyon, to see the tiny, remote pines far below that shaded me an hour back. More hike than most do in a lifetime, and I think of it as just setting out. Pacing myself means more than hiking slowly. Turning around to hike without the pain next week would be no loss.
But my boots had other ideas and took me up toward Murchio Gap, and I lie now in the pine’s sparse shade. It is comfortable. A consolation of a long hike: you can throw yourself down about anywhere and be comfortable for a time, until the flies find you. A breeze and a swallow of water, and I lay my head down on my upturned pack to watch the sky for a while.
A perfect blue sky, with some few needles of Pinus sabiniana, now called “gray pine” so as not to validate the use of racial epithets. A half mile off, a turkey vulture spirals sunward, moving not a wing, not a feather. And the feeling comes over me so imperceptibly that by the time I notice it, it is as if I have always felt this way:
This is the best moment of my life.
I used to leave my job, my love, my dog, I used to head for the east side of the Sierra Nevada and past it, and stoke a sunset fire in a few short deadened limbs of juniper, and it was my life reborn. An emergence from dreamtime; a waking from this petty annoyance and distraction, and I would shake myself off as from a drowse and remembering, re-enter my true life for a few hours. No mysticism, no grandiose oneness with the fire spirits. Sitting. Keeping the fire alive.
A pair of riders will appear below me soon, and I will haul myself up to avoid being trodden upon. A hundred feet more to climb to make the saddle, and then I drop down the other side to climb absurdly steep again. The summit 1,700 feet above me will slide itself under my feet before I expect it. And then the long descent, and driving home through traffic into the next week and if I survive, I will return in a week, or two.
This is the best moment of my life.
Posted by: Chris Clarke
Note: A database glitch in 2008 ate a bunch of archived comments. Don't be offended if yours isn't here, or confused if the conversation seems disjointed. Thanks!
I think Fuji-san is calling your name. The bonus of that trip is you get to slide down the back end.
By: By Roxanne on 2006 09 05
great story…thanks for reminding me that this is the best moment of my life
By: By brennp on 2006 09 05
Chop wood, carry water, hike Diablo.
By: By Janeen on 2006 09 06
This is the best moment of my life.
(Beautiful. And thank you, always.)
By: By Siona on 2006 09 07
=v= So where do Coulter pines grow? This photo doesn’t indicate the location or range.
By: By Jym Dyer on 2006 09 07
