High Enough

This weekend, on an educational field trip to the White Mountains in the Inyo National Forest, I found myself higher than I'd ever been before—literally reaching a peak elevation of somewhere over 12,000 feet, and spending most of the time around 10,000 feet.



And now I know: The air feels different up there. It's so thin that it feels like it's barely there at all.



I've been on mountains before—even at their peaks—but none quite so high as these.



When I was a kid, my father drove us up Whiteface Mountain, Mount Marcy, or maybe both during our trips to the Adirondack Mountains. Those highest peaks in New York State are only about half as tall as the White Mountains.



I've stood on top of Mount Wilson and Mount Waterman, looking out over the Angeles National Forest, feeling only a slight thinness in the air and a slight shortness of breath.



But out there in that desert landscape, across from the Sierras and near the Nevada state border, the White Mountains quite literally took my breath away.



Sure, I could breathe if I wasn't moving—but what would be the point of driving five or six hours north to this remote landscape if I wasn't going to explore it, on foot or by car?



Why not get as high as I could possibly get, where the new bristlecone pine trees sprout out of the dolomite, slowly on their way to becoming ancient? Besides, as high up as we were, we were still on the former ocean floor.



I tried to tough it out—despite the headaches, wooziness, confusion, nausea, and congestion of altitude sickness. I hadn't slept much, but I pressed on, until I reached my limit at the trailhead for White Mountain peak.



We'd braved some rough road conditions to get all the way up to the Barcroft research station at just over 12,000 feet, which added a good dose of car sickness to my altitude sickness. And since everybody else seemed ready to climb, I gave it a try.



I didn't make it very far. With no one sweeping the back of our group, I got left behind. And at that dizzying elevation, I wasn't in my right mind. I didn't know whether or not I was OK. I couldn't catch my breath, and so I found myself hyperventilating. As much as I wanted to see the view from above, I didn't want to pass out on the trail alone. So, in tears, I turned back and waited an eternity fo the rest of the group to return to the parking lot.



The next day, on our last morning at camp, I had one last chance to redeem myself—by hiking up an old wagon road looking for birds.



Once again, I didn't make it all the way. But as I sat on a rock looking out over the landscape—knowing that there was still some distance to climb—I saw a bright mountain bluebird fly over me and land on a nearby rock, where it stayed just long enough for me to get a good look at it. And I knew that that spot was exactly where I was supposed to be at that moment.



For most of the trip, we were so high that it seemed as though we could practically touch the moon. And yet somehow, it was never high enough. There was always more to climb.

But for me, since my body kept me from reaching the absolute highest elevation possible, I had to be happy with "high enough."

And I didn't know how high would be enough, until I got there.

Related Posts:
Photo Essay: Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest
Knowing My Limits
Reaching My Limit
Elevation: Sea Level

The Path of Least Resistance

When I was a kid, my mother always criticized me for sailing through pretty much everything I tried.

What can I say? Things came easily to me.

But to her, the lack of hard work was a smudge on my character. She thought I was always flying by the seat of my pants, she'd say, and so I started to think that if something was hard for me to do, it was somehow more worthwhile.

But for me, nothing was ever "difficult," per se. It was either easy...or impossible.

Working hard never seemed to improve my odds in getting something done. And if I did get it done, I did it well.

But this constant criticism did make me a bit self-conscious about taking the so-called "easy way" out.

I graduated second in my high school senior class because I was taking college-level English and Biology classes, while the valedictorian was fulfilling just her basic minimum requirements to graduate.

I've pushed myself beyond my comfort zone time and time again. I've conquered science, mathematics, fine art, craft, music, dance, technology, and more.

But when I made the decision to move from New York City to LA, it was based on a very simple premise: Life doesn't have to be this hard.

As I've gotten older, and as I've settled into an "easier" way of living in Southern California, I've found less value in doing difficult things just for the sake of their difficulty.

I'm finally starting to embrace the concept of "the path of least resistance."

My adherence to this policy was put to the test this weekend while I was up in the White Mountains, about five hours north of LA, near the Nevada state border.

To get to our camp, we had to drive our cars—many of which were not 4WD—up a nine-mile dirt road, without bottoming out.

Those of us who've done a bit of off-roading know that in order to be successful in those road conditions, you've got to use both lanes of the two-lane road. You must swerve around all the pits and bumps and rocks and ravines—anything that could give you a flat tire, pierce your oil pan, or get you stuck out in the middle of nowhere.

And in that case, taking the path of least resistance also takes more time and effort, but it ends up being far easier on you and your car.



And out there in the wilderness, when you leave your car behind and set off on foot because even the dirt roads have ended, you've got to watch where you step, too.



There are so many living things underfoot.



Even out there in such a dry climate, in the middle of the summer with record high temperatures, the "belly flowers" are thriving out there.



They blanket the higher elevations...



...yet sometimes they're so tiny you can't really even see that they're flowers from five or six feet above the ground.



And while for some reason you must walk—to get back to your car, to finish a hike, or to merely just see more flowers—you must do so carefully.



It would be easy to just trample all the beauty and the life that's beneath your feet without looking.



But to take the path of least resistance out there in the wild means you're stepping between those flowers, bobbing and weaving around them just like driving on a dirt road.



And instead of trying to save yourself—or your car—you're trying to save another living thing.



You can go easy on the earth below. There's a way to make that hike—or that drive—easy on all those involved.



And you may save your own life—or the life of a budding new tree that's directly in your path.

Bobbing and weaving around life's obstacles rather than plowing through them isn't the same thing as taking a shortcut.

And most of the time, it's far from easy.

Related Posts:
Is It Hard?
It's Not That Hard

Photo Essay: The Abandoned Morton Air Academy at Gary Field

Uh oh.



That's what I thought when our rental car came to a sluggish halt in the middle of what appeared to be a wash in the Mojave Desert, still on the California side of the Colorado River.


Photo: Google Satellite View

We were looking for the Morton Air Academy, one of our checkpoints on the Rental Car Rally. We'd plugged all the addresses we could find into our GPS when we first departed LA close to midnight, but not everything was terribly accurate.


Photo: Google Satellite View

And we all were a bit frazzled, after having driven all night across Southern California, from Downtown Los Angeles to the San Gabriel Valley, across the Inland Empire into the low desert of Palm Springs and the Salton Sea. Somehow, I was still awake enough to take over behind the wheel as the sun came up and the rest of my team dozed off.


Photo: Robert Hemedes

But then the whole car woke up when I responded to the navigation by saying, "Here? Here?!" and stopped the car, which got us stuck in relatively deep sand. I tried to remain calm, because I'd been in this situation before. But we might've been doomed out there if one of our fellow teams hadn't arrived at that very moment and helped us get out.



Of course, I'd realized too late that we'd approached the old abandoned airfield from the wrong direction, and that the actual entrance to it was far simpler and less harrowing. In my haste, I parked the car at the opening of the chainlink fence, choosing to walk the rest of the way into the property. I didn't realize that I'd be blocking our opposing teams' access. It turned out to be a happy accident.



Upon our arrival, we were greeted by some vandalism that read, "Welcome to Hell." And in that moment, we knew it would be good.



It's always a good adventure when broken glass abounds...



...and roofs are caved in...



...and you can see straight through the skeletons of buildings that have been stripped down to their bare bones blueprints.



But where were we, anyway?



We knew it was some kind of airport—called the W.R. Byron Airport after its most recent owner, Willard R. Byron—but based on its former name, it had also been some kind of military academy, too.



It turns out that cadets for the U.S. Army Air Forces (a predecessor to the U.S. Air Force) learned how to fly here from 1942 to 1944.



But by 1945, it had been decommissioned and designated surplus.



Some of it was put to use by Palo Verde Community College in the 1950s...



...continuing its focus on education...



...but it reverted to its use as an airfield in 1981...



...this time as a private one.



With an asphalt runway 2640 feet in length and 660 feet across, it could easily handle single-engine planes.



After all, the pilots-in-training learned how to fly on planes like the Ryan PT-22 Recruit and the Piper J-3 Cub.



Considering how long it's been out of commission, there are an incredible number of structures still standing at the airport, also known as Gary Field (named after the son of the Morton Academy's general manager).



The signs of life aren't all-too-distant.



Some people actually lived here.



But only one of the two arched roof hangars still exists, only the wood frame of the southern hangar still standing.



Unfortunately, its metal roof with the word "ACADEMY" painted on it was stripped sometime after 2004. And everything but the foundation of the northern hangar was removed sometime between 1953 and 1994.


Photo courtesy of Joe Russo

This piece of World War II history is disappearing at an alarming rate, so I'm glad we got to see it when we did. I wish we could've spent more time there, but there was a feeling amidst our team and all the teams that we had to rush our way through the Rally—even though we were actually being judged on our mileage and not our travel time.

Of course, getting stuck in the sand on the other side of the airport didn't help our odometer much.

But neither did turning back so we could meet the naked bookstore owner, either.

In the end, I think we had the experience we were supposed to have.

For more on the history of Gary Field, click here.

Related Posts:
A Last Resort
I Am Woman, Hear My Story
Photo Essay: Test Pilot Crash Sites in the Mojave Desert
Photo Essay: Desert Center Ghost Town
Photo Essay: Boron Air Force Station / Boron Federal Prison, Abandoned (Mostly)