There is a wilderness area in California near Ukiah, where I live, called Yolla Bolly Wilderness. Most locals have no idea it exists. It’s a pristine wilderness, never logged. And roads have never been cut into the region. The trails are only scarcely maintained due to budget cuts, which actually increases the appeal of the park by large degrees, making it feel the more wild, natural, and untouched.
In Yolla Bolly
I spent six days backpacking solo there from Sep 7th to the 12th, just three weeks after a lightning storm blew through and set 17 fires ablaze. All but three of these were out when my walk began. Two of the three were as yet uncontained, but the third was expected to be all the way out soon. The uncontained fires burned about 15 miles north by northeast and 10 miles northeast of my trailhead. I had an informative chat with the fire chief in person about the fires before going out, and he assured me that the area of the park I planned to visit would be safe for backpacking. I carried with me a map of the locations of the active and recently active fires, so I was able to avoid them all.
This is the first time I’ve backpacked solo more than three nights, and the second time I’ve backpacked solo at all. To my surprise I didn’t come across a single person during my six day walk. But this was a welcome surprise. A very welcome surprise.
As I walked I sometimes found myself reflecting on my experiences backpacking with others and my observations of those I’ve come across in the backcountry. Everyone I’ve backpacked with or come across has always been filled with a blustering impatience, stressed to be here and there or do this and that during their hikes. Their thoughts were full of highest places, longest treks, conquering some aspect of the wilderness, themselves, or both. Then I thought of the loggers, hunters, rafters, and how it seems that anyone who comes to the wilderness comes not to commune with her, but to conquer some aspect of her nature, to take home a trophy.
It was nice to walk alone, at my own pace and in harmony with my surroundings, rather than hike with others, trekking madly about, on the clock to be here and there, with hardly the time or energy left to notice where I was, where I’d been, what was around me. I found that upon returning from such hikes, I couldn’t remember one vivid detail of my experience, other than being in a rush, straining to my limits, and feeling like I had been roped and dragged by a pickup to a bone-splintering pulp.
This time I got to visit with the wilderness, get to know her a little, enjoy her company. The experience was, and continues to be in vivid memory, refreshing and harmonizing.
I welcome the conquerors to their ways, and to each other. But I have finally discovered mine, and something of myself.
