Illilouette Canyon

Today I climbed the canyon where my ashes will be strewn. I hope it may be some years hence, but here it will be. What better place in the world to traverse the centuries than in this deep granite cleft of pure wildness? Enveloped by a great tumble of stones and shouting water free falling over their surfaces an endless life can be felt. Above the river course storm-strengthened trunks grip the steep white cliffs. Half Dome’s smooth shoulders tower impossibly to the north; Glacier Point holds the west.

This canyon is Illilouette, carved imperceptibly deeper each year by the roaring stream that courses down it. No trail ascends the narrow amphitheater except the river course itself, so only intrepid souls venture here. To meet the canyon spirit you must pick your path amidst granite shards and great stones and giant trees, steeply up, over, around, through – and at times even under the great tumbled boulders fallen 500 or 1000 feet down from the clean cliffs above, fallen perhaps a dozen years ago, or 10,000. Footfall and breathing are drowned in the song of the water. At the root of the canyon, the beginning of the climb, the stones compare to bushel baskets, but farther up they’ve grown to horses and bison. Near the shoulders of the canyon they’ve become grand houses and cathedrals.

The roaring stream is the child of Illilouette Falls slipping softly as its name over the cliff’s edge 800 feet above the uppermost plane of the canyon floor, sailing in streamers, whisps and whooshes down the breezes to the opal dark pool below.

To reach the falls you must flow up the canyon as the water flows down it. Bouldering the ascent, I feel my body gradually take on the quality of water, hands and feet moving ever more responsively, answering the shapes of the granite with corresponding gestures as I climb, the hinges of ankles and knees greeting the rocks’ surfaces fluidly, the flex of fingers, the swing and sway of hips over the curving crests of the stones, the shoulders’ roll and rotate in counterpoint with the boulder music as it comes. The feet find their own way. The body happily swings and pivots among the rocks, vaults downed trunks, slides though thickets of bracken and horsetail, winds through wild currents, ever ascending, against the downward watercourse current. There is nothing claustrophobic here. Far from feeling hemmed in by the stone walls, I feel held by them, and as I climb above the floor of Yosemite Valley my eyes lift to ever more spectacular vistas.

I love the feel of the granite under my palms. Something intensely pure is held in these stones and comes up from them into the limbs. “ When granite in hand teaches the most ancient religion . . .” Something quiet and joyous stirs in me at the rough touch. Smooth maple branches present themselves to grasp and pull up my weight, a deeply furrowed fir trunk braces my back as I arch onto the upper smooth surface of a water-carved stone.

Teaching in Yosemite in my twenties amidst the noisy swirl of tourists and vehicles that mass the valley floor three seasons of the year, I would climb up into this hidden canyon on weekends to renew myself with silence, water sound, wind song, alone high above the gaping throngs, grateful for strong legs and a will for wilder spots.

Cliffs sometimes force my climbing back from the river course onto the soft needled, humused hillsides beneath the old firs and maples. For the first time today a canyon wren- song, liquid and descending as the water, echoes off the cliffs above the stream. The sun, clear at last of towering stone as it rises toward noon, is warming the little feathered fellow enough to call his unmistakable song from his breast. On the soft hillsides my feet dig into the fragrant duff and hands haul up the downed branches, employing them as climbing ropes, helpful assists as I pull toward the minor ridge.

The boulders become huge now, ever bigger as I ascend, and I’m forced to shimmy up between them, back to one wall, feet to another, like water drawn up between two panes of glass. Why am I so happy? None of my years of schooling prepared me for this task. Even childhood adventures and exploits fall short of any real explanation. Some deeper, older capacity comes to the fore, called up by necessity, and I am inexplicably prepared. A native sense emerges. An inborn capacity responds. Danger? Yes , but something in me knows just where the edge of surety meets the precipice of foolishness or bravado and holds me this side. Not fear, but yes, excitement and joy, an old joy in primordial challenge, and in my body and being adding their song to that of the stone and water.

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