I’m indulging myself in memories.

I’m still creating them, but now, retired, in a new after-phase of my life, I can turn to the large collection of my life and bring up a bucket from the well.

This time I’m thinking about camping. We used to love it, went fairly often, carried the backpacks with everything you’d need, the sleeping bag, the tent, the canteen with water, the trail food to keep you alive.

We went camping as a family. We went camping with friends. Being fortunate enough to live in California, we had places to go. We could camp in the mountains just above Altadena, Chantry Flat and Sturtevant Falls. We could go further over to Lytle Creek near Big Bear. We could go up north to the Sequoias and the Redwoods and camp in a real forest. We could climb higher, above the tree-line, and camp among the rocks beside the high mountain lakes.

Lakes, like Chocolate Lakes, where the less hardy were left behind, and experienced hikers regaled us with stories of fishing where you would think fish could never be, how you had to get up early, before dawn, when the fish were feeding on the flying air as the sun rose and you saw them flashing in the parallel light as they leaped out of the water. We camped at the Chocolate Lakes for a night, the mosquitos fierce. The next morning, still following the John Muir Trail along Bishop Lake and up Bishop Pass to Dusy Basin, a very special place.

My memories blur and conflate. I remember camping with different groups of friends. There was this time we went with a ballet student of Shirley’s, a lovely Chinese young woman and her brother who had a big dog. We’d fight over who got to sleep with the dog, because he kept the lucky ones warm.

The young woman gave Shirley credit for her marriage. She said the ballet that developed a beautiful body, and the lovely photos of her in costume, made her irresistible to the young man, who couldn’t resist.

How one time we packed in a carton of eggs so we could eat fresh, and campers coming down from days on the higher trail, gaunt on dry trail food, saw us cooking real food, their tongues hanging out and drooling.

How, because the warning about giardia in the water kept everyone from drinking even at the stream right from the glacier, and we met experienced hikers who came prepared with the highest rated filter, nearly 100%, and they passed water from the stream into a collector and were willing to share and we all watched and waited for the water to filter through.

How, with friends, another trip, entering at Big Pine, we hiked the Big Pine Trail toward Palisade Glacier, looking down to tree-line below, and we stayed in the little mountain hut, Lon Chaney’s Cabin, crowded with the hungry predecessors who had a large and friendly dog, and they watched us with glittering eyes as we pulled out our sandwiches with real meat. And our friend, who liked dogs, threw a slice of meat to the dog and they almost attacked to get a share, and we slept that night with one eye open.

The next morning we left the cabin and made our way to Third Lake, a serene and beautiful spot protected from the wind with some level ledges and a few trees above the rim of the lake. This is where we made a base camp before our ascent the next day across the scree and boulders to the rim of Palisade Glacier. The next morning, we left our heavy packs and tents behind, only carry a few essentials in light packs, hiking the easy part through Sam Mack Meadow, then climbed the last bit, over the tailings, and stepped up on the glacier itself, poking at the ice to make sure we didn’t fall into a crevasse, all so we could say, “We walked on the glacier.”

Scrabbling a bit higher to the rim of the glacier, we found a marker on a crude shelter made of piled stones and a tin roof that we’d reached above 13,500 feet. From here, looking out, the bottom of the clouds were flat while the tops were puffy, and we could see so far that the curvature of the Earth was visible.

And coming down to the parking lot where the cars were waiting to take us back to civilization, everyone drove down to those trail-head towns, Bishop, Independence, on the backside of the Sierras east where Highway 99 parallels Highway 5 on the other side west, and we all came down the road from the mountains directly to the restaurant where everybody rushes to stop for real food, even steak, as the last best bit of civilization before entering the wilderness and the first place you stop when you return.

And California has it all. The beaches with surf, the deserts with cactus, the mountains with trees, the tallest peaks in the contiguous United States, and glaciers almost adjacent to Death Valley, the lowest and the hottest spot in the world, and when California temperatures get too hot, there are glaciers ready, and we walked on them.