Staying at the big trees lodge in Yosemite National Park, beautiful old inn built before the turn of the century. The building I’m in is the ‘baby’ of the group as the check in clerk put it, at only 99 years old. The ‘baby’. All the lights and fixtures are still the same as when it became a historic land mark so…I don’t trust the outlets to plug in anything. The little sign on the wall says not to so I’m not even going to try. So I’m writing this on reserve battery power on the laptop, in a robe they provided on in the room. You give me a robe and I’m going to wear it, even if I have to make an excuse to get a shower.
They were doing a controlled burn on glacier view road, so it took a while to get up there, I’ve never seen a burn, or a forest fire in person. Holy hell is it terrifying. Smoke crossing the road, fire licking up dead tree stumps, walls of fire licking at the road. They were doing it to try and keep the wild fire away from most of the main roads, taking away the fuel for it to continue if it ventured this way. The mountain smelled like the mother incense I have at home. Kind of earthy, dirty, sage-ish, old pine/cedar chest smell.
There isn’t much of internet here or cell signal, that’s ok. I was able to get a call from mum this afternoon telling me happy birthday, and there were spotty text messages here and there saying the same. So that was good.
Better than last year. I worked on my birthday last year. No one knew, no one cared, and it just kind of sucked. Front of the house gets cake and birthday beer. One of my coworkers got me a beer because he felt bad for me. Come to think of it I got yelled at for taking this trip too. Had my recovery from back surgery and my arm being broken called a ‘vacation’ I don’t know what kind of messed up world that that is ‘vacation’ in but not in this one. Physical therapy and not being able to get around by myself for a month sure as hell wasn’t a pleasure cruse. Degrading and disheartening would sum it up.
Tomorrow I’m heading to the village. Maybe one of the places down there has internet so I can post this, and maybe another warm bed.
Woke up around 4am to water running and thought someone was taking a shower, than remembered this was built in the early 1900’s, no one has their own bathroom. Did someone leave a sink running? Opened the door and realized it was raining outside! Pouring down rain! I put my key in my pocket and walked outside, It was so peaceful. I stayed out there for a bit leaning up against the railing watching the rain come down before heading back to bed for a few hours.
