This is the Writer's Prayer. This is the Penmonkey's Paean.

I am a writer, and I will finish the shit that I started.

I will not whine. I will not blubber. I will not make mewling whimpering cryface pissypants boo-hoo noises. I will not sing lamentations to my weakness.

My confidence is hard and unyielding. Like a kidney stone lodged in the ureter of a stegosaurus.

These are my adult pants. The diapers have burned away in the fires of my phoenix-esque rising.

I will burn down the forest. As the conflagration rages, all my excuses shall come scurrying forth like syphilitic rats whose backs smolder with the smoky scent of my coming victory. When my excuses bound, shrieking and squealing, toward my feet, I shall use my mighty wordhammer to squash them all, ‘asploding each like a sausage stuffed with self-deception and disillusionment.

This book is not the boss of my shit.

These characters dance when I tell them to dance. They leap, cackle, fuck and punch because I jolly well told them to and if they don’t do as I say I will have them nibbled to death by marmots.

This plot is knotted tight in the configuration I demand. With it I shall tie a noose, and with that noose I shall hang my fears and uncertainties by the neck until they void their bowels and their legs quit kickin’.

These words march in the order I choose. They are my little bitches, cobbled together of letters and made to carry heavy notions and lofty ideas and character motivations and bad-ass non-stop mad ninja action. In this way they are like ants, carrying more than they should rightfully be able to carry.

They can even be forced into sentences that no one has ever written before. “Betty Scarpetti can take pictures with her robotic hoo-hah, and those pictures will steal your dreams and sell them to goblins working the Secret Carnival down in the parking lot of the Piggly Wiggly.” See? Nobody has ever written that before. Every word journey is a Journey West. I am Lewis, and I am Clark. I am not the Donner Party.

I recognize that writing a novel is hard. And I don’t give a lemur’s left foot. I don’t give a good goddamn. I don’t give two shits in a wicker basket. The best things in life are hard. Like hunting pterodactyls. Like getting married. Like climbing a mountain and building a ladder to the moon. Like raising children. Like raising robotic children. Like making a golem who will build a robot who will raise your robot children.

Writing a novel is hard because it needs to be hard. If it was easy, every jackalope with chalk dust on his fingers would write an epic masterpiece on his cave wall.

I am like a crazy mountain goat, clambering to heights no man should go.

I can almost see the top now. The pinnacle awaits.

This book is almost complete. But challenges shall dog my every step.

My hamstrings might snap like high-tension cables and take out one of my eyes. My back may bend and bow until my scoliosis allows me to pleasure myself with my mouth. My knee caps might shoot off, striking a Yeti in the eye which makes him really mad and so he comes over and tears both of my arms off and beats me about the head and neck with my own gore-spewing limbs. My mind may crumble under the assault, driven to the very precipice of sanity, staring down into the deepest yawning yawping abyss and as the Yeti howls and my synapses fire I will smell the scent of funeral flowers wafting up from that abyss and I will find it peaceful and comfortable and will realize how easy it would be to just pivot my hips just-so and go tumbling down into that satisfying darkness, the darkness of ease, the darkness of acquiescence, the milk-livered niddering darkness of sweet sweet cowardice.

But I will do no such thing.

I will soldier on.

I will grab one of my severed arms in my teeth.

I will flail my neck around until I slug the Yeti in his Yeti balls with one of my own dismembered limbs, and I will watch as he cries, “MROOOOOooooo!” and pirouettes into the chasm of shadow, clutching his junk.

I will reattach my arms with the duct tape I wisely brought from home.

I will hammer my spine straight with a rock I found on the ground.

I will tie my busted-ass hamstrings around my recently-reattached arms, and I shall puppet my own legs as if I am a Marionette, and I shall puppeteer those legs so that they step over the yawning abyss.

I will sally forth until I have this book by the balls and by the throat.

I am the Commander of these words.

I am the King of this story.

I am the God of this place.

I am a writer, and I will finish the shit that I started.

I am fairly certain this can be adapted for programmers, too. (source)

Letter to Obama

Okay, so I try to leave things not related to my backpacking trips or backpacking in general on here, but this seemed like a worthy way of getting the word out.

My acquaintance Simone Youngblood wrote this letter to President Obama for her Great-Grandfather. Please read it and pass it along to anyone you think might might forward it further to the world and to the President's ears.

http://www.simonesoasis.com/2009/09/my-letter-to-barack-obama-on-behalf-of.html

Thanks.

Trip Report: Pt. Reyes

Due to unforeseen delays at work I didn't leave until almost 5. Fortunately Alice had finished packing the food and gear to get us out of town as quickly as possible. Despite some traffic in Davis, we made good time.

We stopped at Moylan's Brewery for dinner. It is amazingly hard to be that close to good beer and not get some because you know it will be a bad idea.

We made it to Pt. Reyes about 9:30pm. We took a look at the map we had brought and oriented between that and the map at HQ. We wound up following my brilliant direction and taking the Horse Trail to Sky Camp, because I thought it would be more gradual. This lead us on a 3 mile detour where we found out just crappy the maps printed from the National Geographic kiosks at REI can be.

We finally stumbled upon a trail marker that showed the way to Sky Camp. From there it was a steep climb, in the dark, up to nearly the peak of Mt. Wittenberg. Alice impressed me with her perseverance in the face of adversity and my stupidity.

We finally got to Sky camp around 1:30am. We set up camp quickly and passed out.

Now, you, my dear reader, may remember from my trip report that we were going to get up around 6am, race down the mountain to HQ and try to secure a camp permit for Coast Camp. That didn't happen. We finally got out of bed after being rudely woken at the ungodly hour of 9:30 by our neighbors packing up and leaving camp. We grabbed a couple Clif bars and hit the trail to get back to HQ to (hopefully) get a permit for Saturday night at Coast Camp.

This time we took the Meadow Trail to the Bear Valley Trail. Following trails in daylight is much easier. We arrived at HQ and fortunately they still had permits available for Coast. Oddly enough, we wound up in site 7 in both camps.

We hiked back to Sky Camp via the Meadow Trail again, bemoaning that we seemed to gain more elevation than we lost the entire way. Upon returning to Sky Camp, we broke camp and had a late lunch.

From there we headed out to Coast Camp. We started North on Sky Trail, then took the Fire Lane Trail to the camp. The trail was beautiful, with several low hills providing vistas of the surrounding park and Drake's Bay. There were even these sections where the trees knitted together over the trail, like a tunnel or arbor.

The hills rolled along, seemingly taunting us will brilliant views at the peak, but another hill looming ahead. Finally after about five miles of zig-zagging elevation we reached Coast Camp. We gratefully dropped our gear, switched into swimsuits, and wandered down to the beach.

The wind whipped along the beach. There were small waves, close to shore, with a vicious curl promising undertow and riptide. We walk a ways along the beach and decided that it was too early for a fire and and too cold to swim.

Alice and I returned to camp to setup the tent and prepare dinner. We made Pad Thai from Backpacker's Pantry; I highly recommend their food now. We made a few additions of more spices and extra peanut butter, but this is minor and the food was good as is.

The sun had just started to set as we finished off dinner. We headed once more to the beach to start the evening's pyrotechnics. (Okay, so it was just a fire, but "pyrotechnics" sounds cooler.) We found a segment of what looked like a telephone pole and hauled it over to where we wanted. We foraged for some wood and were fortunate enough to stumble upon someone's cache. I dug a small pit on the lee side of the log and set up a small lean-to with some dry grass as tinder.

After burning through all of the tinder, we sacrificed a piece of reading I had brought with us: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070503/012939.shtml. We ripped the paper up into little pieces and mixed them in with some small, dry twigs. Using our bodies as windscreens we lit the paper and kept it going to get the twigs burn. We kept putting on bigger and bigger pieces until the fire was roaring.

The wind whipped along the beach so fast that the smoke from the fire stayed at ground level as far as we could see. It made the fire a bit less cozy to cough in the smoke, but it was nice to have anyway.

We met a family on the beach. It was two brothers and their families, about 10 in total. The kids were having a great time running up and down the beach. One of the brothers and his sister-in-law joined us by the fire to warm up. We talked a bit mentioned that we had worn ourselves out in the last two days of hiking and weren't looking forward to hiking back out the 10 or so miles tomorrow. Pete, the brother (though I guess you figured that, there aren't too many women named Pete), offered to give a ride the next morning out to the Pt. Reyes Headquarters.

We slept in a little the next morning, getting up around 9am. We struck camp and made breakfast and headed out a little after 10am.

We followed the Coast Trail back towards the Pt. Reyes Hostel. The trail was nice, mostly level with a good view of the beach along the way. We leap-frogged with some of Pete's family who were on bikes with the kids. Th kids kept stopping for various reasons (catching frogs in the streams, bathroom breaks, etc.) allowing us to pass them at times.

Eventually, we met up with Pete in the parking lot. They were able to cram us into an already overloaded minivan and drove us back to our car at HQ.

The pictures are at my Picasa page at http://picasaweb.google.com/jheckey/Pt_reyes#.

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So that was it. The last trip of the year. Trinity got canceled without notice and this post has been in limbo for the better part of a month.

I do intend to continue updating this blog with future trips. I think, though, next year I will just try for one or two short trips like these and one good long trip for 6 days or so. It'll be interesting.

Thanks for reading and following along on my journey. Thanks to all of those who joined me, and I hope to see you in the next year!

Pt Reyes Flight Plan

The Emigrant Wilderness trip has been replaced by Pt. Reyes. Yay!

Alice (who has been kind enough to work on the reservations) and I will be heading out from Sacramento around 4pm on Friday, August 28. We should arrive around 6:30-7pm. From there we'll hike in about 1.8 mi to Sky Camp, set up camp and have dinner.

From there it gets a little interesting. Since we're making reservations so close to our trip, we were only able to secure Sky for Friday. We are hoping to be able to get a spot at Coast Camp for Saturday, but that is contingent on being able to fill a cancellation. If there aren't any cancellations, we can try to get the ranger station at around 6am on Satuday and get one of the two day passes that keep open. If that doesn't work, the plans will shift accordingly.

We'll definitely be headed back by Sunday night.

By the way, this is Alice.

More Schedule Changes

Since no one else has signed up for the remaining trips, I have decided to reschedule them so that my girlfriend, Alice, can come with me. A couple of you have expressed interest in coming on some of these trips, so hopefully these dates and locations work better.

Emigrant Wilderness has been cancelled. Instead, we will be heading out August 28-30 to a currently undetermined location. We'll probably go somewhere in the Bay Area/North Bay. Suggestions welcome.

Mammoth/Devil's Post Pile has been moved to September 19-21, and the new location is probably Trinity.

Let me know if you're interested in coming with us!

Desolation Wilderness Trip Report

So this was the perfect backpacking trip. Matt will confirm.

We arrived at the Echo Lakes parking lot at around 6:30 on Friday. John was kind enough to prepare some BBQ chicken for dinner, along with a couple bottles of very nice wine. Matt and Janet brought along some salad and a bunt cake to round out the meal.

We camped just outside of the parking lot in a small area, hoping to avoid the rain that threatened from some nearby clouds. Fortunately, we managed to miss the rain drops and had a comfortable first night.

In the morning we took our time making breakfast and getting packed up. I made chorizo and eggs for those who wanted it. Those who didn't shall remain nameless to protect the guilty. :)

We broke camp and hit the trail about 9:30am. The trail cut close to Lower Echo Lake and wandered along the mountainside. It rolled slightly along the trail, but it was mostly level.

The lake is rimmed by small cabins and had a few boaters out waterskiing and innertubing. This somewhat detracted from the "Getting-Away-From-It-All" ideal, but it was still somewhat relaxing because of a distinct vacation vibe.


The trail had some minor ups and downs while tracing Echo Lakes, but started climbing quickly as we got near Lake Tamarack. The trail along the mountainside up to the plateau was paved with skree, which is small to medium chunks of broken rock. Or, as I like to think of it, ankle-twisting fun time. This was probably my least favorite part of the hike.

After cresting the high point of the trail, it was only about 1.5 miles of mostly downhill hiking through some very pretty forest to Lake Aloha. It is worth mentioning that the same PR firm that named Iceland named Desolation Wilderness. It is (at least this time of year) lush and green, full of dense stands of trees and rolling meadows.

Lake Aloha is a large, shallow lake, full of small islands of rock jutting up all over. It is located in a small valley, surrounded by several peaks. The peaks themselves were covered in morraine and rubble. Honestly, that was most desolate part of the whole trip.

We hiked along the east side of the lake less than a quarter mile before finding a nice spot to camp. Upon dropping my pack, I instinctively found the most comfortable boulder and laid down. After a brief rest, I declared that my bed for the night.

We spent a little while filling water containers. The lake itself was warm by alpine standards (about 65 F), so it was great for swimming. The deepest part of the lake I saw was about 14 feet. It was right next to an island rising about 10 feet out of the water. So I got to work on my swan dive. :)

After relaxing by the lake for a while, Matt, Janet and I took a short walk along the lake, catching up and snapping pictures of anything that looked pretty (that is, everything). Both Matt and Janet have Canon SLR cameras, though the one Janet was carrying had been modified for infra-red pictures. The infra-red shots look very cool on the built in screen, and they should be even cooler once they've been processed.

We came back and spent a while puttering about. We got the tents set up, and started dinner. I swapped refried beans with Tom and John for some of their enchiladas, so that worked out. BTW, Winco has dehydrated refried beans for cheap and they are good and filling. That and a couple tortillas makes for some good and easy camp food.

Matt spent some time setting up and playing with the cameras to get some pictures of the stars. He got some pretty good pics, too.

In the morning we made some breakfast and coffee (thanks Tom!) and slowly reassembled our packs. We broke camp about 9:15am. The trip back was quicker, but we still took our time, not really wanting to go home. The skree-lined trail was even more treacherous, what with faster, heavier footfalls.

Towards the end of the trail we were reminded, forcibly, of exactly how much downhill we did on the way in. It just seemed to keep going up, despite the fact that the lake was right there! We kept thinking we reached the top, only to go around a slight bend and find more up! It was frustrating to be so close, and yet keep having to work harder and harder.

At last, we reached the parking lot around 1:30pm. We celebrated a successful and enjoyable with a milkshake from the general store. (Hmm, maybe there is a reason I never seem to lose weight on backpacking trips.)

The rest of the photos can be seen at my Picasa page: http://picasaweb.google.com/jheckey/DesolationWilderness#

Happy Trails!

Desolation Wilderness Flight Plan

The Desolation Wilderness trip will follow the Pacific Crest Trail from Hwy 50 and Echo Lakes up to Lake Aloha. Friday night we will camp off of 50. On Saturday morning we will leave from Hwy 50 and hike about 6 miles in to Lake Aloha; we'll gain about 800 feet. On Sunday we will hike out by the same route.

The group going will be Tom McGinley, John Chute, and Matt and Janet Davis. Thanks for the company guys!

The Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit is in charge of Desolation Wilderness/El Dorado National Forest. They can be reached at (530) 543-2600. If we don't make it out by Monday, please call them and send a rescue party.