The Mountains Are Calling. Don't Answer.
In Which Effie Takes to the Forest
Back in my younger, shinier days, I dreamed of being a travel writer for National Geographic. When I realized that distinguishing myself from the thousands of other applicants and freelancers meant undertaking some sort of death-defying activity, such as hurling myself into a bottomless pit in Mexico, I pivoted and began writing satire.
Eventually, I met a man whose dream was to be one of those dads who carry their baby in a $200 backpack purchased at REI. He agreed to hike 500 miles on our honeymoon, then actually followed through on it. This assured me that he was sufficiently insane for my purposes. We returned home, purchased an Osprey Poco SLT Child Carrier, and then made a baby to put in it.
Recently, my husband was finally able to achieve his dream and haul our bundle of joy around Yosemite National Park in California. This was our first outdoorsy trip with a baby (ex-utero), and we went into it with all the incandescent optimism of first-time parents who haven’t quite realized that their lives have made a complete 180-degree turn. So here’s my bid for a spot on National Geographic’s front page, having undertaken a death-defying activity not even the bravest spelunkers would attempt: Baby in Yosemite.
Our initial intention was to drift peacefully around the valley’s flat loop trails, designed for unambitious tourists who just want to see some big old waterfalls. That was fine with us! We have a kid now, we said—no need to go crazy here. We’ll walk the meadows, watch the changing light on Half Dome, then let the baby splash around in the river while we sip cold IPAs and eat sandwiches. No overexertion required. Does this sound ominous? Because it should.
Within hours, we found ourselves attempting a (presumably) quick, mile-long jaunt to see what the authors of the Yosemite hiking brochure called a “spectacular view” from a rock partway up the Upper Yosemite Falls trail. We’d done the pleasant, flat, half-mile Lower Falls trail, where we’d arrived at the base of the thundering cascade and wondered, “did we even earn this?” That’s the twisted logic of hikers, folks. Don’t worry — we weren’t quite stupid enough to embark on the whole trail, which was 3 miles one way with a 3000-ft elevation gain, but we were stupid enough to forget that one-third of the trail would mean one-third of the elevation gain.
This trail almost broke me, and I wasn’t carrying the fattest baby in the world on my back. To my husband’s credit, he had begun the hike with great courage. “Are you sure you want to do this?” I said. “You carried this kid for nine months,” he replied with chivalric flair. “I can handle a couple hours.” He repeated the same phrase with similar flair to several middle-aged women on the trail, all of whom remarked on his fortitude and then fell immediately in love with him when he showed himself to be a feminist ally. Half an hour and two dozen switchbacks later, sweating and straining, he spoke directly to our son. “I wish you were the same weight that you were in mom’s tummy.” I couldn’t even protest.
About ¾ of the way up, the baby began to fuss, and then finally to scream. At first my husband’s thought was to power through, but about 20 feet ahead with a baby screaming in his ear, he surrendered and took off the pack. I lifted the kid up and out for a little break, whereupon the tyke let loose a series of thunderous farts. As the stench cleared and the baby quieted, we paused for a moment to reflect on what we had done. We looked down to see that we were very high above our starting point, which was impressive, but also meant that there was no going back without shame and regret. “How much further to the viewpoint from Columbia Rock?” We asked the descending hordes. Most had no idea what that even was, which did not bode well. One lady checked her trail map and said “about a mile,” which was baffling, considering that the whole trail up to the rock was supposed to be a mile and we’d been hiking for nearly 40 minutes.
Finally, a German couple made a solid German guess. “Perhaps it is about 20 minutes more?” they remarked. That’s 20 normal minutes, 20 minutes without a baby. But we took that as a sign to forge on.
A few minutes ahead, we broke treeline and were suddenly hiking in the full blaze of an afternoon sun. The myriad stone steps, which had once seemed so cruel, had disappeared, leaving us with only loose sand and a sheer cliff to our right. We were idiots, we agreed. But soon we would be idiots with a “spectacular view.”
It was, of course, a spectacular view. The rock was unmarked, with no signage proclaiming its name or our victory. But it seemed to match the description in the brochure and boasted a fancy set of metal rails to prevent eager viewers or eight-month-old babies (surely there were many) from plunging off the edge. My husband was, at first, unconvinced that this was really our destination, but I assured him in no uncertain terms that we were at the right place and there would be no hiking ahead to fact-check.
All in all, this could reasonably be considered a success. The way down comprised of several near-misses, but they were misses! No slips or slides off the edge of the cliff occurred. And once we’d made it back to solid ground, we agreed that it “wasn’t so bad.” Memory loss is a beautiful thing.
Two days later, we found ourselves at a Marriott in Tehachapi about two hours away. A middle-aged Australian couple joined us on the elevator. They were an odd pair to behold. The woman, tall and lanky, was limping and wincing with each step. The man was short and tanned, with a singular black eyebrow that looked as though it might crawl off his forehead any minute.
My husband and I were dressed as unostentatiously as possible, so when the man made a comment about our clothing, I thought he was some sort of fashion mogul making fun of us. But he himself was wearing hiking shorts and a simple black t-shirt, and when he began to mumble self-consciously about having “mailed his good clothes ahead,” a lightbulb went off in my head. “Are you hiking?” I asked. “Yes!” he said. “Aren’t you?” said the woman.
As it turns out, they’d mistaken us for hikers on the Pacific Crest Trail. At first I was flattered, but when I caught a glimpse of their feet I wondered what exactly had made them think we were a part of their insanity. They said it was my husband’s hat, but that seems implausible. Perhaps it was those large undereye bags that are the special property of new parents and also people who have been hiking through the Mojave Desert for 36 days.
If you haven’t heard of the PCT, it’s an exercise in masochism reserved only for the truly deranged. It stretches from the Mexican to the Canadian border, a grand total of 2650 miles that crosses over several mountain ranges. You might hit a town once every couple of weeks, but otherwise you’re camping out and eating trail food. So what we thought was a nothing stop in a dusty old desert town might as well have been Mecca to these people. We chatted with them for the short duration of our walk from the elevator to the car park and watched them limp into the sunset toward an Arby’s. Boy, do I ever remember that feeling of returning to civilization after a long day’s hike. I wouldn’t touch an Arby’s with a 10-foot pole on a normal day, but after hiking several hundred miles through the desert in temperatures reaching upwards of 110 degrees? Give it to me, baby. I want the meats.
Here’s the worst part of this whole thing: I actually envied them. Even though they explicitly said they regret hiking the PCT almost every day, even though I personally know the feeling of aching feet and running out of water in the middle of God knows where, I wanted the chance to hike that godforsaken trail.
At breakfast that morning, we were surrounded by dozens of young, bronzed gods and goddesses decked out in Patagonia and limping over to the buffet to heap their plates with wet eggs. What to us was mid-tier fare was to them a feast of Valhallian proportions. All they’d had to do was nearly kill themselves to achieve this special privilege of being excited for a continental breakfast.
“We could do that with the baby in the backpack, don’t you think?” I said to my husband, who turned to me with the pleading weariness of a kicked puppy. I dropped the subject and finished my bowl of oatmeal.
The moral of this story is, well, I don’t know. Make of it what you will. Perhaps my husband and I will never learn, and you’ll catch us in two decades with a gaggle of 12 children, through-hiking the Appalachian Trail. And no matter the misery, once it’s over, we’ll say we’d do it all over again without hesitation.
-E.S.F.
When our oldest was two we took him hiking at a place called Kennedy Meadows. The trail gains about a thousand feet in elevation (I think). It’s north of Yosemite in the Emigrant Wilderness. My husband has horse thighs and a back like a bull so that got us through with the pack. But the toddler did get out and hike a mile on his own. We were very proud and def had people looking at us like we’d lost our minds.
My husband isn’t really a hiker but he’ll do it for me about twice a year. Someday, I’ll hike part of the PCT, which he thinks is the dumbest thing anyone could do, but that’s kinda part of the fun 🤩