I was 26 years old and sitting in the back seat of a government issue SUV with a Yosemite National Park Service sticker slapped on the side of it. I wore a flimsy baseball cap with the words “Yosemite Climber Steward” printed on the front, and a little patch that displayed a caricature of Yosemite Valley.
As a Yosemite Climber Steward, I made $40 a week in food stipends and got free camping in the valley for 6 weeks. It was one of the best deals I’d made in a long time. Even with gas being $4.50 per gallon.
Sitting in the driver’s and passenger’s seat in front of me was Brandon and Bud, two of the climbing rangers. We were driving The Valley Loop Road on our way towards El Cap Meadow to start our “Ask a Climber” program. I’d stand at the base of El Cap for four hours and answer questions that tourists had about rock climbing. During this time we’d answer everything from “how do you get the ropes up there” to “why would you do something like this?”
We take another familiar bend in the road, and for a moment the profile of El Cap is revealed through a gap in the trees. In unison, I watch as Brandon and Bud lean forward and look up. The motion is instinctual, having been practiced on the hundreds of times they’ve driven this road. To an outsider, it would have looked choreographed, the perfect timing of their lean, the exact same angle of their torsos, and the silence they maintained. Neither man spoke beforehand, and neither spoke during the eight long seconds in which we had that perfect view. I knew their eyes were searching out any information they could glean from those eight precious seconds. They held their breath, scanning the more than 3,000 feet of granite in milliseconds, and then let it out in a soft sigh as the trees obscured their view once more. They sat back in their seats in perfect harmony and resumed a calm sort of boredom that envelops all government workers at the end of a long season.
I stifle a laugh, the two men in front of me oblivious to how the scene played out.
Why look? Why take your eyes away from the road, in Brandon’s case, for an incomplete glimpse of a rock that we were about to spend four hours standing in front of? Why the habitual lean and stare? Why are they compelled to look? To see?
We pulled up to El Cap Meadow and began unloading the SUV. Above us towered one of the most prominent and beautiful pieces of granite in the world. At 3,000 feet tall and over a mile and a half wide, El Cap has a way of capturing your attention.
Anyone who stands at the base can be struck by its beauty. I will eat my government-issued hat if there is ever a person who stands before El Capitan and is unimpressed.
Standing at its base, your language betrays you. We don’t have words for the size, for the complexity of what you’re seeing. Is it a mountain? No. A mountain protrudes up out of the ground, it has a peak and a summit, El Cap has neither.
Is it a rock? There are rock climbers on it after all. The nature of their vocation implies that this must be a rock. But although rock is what it is made of, it feels desperately lacking, leading on ludicrous, to call El Cap simply a “rock”.
Is it a cliff? I find that most people settle on cliff. Although as you look up, it is difficult to make the word fit right in your mouth.
The White Cliffs of Dover, the Cliffs of Insanity, going “cliff” jumping. These things almost, but not quite, encompass what El Capitan is. A cliff is something you get to, and can no longer proceed forward. A cliff is where the sidewalk ends, a cliff is where land stops and ocean begins, a cliff is a finality.
But looking up at the expanse of what is in front of me, it is obvious that El Cap is not an end.
A cliff is an ending, and rock climbers know that El cap is just the beginning.
To sit and stare at El Cap is to have your eyes deceive you as well. The first time I sat and looked at it I saw only the ocean of granite in front of me. It was a cornerstone, a monolith, one part of a whole in the rock faces that made up this beautiful valley.
But as you stare longer, your eyes reveal so much more than you thought was there. Is it a trick of the light? That ledge couldn’t have been there before, could it? That water streak that looks like a lightning bolt can’t have just appeared? The heart on the left side surely wasn’t present a moment ago. The snake running through the middle, that great roof, that ledge, that flake…
It feels like what I imagine learning your first language must feel like. At first, there is just noise, with no meaning or presence. But then, as one piece begins to make sense, another blooms into reality bringing more complexity than you ever thought possible.
I have never been bored staring at El Cap. And at this point in my life, I have spent at least 100 hours sitting in that meadow looking up, always looking up.
It reveals more of itself to you, and eventually, you are not looking at a rock, or a cliff, or even a wall, you are looking at a vertical city. A landscape as complicated and as varied as a world map. The things you thought were blank are actually textured and change beautifully as the sun travels around them.
Your eyes adjust to the language of the rock and you begin to absorb the highways, the freeways, and the meandering back roads that travelers take on their journeys along El Cap.
You begin to pick out the cities, where many folks congregate for long days and even longer nights. You notice the small, cramped towns that hold only a few daring souls at a time. And when you start to notice those who must camp along the side of these roads, instead of on a comfortable ledge or two, you begin to get very excited.
El cap reveals itself to you slowly, and there is always more to see. You don’t want to miss it, because the lighting will change according to the time of day and the time of year, so you might only have this one chance to see what it’s trying to show you.
This is why, when I drive along the Valley Loop Road, and I come across a short section of road where an incomplete part of El Cap is revealed to me.
I lean forward, my timing perfect, and look up for those eight precious seconds.