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Maybe the landscape depressed me, or maybe I was just tired. In any case, I had to pull off the highway a couple of times to nap and to buy a coffee. Each time I found myself in a sprawling strip mall. But the malls seemed to be doing a good trade. Many of the parking spaces were occupied with gleaming new vehicles. I asked myself, what on earth do people do here? In fact, that is probably the question I ask myself most frequently. I understand that in cities people work in finance and everything else supports that, or them, in one way or another. And in the countryside people farm, and there is an infrastructure to support that. But the majority of industrialised nations are not composed solely of cities and farmland, and yet people seem to live prosperously all over. So what do they do? Cottage industries are fine and good, but surely not everyone can live off sewing patchwork quilts, or carving Dalarna horses, or clotting cream. It really baffles me.
It was dark when I arrived in Yosemite. I parked my car at the campsite on the valley floor. On either side impossibly tall trees leant their distant tops against each other. In the moonlight the effect was like an arboreal cathedral. The valley floor was strewn with extraordinarily heavy, sticky, oversize pine cones.
I slept in my car and woke early the next morning. I left the campsite at first light, bound for the smooth granite knuckle of the half dome. After half an hour’s walking I came face to face with a black bear. He ignored me and I photographed him. I continued up to the half dome and took Ansel Adams type pictures along the way. I barely saw another soul all day. It was very peaceful on the summit.
I returned to my car at about half past three and was back in San Francisco in time for dinner. What a place this is.
