Kings Canyon National Park boasts many odd distinctions. It’s the least-visited national park, despite being huddled between the well known and popular Sequoia and Yosemite National Parks. It reaches deeper than the Grand Canyon and features peaks above 12,000 feet. In 2006, analysis found that Sequoia and Kings Canyon trees sequestered more carbon than visitors caused by coming to the park--something that may not be possible if trees burn.
But the park doesn’t let its underdog status bother it, treating visitors to breathtaking scenes as they climb through the foothills, montane and alpine zones. Whether taking in the rush of Mist Falls or simply struggling a bit to breathe at the top of Glen Pass (11,969 feet), Kings Canyon treats visitors like royalty. Trekking out to Rae Lakes is a more challenging but also more rewarding experience than simply driving along 180.
There are parallels between Kings Canyon and Yosemite. People have fed bears, acculturating them to humans and putting them at risk. The mere pad of hiking boots on the trail kicks up dust and wears down rock. Though it pales in comparison to the import of raging forest fires exacerbated by anthropogenic climate change, the impact of humans on the landscape is real.
My own experience along the Rae Lakes Loop in Kings Canyon was transformative. Spending the day watching trees and peaks and sky instead of my own face moving blandly on a screen started to open up parts of my mind that had sunk into themselves, canyoned, perhaps, in the perpetual stress state induced by constant movement. Being in stillness reveals just how conditioned our brains are to notice movement and, attendantly, just how stressful it is to watch movement all day on a screen.
The first night of the trip, we stayed in Upper Paradise Valley, where a bear visited our campsite --twice. The Lower Paradise Valley campground had already been closed due to bear activity, and it would appear upper is on its way. Campers chased the bear away by banging pans, yelling, and throwing rocks, influencing the land again as humans.
On the second day, we hiked slowly up and up to Rae Lakes, an impressive expanse of pristine lakes. When I hike, I often think about the people who built and maintain the trails. It can feel hard enough to simply walk along them, what about carving them out of sheer granite, or moving boulders to make boundaries? We encountered several California Conservation Corps groups performing trail maintenance, moving buckets of sand from river to trail--a seemingly fruitless endeavor, perhaps, but still somehow methodical and, ultimately, physically productive, unlike the work of pushing pixels all day long.
It turns out that, much like most anything else, trail building had a profit motive as well. According to a history of Big Trees State Park, “The initial trail-building impetus in the southern Sierra was not so much to get into the mountains as to get across them,” to reach exploitable resources. Once built, trails “opened up the southern flank of the high Sierra to sheepmen, hunters, mineral prospectors, and anyone else interested in looking at the country.”
The history continues, noting (my emphasis added in bold), “These new people [the Caucasian settlers] valued not nuts, berries, and game, but pasturelands, timber, and minerals. The new people saw nature not as a part of the same psychological world as that of humanity, but instead as something provided for their consumption and use. The new people sought not stability and equilibrium, but instead had a strong predisposition towards change, even if it involved total consumption of the places and resources at their disposal.”
During our trek to Rae Lakes, we met a family hiking along. Father, mother, son. The father told us that he’s a climate scientist and can easily see that many trees have died off due to warming since his previous hike along the John Muir Trail three years previous. His observation inspired me to track my own trips more closely, researching where I’ve been and aiming to understand climate change there. As we hiked up Glen Pass, shivering a bit in the altitude, I started thinking about writing this piece, starting this section of my website, tracking climate change on my own.
Despite sore feet and muscles and mediocre rehydrated food, I was happy during the camping trip in a way I’m not in my “normal” life sitting at a computer for hours a day. There was little negotiation, no constant one-upping, and no need to present myself in a way that dominated someone else. I didn’t have to come up with a better idea or with a politically savvy strategy. There were no winners and losers, there was just us and nature. (This ignores, of course, that nature is, in a way, losing.) Just the trail and the ongoing footsteps. Just keep moving.
Now that I’m back, I’m aiming to start this climate project and just keep it moving, chronicling new parks as I visit them and old ones as I gather information about climate change there. I recommend visiting Kings Canyon and hiking the JMT for the beauty, and to see the trees before more of them die off. If you can, I suppose you should get there in an electric car, or offset your emissions somehow, the emissions-generating process of getting to some spots ironically contributing to their not-so-slow demise.
As temperatures climb and waters flood and people die, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. But one of the most important things we can do is bear witness. Say what’s happening. Say it loud and clearly. That’s what I’m trying to do here. Will you listen?