The Sierra Nevada

The Sierra Nevada is a superlative range. Almost 400 miles long from Tehachapi Pass to where it fades into the Cascade Range just north of the Feather River, and from 50 to 80 miles wide, it is the longest single mountain range (as opposed to a mountain system) in the continental United States. Within that purview you will find the largest trees, the most temperate summer climate, the greatest snow depths, the mightiest escarpment, (arguably) the deepest canyon, and the highest waterfalls in the United States. Its rivers water the richest agricultural region, and its placers and quartz veins produced and still hoard the richest gold deposits. The highest U.S. mountain outside of Alaska is Mount Whitney, a Sierra summit. The oldest large-scale public park to be established by the federal government - the nation's first national park, if you will - were the combined parcels of Yosemite Valley and the Wawona Grove of giant sequoias, signed over to the state of California by Abraham Lincoln in 1864, eight years before Congress created Yellowstone National Park.

What sets the Sierra Nevada apart from other landscapes, however, owes more to the testimony of the senses than to factual assessments. For anyone even moderately receptive to the beauty of mountain landscapes, the Sierra Nevada offers a lifetime of enthralling study, pleasure, and recreation. No matter where you go, there is always something extraordinary. The scent of pungent mountain misery is every bit as heady as the aroma of deep pine forests or sagebrush basins. The dazzling wildflower pastures of Butte County in spring, or of Carson Pass in summer, give way to the dazzling autumnal leaf displays of the eastern canyons of Mono, Alpine, and Inyo Counties. The widest, most sublime of Sierra vistas evokes a sense of wonder no less engaging than the most exquisite details that lie immediately under our noses: a trailside rock garden, that delicious scent of sun-warmed Jeffrey pine, bumblebees sheltering from rain under the umbels of a blooming flower stalk, the fat marmot who lives atop Mount Whitney.

The Sierra Nevada is much, much more than a sum of its peaks. When you stand before the majesty of a soaring alpine summit, spare some thought for the broad belts of desert, forest, and foothill that cushion your solitude; the lower canyons that carry the streams and their sediments away from the highlands; the boreal larders of food and shelter for wildlife. The western foothills and forests are a prelude to the High Sierra, the east-side deserts its grand finale. By extension, the degradation of the foothills also degrades the High Sierra, for the failing health of one zone infringes upon the next and weakens the whole.

John Muir extolled this extraordinary richness of the Sierra Nevada in his writings. He recognized the rare magic of these mountains at his first glimpse, as he crossed the Coast Ranges en route from San Francisco to Yosemite, and the Sierra never disappointed him:

At my feet lay the Great Central Valley of California, level and flowery, like a lake of pure sunshine, forty or fifty miles wide, five hundred miles long, one rich furred garden of yellow Compositae. And from the eastern boundary of this vast golden flower-bed rose the mighty Sierra, miles in height, and so gloriously colored and so radiant it seemed not clothed with light, but wholly composed of it, like the wall of some celestial city. Along the top and extending a good way down, was a rich pearl-gray belt of snow; below it a belt of blue and dark purple, marking the extension of the forests; and stretching along the base of the range a broad belt of rose purple; all these colors, from the blue sky to the yellow valley smoothly blending as they do in a rainbow, making a wall of light ineffably fine. Then it seemed to me that the Sierra should be called, not the Nevada or Snowy Range, but the Range of LIght. And after ten years of wandering and wondering in the heart of it, rejoicing in its glorious floods of light, the white beams of the morning streaming through the passes, the noonday radiance on the crystal rocks, the flush of the alpenglow, and the irised spray of countless waterfalls, it still seems above all others the Range of Light.

The mountains have a way of kneading and slapping life back into an existence wearied and dulled by too much city living. Who needs a personal trainer when you can hike a Sierra peak? Who needs a stiff belt down at Joe's when the stinging shock of a cold wind off a high snowbank, or even a damp grass stain on the seat of your britches, bellows out that you are a vibrant part of the planet? Hiking the Sierra Nevada is not always a romp through posy fields. The mountains can parch you, exhaust you, freeze you, drench you, wear holes in the knees of your trousers, or break your bones with complete indifference, though never with malice. A week on its trails has a wondrous way of shifting priorities back into their proper places, of reminding us of the preeminent excellence of simple things - dry clothes, rest, food, water, camaraderie, a campfire. Our ancient ancestors ranked such basic commodities highest among life's happiest and most precious attainments. Bring along a good book or a guitar, and we can add to that state of bliss a touch of high culture, too.