Reymann Lake

The cold front had finally passed by August 1. Spirits lifted. I had spent the last couple of weekends being a camp slug. I couldn’t do that three weeks in a row, so I planned an overnight trip to Reymann Lake with Dewey and Derrick.

I enjoyed spending time with Dewey. There was nothing complicated about Dewey. He always saw the positive side of everything. He had quite the imagination, too. He had an imaginary Martian friend he would talk to. His Martian friend’s name was Moshkylogy (MOSH-kĭ-LOG-ee). Dewey made crew journal entries for Moshky. Dewey even demonstrated for us how the Martian language sounds. Moose even learned some Martian. She had some lively Martian conversations with Dewey! I know…it sounds weird. But Dewey had such an innocent naïveté about him that it wasn’t weird at all. It was kinda fun and added character to the crew.

Derek was an alternate who joined the crew just before we left Wawona. When he was off duty, Derek always wore his black beret and gray camo pants. Most weekends, Derek didn’t want to leave camp. He just wanted to hang out and read military history.

During the week I had been talking with Derek about being a camp slug. I was falling into a rut that I didn’t really want to be in. Derek realized that summer was passing us by and he hadn’t been out to see anything yet. I talked him into going with me to Reymann Lake, the place where I had tried to catch up with Anne and Wayne on the July 4th weekend. Dewey thought it would be a good hike and offered to join us. Since we needed three anyway for a cross country hike, it was a perfect plan. We talked about the hike for the rest of the week.

Saturday morning rolled around. I had lost almost all of my motivation for a cross country hike. Derek didn’t seem very motivated, either. Dewey, now…Dewey was motivated! He chattered all morning about going on a cross country hike with his good buddies George and Derek. I couldn’t let Dewey down. I decided to suck it up and go. Derek still wasn’t sure he wanted to go, until I pointed out that we needed three people for a cross country hike. If Derek didn’t go, Dewey and I couldn’t go, either. The guilt trip worked! We left camp right after brunch.

I already knew from my failed solo attempt over Rafferty that I had tried to cross the ridge too far south. We continued north on the Rafferty trail past the creek we saw marked on the map before we headed up the ridge. We spent the afternoon picking our way around and up our friends, the boulders. We crested the ridge in the perfect spot. We had a pretty easy decent to Reymann Lake. We found a good camping spot far enough away from the lake among some erratic boulders. Erratics are big boulders dropped in unusual places by retreating glaciers. These boulders were eight or ten feet tall. A lodgepole forest had grown up around them. We had a great time finding different routes for climbing them. One thing they all had in common…marmot scat proved they had all been used as marmot lookouts!

We spent the rest of the day lounging around the lake. Dewey took a nap under a tree. Derek read his book. I took a long time to write a short journal entry. I spent the afternoon simply slow watching.

We had a quiet dinner, talking about who we were, where we were from, and where we wanted to go. The quiet conversation continued as the sun set. Wilderness rules said that we could not have an open fire here, so when the sun went down for the night, so did we.

I was awake at sunrise the next morning, as usual. The first one awake, as usual. Sunrise has always been my favorite time of day. Darkness goes away. New light promises that anything can happen. Reymann Lake’s surface was perfectly still. Birds were starting their day. It was a beautiful time to breathe deeply of the crisp alpine air and slow watch.

Life was good.