A Pilgrimage to Yosemite

I’m back from a vacation to California, highlighted by a visit to Yosemite National Park.

I call it a vacation, but it was a pilgrimage as much my trips to Brú Na Bóinne or Orkney. There was a call, a journey, and a spiritual experience. My travel-related blog posts tend to not be well-read, but this is more than a travelogue – this is a report on a spiritual experience, the kind I encourage everyone to share.

This was my pilgrimage.

A very brief history of Yosemite

Yosemite National Park is roughly the size of Rhode Island. Like most visitors, I spent most of my time in Yosemite Valley, a much smaller area. The valley was formed by a combination of volcanic and other geological activity over hundreds of millions of years and glacial activity over two million years.

The area was first occupied by the Ahwahneechee people, who were forcibly removed in the years of the California gold rush. The land was set aside for public use by an act of Congress in 1864. In 1903 President Theodore Roosevelt spent three nights camping at Yosemite with naturalist John Muir, which led to Yosemite becoming a national park.

And that’s all the history I’m going to talk about. If you want more, see the National Park Services page or the Wikipedia page.

A call to visit

I don’t love Nature because I’m a Druid – I’m a Druid because I love Nature. And while Nature is everywhere, some places are special. Some are special because important things happened there, either in natural history or in human history. Some are special because they’re a connection to the world of spirit. And some places are special simply because they’re beautiful.

Is beauty an inherent quality or is it a human value judgement? I’ll leave that question to the philosophers. For me, beauty can be found in all land, but some places are especially beautiful. In this country, we’ve turned many of those places into national parks.

Yosemite has been on my list to visit for longer than I can remember. It’s not particularly easy to get to for someone living in Texas, much less when I lived farther east.

Cathy and I planned to visit in 2020. You know what happened to that trip. I very much wanted to go to Europe this year. But we decided to give the pandemic (and the countermeasures) one more year and stay in the U.S. Cathy suggested resurrecting the 2020 itinerary, and when she did, something clicked. I was supposed to go to Yosemite this year.

And so we began booking the trip.

Yosemite wasn’t the only stop on this trip. I’m probably going to write about one other place sooner or later, for very different reasons. But it was the highlight.

The journey is never alone

The journey is part of a pilgrimage. It certainly was in earlier times, when traveling was slow and hazardous. It still is today.

I’m reluctant to label all difficulties as “tests” or even as “learning experiences.” Most times they’re simply the randomness of life asserting itself in unpleasant ways. If there is meaning in them, it’s the meaning we assign to them.

I assign no spiritual meaning to the fact that three days into the trip, we got a call that our 17-year-old cat hadn’t eaten anything since she got to the boarding facility. We’ve boarded her at least once every year of her life with no problem, including several stays at this place. I still don’t know what went wrong – it may just be an old cat being old.

I called fellow Denton Pagan and ADF Druid Lauren Mart. Lauren drove 90 miles round trip, picked up our cat, took her home with her, and took care of her till we got back. She started eating and was fine till we got back.

I often write about the need for strong local groups and local communities. Internet friends are real friends. But internet friends can’t save your cat. Without Lauren’s help, we would have had to rush back before having seen Yosemite.

Pilgrimage is a personal thing, but it’s not a solitary thing. There are your traveling companions, there are the people you meet along the way, and there are those who make it possible for you to make the trip in the first place… or in this case, those who make it possible to finish the trip.

Wonder and awe

Part of me thinks I should just post this picture and let that stand as this section of the blog post. But while a picture may say a thousand words, it can’t completely communicate the emotion of seeing something like this for the first time – the emotion of being there.

For me, this was the classic experience of wonder and awe, an overwhelming feeling of joy and amazement. For all that I’ve thought about visiting Yosemite over the course of my life, I’ve never seen many pictures of it. I don’t know if I was subconsciously saving the experience, or if other people’s words were enough at the time. I just know I loved it.

This was an entirely naturalistic experience. Knowing the science and history behind Yosemite Valley did nothing to diminish its immensity.

The spiritual experience came later.

El Capitan is on the left – we saw some rock climbers while we were there. It takes most people multiple days to climb it, meaning they have to sleep on the rockface. Half Dome is in the middle – it can be hiked/climbed in one (very long) day. Bridalveil Fall is in the right foreground, except you can’t see it because there’s almost no water going over the falls. Yosemite Falls (not in this picture) was completely dry.

This view was worth everything it took in time, money, and energy to get there.

The message

Now I need to tell a bit of backstory: I didn’t want to take this trip. Oh, I wanted to see Yosemite. I just didn’t want to do the things it took to get there.

Not because I really wanted to go to Europe. And not because I had any sort of premonition or other intuition warning me not to go. I still don’t completely understand why I didn’t want to go. I don’t know if it was spiritual, or psychological, or if my tolerance for “adventures” (i.e. – unexpected difficulties) is getting low in my old age.

I had to make myself get out of bed the morning we left. I never seriously considered blowing off a day’s activities and just hanging out at the hotel, but I thought about it. A lot.

Every morning I thought about how I didn’t want to do what we had planned. Every day I thoroughly enjoyed the day’s activities. And every night I thought about how I didn’t want to do what we had planned for the next day.

I went out to make offerings the evening after our first day in Yosemite. This was a special offering to Cernunnos, special for several reasons. As I always do when making offerings, I pause to listen. Most times I “hear” a polite acknowledgement. Sometimes a word of encouragement. Other times an instruction to do this or that.

This time I heard Him loud and clear: “go do these things!” Except it wasn’t quite in words, and it was much more than a simple order. It wasn’t just about the next day’s travel plans – it was about the direction for the rest of my life.

Spiritual entropy is a real thing. You get used to doing something and so you do it all the time. You stop doing anything else. And then you forget why you started doing it in the first place, you gradually stop doing it, and before you know it you’re spiritually dead.

I think there’s a whole blog post in that, but it needs more meditation first. Probably a lot of meditation.

There was more – some general and some very specific – that’s too personal to write about. I’m writing about this because I’m guessing I’m not the only one who needs to be reminded that sometimes we have to go and do even thought we don’t feel like it, even though we’re afraid something bad will happen, even though we’re concerned – many times legitimately – that where we’re going won’t be as good as where we already are.

I heard the same message again several times, in offerings to other persons and in general meditation.

I think that means it’s important.

If you go

Like many of our national parks, Yosemite is very popular, which leads to overcrowding. Reservations are required to enter the park between 6 AM and 4 PM, May 20 through September 30. Even in the off-season, parking is limited. Park once and take the free shuttles from place to place. Or take a bus tour.

Lodging inside the park is very limited and sells out far in advance. Same for camping spots. Some activities require permits, and some permits – like for hiking Half Dome – are issued on a lottery basis.

Snow in higher elevations can close some roads anytime outside the summer. Tioga Pass was closed when we got there – it reopened the next day. Glacier Point Road is closed for reconstruction until sometime next Spring.

Going in late October was great for us, except the park was very dry. I’d like to go back sometime in the late Spring when the snowmelt has the waterfalls running.

And I really want to go back.