Sierra Symphonies
- linnieaikensartist
- Jan 29
- 10 min read
Updated: Feb 22
I wrote this little descriptive story, "Sierra Symphonies" when I was a teenager after one of our annual family backpacking trips in the 1970's. I had a love-hate relationship with hiking and backpacking trips, as I have had a love-hate relationship with most things for which I have felt great passion in my life. I mean, what’s really all that glamorous about strapping 40-60 lbs. on your back, a human pack mule, only to sleep in the dirt for days on end, wipe your bottom with dried, pokey leaves or rocks, and go without a shower for nine days until your clothes can sand up by themselves? Oh yeah, that’s what makes me feel feminine all right!
Camping, hiking and backpacking were a big part of my childhood, a love I have carried with me throughout my lifetime, despite my professed aversion to our childhood training hikes. Even those hold a romanticized nostalgia for me now, for they contributed to who I became. These are some of my most cherished childhood memories, and I would one day share such experiences with my own daughter.
Nature for me was the way God wooed me to Him. I love how life is put into perspective in the mountains, especially when you are alone. It always inspires wonder at the grandeur and immensity of nature and God’s creativity, in which I am but a tiny inhabitant. The mountains feel taller, the lakes deeper and more mysterious, the weather more omnipresent, the stars closer, and even one’s campfire feels like a bright, burning star in the night. My “Wonder” painting was inspired by these perceptions.
Sierra Symphonies...
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Another Sierra's backpacking trip. Parking at Convict Lake, we hiked up six or seven grueling miles straight up the mountain to camp at Dorothy Lake. We always dreaded the trip before we started the hike, but once we're there, we'd fall in love with nature once again. At least I did. I'm not sure my sisters agree! For me, the wonder and beauty of nature was like a glorious, quiet avalanche upon the senses of my soul. Everywhere I looked the contrast of colors, lines, textures, sounds and tastes took hold of my spirit and carried me far beyond the awareness that I was really just a beast of burden, trudging up hill for untold miles. All I saw were the graceful red lines of the Manzanita branches arching out elegantly beneath a canopy of stiff, tiny medallions of green. They’d glint in the sunlight like coins, blending into the backdrop of the quartz-dusted soil of an embankment. I’d light up in wonder at the deer scat nearby, and I’d search for and spot the shiny red Manzanita berries that offered them such a delicacy in this rugged wilderness. Nature’s aromas of California Sage and Sugar Pine commingled in an exotic perfume on the afternoon breeze, with its earthy undertones of ancient, dry soil and lichen covered granite rocks. Mornings though, were marvels of immense majesty; sunrises highlighted one peak, then shifted to another, throwing the first peak into shadow once more--glorious, silent light shows for the observant. The Golden and Rainbow Trout would leap and splash in and out of the frigid glacier-fed lakes, and chipmunks would scurry busily around in their search for piñon nuts. All of it would fill my soul with wonder.
What stands out even more for me was that it was a time when my parents were at their best with us girls. There were no scoldings or harsh words. They played and laughed with us. Dad taught us all to fish, and then he’d stand with us in the thin, crisp, cheek-biting mornings kissed by God, and regaled us quietly (so as not to scare away the fish) with his own childhood stories, to our quiet giggles as he patiently went from one to the other, unwrapping our ever-tangled fishing lines. Later, we’d strip and scream and squeal with delight as we jumped into, and dared one another to dunk our whole bodies into the ice-cold lake. Those spastic water dances of flailing arms and legs were also captured in perpetuity on Super-8 movie camera. This was Mom’s excuse for not joining in on the exhilarating polar bear fun. Even so, Dad would leap out and run out of the water like a spaz and grab Mom from behind the camera, and he’d throw her over his shoulder and run back into the water, to our wild yelling and cheering through our chattering teeth.
Camping and backpacking were times of many family games. In the afternoons after returning to camp from a day hike, we’d play “Forest Tag,” designating the “hanging pine,” or “bear hang”, as “SAFE.” Dad would lope about the campsite growling and thrashing about like a big Grizzly Bear while trying to catch us. Meanwhile, we screamed and yelled in delighted fear as we ran from him. Rainy afternoons were spent holed up in the tent playing 5 Card Poker or Gin Rummy. We were all card sharks by the time we reached the ripe old age of 12.
We had fried trout and some freeze-dried vegetable wonder that managed to taste both gritty and gooey at the same time. It tasted heavenly, as most food does after a full day of activity in the mountains. In years when the trout were lean, we’d have “Dorothy Fritters,” a thick pancake-like entreé with the cornmeal originally intended for fish batter, and named for the Sierra Dorothy Lake beside which we'd often camped.
The flames crackled brightly, speckling the midnight blue sky above the campfire. We sat silently around the fire, warming our toes by its heat. We were a family of six, together enjoying another day’s end of our Sierra backpacking vacation. Drained of energy from hiking all day, and lulled into reflective moods by the mesmerizing flame dances to a crickets’ symphony, we each sat quietly lost in our own thoughts. We each sipped coffee or cocoa to warm our stomachs and wrapped our fingers around our tin Sierra Cups to warm our hands in the night chill.
While individual family members were lost in their private thoughts, Mom’s eyes scanned the faces of her four daughters. They were growing older, her eyes seemed to reflect, as they rested on each girl. I'm her oldest, already 16, the twins-15, and even her baby was now 11. Her mind filtered through memories of other Sierra trips; one where her youngest was just a small child of four or five, bouncing down the trail singing “ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall,” her oversized Raggedy Ann doll strapped to the back of her tiny backpack, its arms and legs bouncing up and down with each step. Now her little girl was well on her way to becoming a teenager. Mom dropped her eyes back to the fire and smiled to herself. She snuggled her back in closer to Dad’s chest as they sat, she in his lap, he with his arms encircling her from behind. He tightened his embrace.
The little group’s attention was momentarily shifted as a small snigger escaped from one of my sisters. Out of the corner of my eye I'd had caught one of the twins missing her mouth and pouring cocoa down her front. Other low sniggers followed around the campfire. She had been thinking of her first boyfriend at home and wishing she were there. She glanced up at the smirks of her sisters; she offered a glazed smile, wiped her sweatshirt, and returned her focus to the fire in efforts to escape back to Los Angeles, if only in her thoughts.
“Oh, she’s dreaming of her boyfriend again,” her twin explained to the other glances. “Leave her alone,” continued her older sister by 5 minutes, in her characteristic tendency to side with and speak for her twin; “She’s in LOVE.” She couldn’t help teasing her just a little; besides, everyone knew only she was allowed to give her twin a hard time.
“What are you going to do when she runs off and gets married?” A deep voice asked from behind the mother. “You two are going to have to find some man who will marry both of you so you won’t be separated.” Two cheerful eyes with a merry twinkle peeked around the mother to wink at her indignant face. We all laughed at that ridiculous thought.
Once the night sky blanketed us from the cold with the glitterati of a million stars, we’d drink hot chocolate while making up more stories, laughing quietly and singing to Mom’s acoustic guitar. Of course, we’d have to sing the requisite “On top of Old Smokey” for Dad, the only song to which he actually knew the words and could sing somewhat on key we knew since he'd more than once serenaded the family through the bathroom door when he took a bath...that and "Ghost Riders in the Sky."
As the night sky blanketed us from the cold with the glitterati of a million stars, we'd drink our hot chocolate and tell more stories, laughing and ribbing one another. Mom reached for her guitar, which was leaning against a nearby stump. I glanced up and felt engulfed by a rush of nostalgia as I thought of all the nights Mom had sung us to sleep through the years. Even now, I love to be sung to sleep by her my mom. As Mom‘s fingers picked a soothing classical piece, I watched my parents sitting on the other side of the campfire and was struck again with how identical Dad looked to Willie Nelson, the country singer. He wore his blue bandana around his forehead, his long grey-streaked hair pulled into a pony-tail behind. My favorite feature was his were his crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes.
“As I walked out in the streets of Laredo…”voices joined the beckoning music. The family was united in the old familiar tune.
“Mom, didn’t you used to sing this to us when I was a baby?” my little sister asked upon the last echoes of “…as cold as the clay.”
“Mmmm Hmmm, sweetheart,” our mom replied, “and speaking of which, I think it’s time we all hit the sack. Drink up your cocoa and rinse out your cups. The water bag is hanging on the tree where the food is tied up, then go brush your teeth.” With that, she rose and laid her guitar in the tattered case she used just for backpacking trips and then took both her own and Dad’s cup to rinse.
Each family member shuffled back and forth in the dying firelight to carry out Mom's requests. Dad walked down to the bank of the lake for a container of water, then upon his return, he thoroughly doused the now orange and red embers of the fire.
Eventually, each one of us had crawled into our pup-tents. There were three tents, each sleeping two. The clear plastic of the tents made crinkly, wrinkling noises in the night, and the rearranging of six goose down sleeping bags rustled as campers settled in for the night. Wrinkling and rustling lessened as, one by one, each person got comfortable. The night settled into silence.
“Keep all those millipedes warm,” Dad reminded me through the dark night air. Giggles bubbled from various directions.
The plastic of one pup-tent wrinkled suddenly, accompanied by a familiar rustling, when a voice rang out, “oh YEEEUCK! I’m not sleeping in here with her and her ugly millipedes! That’s disgusting. Mom, do I have to? Make one of the twins sleep with her this time. They’re so ugly that Nobody would bug them,” my little sister pleaded.
“No way kiddo. She’s YOUR ‘Pal”. YOU get her—millipedes and all,” chimed similar voices from a nearby tent. “Don’t worry though,” they continued reassuringly, “they’ll probably only come after you when you finally drift off to sleep. You won’t even know they’re there then. So, no big deal, you see?” Giggles.
“Aw, come on you guys. That only happened once in all of these years of backpacking and you won’t let me live it down. It’s not MY fault that I am the only one with warm blood in this family. Why else would they come sleep in my boots and bag? You’re just jealous.” Sniggers.
As conversation between the tents paused, the my little sister mused quietly in our tent, “I wonder how come they really only are attracted to you.” I had no answer; It was always a mystery why they seemed lured to just my shoes and under just my sleeping bag.
“Yeah, I know why. You see…” began another sister "big ears" in the night.
“You be quiet Bionic Ears. We were having a SERIOUS conversation.” Peals of laughter erupted from the tents.
Voices drifted off and the night became quiet again. The silence of the mountains that night was filled with the wondrous sounds of crisp breezes through the pine needles overhead, and the crickets, squirrels and owl collaborating on a new symphony in-the-making. The water rushing from the lake, over the low dam into the stream, provided a hushed lull and backdrop to the animal orchestra. Even the stars, which appeared so close to earth in the mountains, seemed to twinkle music like tiny bells.
Such was the lullaby provided for each camper lying quietly under the stars that night.
“Hmmmm, night you all,” sighed one girl sleepily.
“Good-night, dear,” Mom replied.
A little rustling, then quiet. A breeze brought a pinecone tumbling to the ground. The orchestra paused a moment to listen. Then nature slowly creshendoed into song once again.
“Night Mom, Night Dad.”
“Night. Sleep well punkin’ head.”
“Good Night, John Boy,” another voice followed.
“Night Mary Ellen,” came the reply.
Fifteen minutes or so pass in silence. Moments later, slow rhythmic breathing blended with the music of the night.
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Note: All artwork, stories and observations posted within should be credited to the author, Linnie Aikens Lindsay (unless cited in the post). Permission is required for any use of my words or artwork. Taken from my work, "My Life As Wallpaper Art".
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