Igneous Range

“Grandma,” Armen started over the sandwich she had prepared him for lunch.

“Yeasss?”

“Do you still have m—do you still have those baseball cards?”

“In the garage. Over the car.”

After lunch he looked through his old Topps cards, some in sleeves and some in stacks. Coming upon his 1976 Brooks Robinson, seeing the glossy green of the turf and the contrasting orange, black, and white of Robinson’s uniform, he stopped and stared, as his vision turned inward and into the past. He rubbed his eyes, as if it might change what they saw as they looked back and turned back to the present. A pragmatic frown flashed over his face, and he got up and looked for the yellow pages.

He found a couple dealers, and set off by bus and foot that afternoon to see what he might get for his most valuable cards. He stopped at the mall to check a bookstore for a pricing guide, and scribbled some prices onto a loose sheet of paper.

Within several days, Armen had sold off his cards, bought some supplies, and caught a bus to the park.

Armen got off the bus at Wawona, and backpacked up the falls trail. Night fell as he ascended past the falls. He unrolled his bag against a stone trail cut, and fought against the steady wind and rocky ground to get some sleep. The next day, he backpacked north to the rim of Yosemite Valley, where he spent his second night in the mountains above the Valley lights. He unrolled his bag and basked beneath the cool spring stars. He did not light a fire. It had been a long time since he’d lit a fire in the Igneous Range.

The next morning, he descended into the Valley. He rode the shuttle buses, and ambled along the river, visited the falls, and watched the women. In the evening, he caught a bus down to an employee housing complex just outside the park in El Portal, where he found his cabin.

His found his lab job at the sewer plant rewarding. It felt liberating to have a 9-to-5 job with no family, religious, or professional entanglements. It felt invigorating to walk out on the steel deck in the morning and take a sample from the aeration tank. “Independence at last,” he’d think to himself as the atomized sewage dampened his face.

© 2008 Dan J. Jensen