Graphic the Valley (30 page)

My mother pointed.

“This is nothing like anything,” I said.

My mother kept pointing.

The lightning strikes were short at first, high ground to sky, the cumulonimbus inching north, ready to drop the rim. Sideways lightning like fingers wiggling.

My mother took my hand.

“Are we staying here when this is over?” I said.

She didn’t look at me. She watched the lightning, the Valley’s three elements: iron, water, and electricity.

In between the lighting, everything turned to dark gray, the night coming. I felt the nerves at the ends of my right hand like a color. Sparks of yellow. I felt my mother’s small hand in my left. She was cold and she began to shiver like an animal coming out of a creek. I put my arms around her. Walked her toward my favorite cave at the slab summit.

There, we looked out on the running lake below us. And it rained still. In the west, the metallic glint of cars floating among low tree branches. The water turned to black at the end of the day, and the river lake spread laterally across the Valley, the reclamation of the meadows, the roads, the buildings.

Rockfall broke off the Shield, shearing like a cornice, but louder than a snow cornice breaking. The waves of sloughed granite washed into the Curry tent-cabins just before dark. White buried beneath thick gray, the dust cloud beaten down by the rain. Darker gray now and the trees sticking like clipped wire ends.

I scanned down the Valley. Tried to see the silver of the fertilizer truck in the overflow lot, but it would be floating on the current now, floating down toward the mouth of the Valley where the soldiers of the 36th Regiment Wisconsin first entered near El Portal.

I knew the white jumble of scree boulders on the south side loop there, at the mouth of the Valley where the Merced cuts a W at the west end. In the morning, the boulders would mix with the new wrecks of brightly colored tourist cars.

We stood above the Valley with the screaming of the water and the stones falling, the storm, the lightning, the throating of thunder.

And the Valley rose. Water and water and water.

My mother huddled against me.

• • •

In the beginning I was. And I was with the Valley, and I was the Valley. We were with the Valley in the beginning.

Peter Brown Hoffmeister is the author of the memoir
The End of Boys
, the nonfiction manifesto
Let Them Be Eaten By Bears—A Fearless Guide to Taking Our Kids Into the Great Outdoors
, and the story album
The Great American Afterlife
(produced with Mankind). He has climbed and bouldered and camped for more than a decade in Yosemite Valley, Yosemite National Park. Hoffmeister’s fiction collection
Loss
earned an Oregon Literary Arts Fellowship and his first book was chosen as a Goodreads Memoir finalist. Hoffmeister blogs for the
Huffington Post
and runs the Integrated Outdoor Program at South Eugene High School. He lives with his wife Jennie, and daughters Rain and Ruth, in Eugene, Oregon.

To Jennie Hoffmeister. How can I say what I mean here? You read bad drafts, vet ideas, challenge me, support me, stay up late reading, and make me feel capable of anything. You are my Maxwell Perkins.

To my friend Kenny Cox. The way I see it, you and I were even after the third round. But that’s not what I wish for you. No more wrestling. Instead, I hope you’re given raw congress with the natural world. Life in the canyon. Hiking the desert. Swimming in the river. Your hair dirty always.

To Dr. Lafayette Bunnell, post mortem as well, for your book
Discovery of the Yosemite: And the Indian War of 1851, Which Led to That Event
. Your vivid, anti-36th account started me on this strange deer trail. Did the soldiers of your regiment know you didn’t agree?

Thank you also to the Northern Paiutes, greater Paiute People. If the National Park Service continues to make things up, we’ll continue to talk. This book and others will spread the truth.

To Miriam Gershow who read the short story that led to this book three and a half years ago. Thank you for saying, “There’s too much good stuff happening in these twenty-five pages.”

Next, to Adriann Ranta, an excellent agent because of your honesty. When you say it’s bad, it’s bad. When you say it’s good, it’s good. And that is the most an emerging writer could ever ask for. Thank you for hating so much of the third draft.

To Ben LeRoy. The King. You got it. You understood this big thing that I was attempting. And
Graphic the Valley
wouldn’t have happened without you.

To John Galligan for perfect editing and revision advice. Thank you for finding my egregious plot hole and for explaining structure. You made me better.

Ashley Myers, all-things-girl at Tyrus. Thank you for helping me clarify those little details, and for finding my one, overused simile.

To Haley, Hillary, Cooper, Maddie, and Ellis. Thank you for the love and support, for the wild fun of this big, messy family.

To my mother, Pamela Hoffmeister. You made me want to be a novelist when I was young. For all of the books, art, and imagery.

Again, to my father Charlie Hoffmeister for your early morning work ethic. It is your model that I always follow. Plus watching baseball together doesn’t hurt.

To Betsie, Aimee, Carrie, and Sarah for so much love. You four are incredible. I am truly blessed.

To my brothers-in-law, Nate, Caleb, Jay, and Dan. You guys just get it.

To Courtney Stubbert for the interwebs and the absinthe. The cover. My kitchen or your kitchen, it doesn’t matter.

To Mike Wilt for blood. To Pris Wilt for love.

To Sonja Jameson for always reading and encouraging.

To everyone I’ve climbed with in Yosemite over the years, but especially to Garrick Hart, Lee Baker, Jennie Hoffmeister, and My-Only-Friend-in-the-Entire-World Jeff Hess. Any time. Let’s go. And apologies on Pywiack Dome. I know there’s no route with that line, but I needed it. Same with the Yosemite jail.

To my friends and fellow writers who inspire me, Michael McGriff, Dorianne Laux, Tina Boscha, Lidia Yuknavitch, Alexa Lachman, Katie Meehan, and Jose Chaves. A writer needs writers. And y’all are good.

To Ingrid Bodtker for calm. We shouldn’t be this busy, but somehow we are. Working with you makes it all better.

Finally, to my girls, Rain and Ruth. I love coming home every day.