As we commemorate Apollo 11’s successful trip to the moon and Neil Armstrong’s first steps there, all done with the aid of less computing power than exists in my cell phone, I am reminded of how in one respect it trumped all accounts of moon landings I encountered reading science fiction.  It was televised, live.

I saw that landing in a very special way.  Forty years ago my friend Michael and I had gone backpacking up above Yosemite Valley to near Lake Merced.  After some days far from electricity and the internal combustion engine, we hastily broke camp in order to be down to the valley floor in time to see the Neil Armstrong’s first lunar steps televised live, to the TV in the lodge.

I am sure ours was one of the most memorable ways to have witnessed that epochal event, an event that in retrospect marked the high point of post WWII techno-liberal optimism and the beginning of a very different time through which we are still struggling.

A week ago we did a kind of reprise, this time only a hike, and at Pt. Reyes National Seashore, a less daunting but no less beautiful place than the high Sierra.  We arrived from different directions, and used our two cars to set up a shuttle hike, starting at the Estero trailhead, and ending (we thought) at Limantour Beach.

Our trip of 40 years ago had gone almost flawlessly – other than the time when we entered the Land of Mosquitoes, each of us realizing he had forgotten repellent, but knowing the other ‘very experienced companion’ would certainly have not done anything so silly.  We ended up running a mile with full packs, constantly wiping our arms and faces, until we exited that place. Perhaps the reason we saw no animals there was that they’d been drained of blood.

No equivalent problems arose at Pt. Reyes.  We saw innumerable birds, a feeding frenzy of pelicans, gulls, and seals having at a school of fish near shore, one very startled garter snake, Tule elk, and a three-masted tall shop anchored off shore.  The wildflowers were unending even in summer’s brown grass, as we hiked along the tablelands that lay between the coastal cliffs and the mountains that rose behind us.  Truly I think the California coast, where it has not been smothered by development, should be called the coast of flowers.  

Forty years ago I was no Pagan, though Nature had long given me more peace and beauty than anything else in life.  As it still does in most respects.  Now I experienced the land more deeply still, for I could feel its energy, and know that was what I was feeling.  Politics was far away, where it should be.

Everything went blessedly – until we discovered that the online map Michael had consulted and the top of the line park map I carried could be seriously deceiving.  Where a crucial linking trail to the beach began was a sign saying no such trail existed anymore.  And where there was no trail on the map, a well defined trail went merrily off in directions unknown. Then, when we came to the final trail far to the east of where we had anticipated doing so, a sign said it was under water.  While this was certainly untrue a sit is dry season and sea level has not risen much in the past few years, those truths did not much matter.  The trail quickly became jungle, with or without water.  We finally went the other direction, away from the beach, eventually to hook up with a road.  

One trail both maps we consulted claimed to exist, did not, and had not for years.  Another trail both agreed did not exist, did, and led into places we had not planned to see.  Still another trail that again both maps agreed existed ended in a impassable thicket.  We saw a lot more of the Pt. Reyes landscape than we’d planned on.  We arrived foot sore to our car well after dark, hiking the last couple of miles on the road we had driven out to the beach.

But somehow it was all right.  We joked we had partially ‘paid for’ the wonderful privilege we had received 40 years before, when we awakened in a wilderness camp, and hours later, watched the first steps on the moon, and watched them “to boldly go where no man has gone before.”