The road winding towards the Yosemite valley was stained with drifts of orange flowers. The river raged, the rapids bobbing with yellow life-jackets and blow up rafts.With the squirrels so tame and crafty, the deer barely blinking as we brushed passed and the curving road packed with tourists Yosemite wasn’t quite the Ansel Adams wilderness we had in mind. We dodged heavy breathing mid-westerners all the way up the asphalt path to the river, then at the fork took the opportunity for quiet taking the winter route up the mountain. We wound our way around, distant waterfalls a dime a dozen and came to the rocky shelf of the river. We lay in the sun, the cooling spray of the river bouncing off rocks misting us in cool and calm. Dylan read about the explorer Muir’s first summer in the Sierra and mourned the lost of his world, I napped away the hour.

When we approached the waterfall’s dizzying edge the crowds swelled, we were fortunate that the fools jumping the fence for a photo did not plunge to their deaths. Delicately negotiating the damp stair we came through the trees and suddenly the crowds didn’t matter. A rainbow arched at the base of the falls and we were sprayed with its thundering rain. Refreshed and renewed we sought out a rougher path.

Dylan ran out of site and I plodded upward. The mountain was in shadow as sun disappeared from the valley, but I was chasing the sunlight brushing the peaks. But too late, it was dim by the time I met Dylan, we climbed on. This falls were far higher than those of the morning and fell in curtains of shimmering mist, like the gauze of a wedding veil. We sat a while, I was disappointed at first to have missed my photo, but then I shrugged it off to just enjoy the place, easier to imagine in the solitude how the explorers would have felt on discovering Yosemite.