it's in the water

Thursday? Today was a perfect lazy day. Other people went hiking, in packs. I sat alone on a rock and listened to waterfalls. For hours. Sometimes I stretched or looked at birds. Mostly not. 

New people began to arrive, some by mule train. They looked cleaner than those of us who'd been sleeping in our clothes. 

And then something exciting happened: a young man with long hair climbed up on top of the rocks!

I'd seen a tall blonde in a polka dot bikini posing in the water for her boyfriend, but this was much better. The diver waved and climbed down and an hour later returned with friends. 

A couple of middle-aged dudes were swimming under the freezing waterfall, but they got out to watch too. 

The cliff divers of Glen Aulen, in your SF water! 

We cheered and then I went and took a nap. 

My new tent mates arrived, and Lydia and I set to opening her box of Cabernet Sauvignon that her husband had mailed to Yosemite and then paid $5/lb to send to Glen Aulin on mule. 

We ate dinner with the mule wrangler and learned lots of nifty facts about mules: that they have an odd number of chromosomes and can't reproduce. That they spend the offseason in Chowchilla. I appreciated their good temper even more on Friday when I climbed 600 feet of terrible cobblestone.…