I’m incredibly lucky to have gone to the Sierra Nevada for at least a couple days every year of my life – until 2020, that is, with the COVID-19 pandemic. It wasn’t until a few years ago, 2017, that I discovered just how much I love and yearn for the mountains.
And yet despite, an ever-growing desire to live in them, I’m stuck in Illinois, which surely must be one of the most boring states in the Union. Stuck by volition – a job and relationship – but stuck nonetheless.
Every so often some event makes me further question my decision to stay in a place I absolutely despise. Today, that’s the Creek Fire. Burning in Sierra National Forest to the west and northwest of Huntington Lake, the Creek Fire exploded to an official 36,000 acres in a day – and satellite heat maps show it burning closer to 150,000 acres.
The fire’s ripping through breathtaking scenery and potentially threatening more if – as – it makes its way north to Yosemite National Park. It’s also where I made my second Sierra trip (and first in the summer) outside of the Tahoe Basin, specifically, Desolation Wilderness. In 2018, my mother and I spent an evening near Shaver Lake on the east side of Bald Mountain and then dined at Shaver Lake. The next day we hiked, separately, to Kaiser Peak, from which I had my first glimpse of the distant High Sierra before looping through the forest, detouring to Nellie Lake, and making the way back to the trailhead through Mary’s Meadow.
That view of the High Sierra floored me. I spent hours in the coming days and weeks going through photos, trying to identify the unknown peaks, reading trip reports of them, studying maps for the first time….
I was in love.
Now the landscape around Kaiser Peak and Huntington Lake will be desiccated, scarred for generations. And this, on top of destroying beauty, threatening homes, perhaps taking lives (it’s already critically injured vacationers), reminds me: The Sierra’s beauty is fragile and increasingly at risk from climate change and instead of doing everything possible to explore those forests before coming droughts, bark beetles, and fires destroy them; Black Oaks replace Ponderosa Pines and other conifers; glaciers melt into cirque lakes, I’m languishing in Illinois.
And I hate that. So, so much.
It needs to change, but I guess I’m too scared to. I appreciate my job and don’t know if I’d find one out there (or a remote one). I don’t want to risk losing a relationship I value. But I can’t keep waiting and waiting and watching the Range of Light burn.
Something needs to change.