I'm a Student Again, Part 2: The Backstory

This All Started with a One-Way Ticket to the Wild

It was mid-July, 1974. I was 18, freshly released from Glendale High School with a diploma and a vague sense that something big was supposed to happen next.

So I decided to make it happen.

To celebrate my graduation, I talked my mother into something wildly out of character: dropping me off—alone, with nothing but a backpack—at the downtown Los Angeles Greyhound bus terminal.

If she had known what that terminal was actually like—a combination of a one-act play about urban decay staged in fluorescent lighting and just a shithole—she never would have gone along with it. But she didn’t know. She drove away before I could tell her.

I bought a one-way ticket to Yosemite National Park. That’s where I was going. I didn’t have a plan. I just knew I needed to go north, into the trees, into the wild. Away from whatever wasn’t working.

The bus ride took eight hours. I grabbed the only available seat, next to a striking woman who looked to be in her 30s. She nodded politely, said nothing.

There was something unmistakably sad about her—beautiful, but folded in on herself. It took a while, but we eventually found our bridge: Spanish. She was from Paris, but like many Europeans, she spoke a little. I had two years of high school Spanish rattling around in my brain. It was enough.

She had recently suffered a tragedy. Her husband had died in a car accident. No children, just grief and silence and a small bag packed for escape. She didn’t know much about Yosemite—only that it was beautiful. A place people go when they need to forget, or remember.

She didn’t know the campgrounds would be full. I wasn’t worried. I had a tent and no plans beyond the next morning. When we arrived, I tried to help her find a bed for the night, but every place was booked solid.

So I did the only thing that made sense.

I invited her to sleep in my tent.

She said yes.

I gave her my only sleeping pad and unzipped my bag to cover us both. The ground was hard. The air was cool. And somehow, we both slept.

In the morning, she ran off in search of accommodation and—miraculously—found one. She came back just as I was packing up my things. She gave me a long hug. A kiss on the cheek. Her eyes said thank you in a language that didn’t need translation.

And then she was gone.

I walked out to the highway and stuck out my thumb, headed for Tuolumne Meadows. I was about to spend a month sleeping in a tent while enrolled in Yosemite Mountaineering School.

I don’t remember her name. I wish I’d asked for her address.

I hope she’s well.