Yosemite Mountaineering School wasn’t just a program. It was a cathedral tucked in the wilderness—stone fireplaces, wood floors, big beams that looked like they’d been lifted straight from the forest and blessed with permanence. The building itself breathed purpose.
The director was the kind of man who felt like he’d walked out of a sepia-toned movie about taming the American frontier. Rugged, but kind. A storyteller, a teacher, the kind of calm you want tethered to your rope when you’re dangling off a granite cliff with adrenaline trying to crawl up your throat.
He knew when to speak and when to simply be there—anchored, grounded, present. He was, in that moment of my life, a figure of quiet strength I hadn’t known I was looking for.
I wanted to be like him.
Not in the surface-level hero worship way, but something deeper: I wanted that life. The clarity of it. The rhythm. The deep inhale of mountain air and the way people listened when he spoke.
I wanted to become an outdoor guide.
That was the dream. The next step was supposed to be figuring out how.
But then… life.
After the course ended, I hitched out of the park to Lee Vining, where I sat on a bench for six hours waiting for the next bus home. It was one of those liminal days—caught between two versions of myself. The dreamer on the edge of something new, and the kid who still had to go home and deal with a girlfriend, a job search, a college decision, a mother, a sister, a handful of friends all tethering me back to my familiar life.
And just like that, the dream… slipped.
It didn’t crash. It didn’t burn. It just quietly got tucked into a drawer marked “Maybe Someday.”
So now, all these years later, when the move to Quincy started to take shape, I reached back into that drawer and pulled the dream out again.
Enrolling in the Outdoor Recreation Leadership program at Feather River College wasn’t just about learning something new. It was about returning to something old—something I’d left behind on a granite wall under the watchful eye of a man who taught me how to breathe when breathing felt impossible.
And maybe—just maybe—I’ll learn to become that calm presence for someone else, someday.
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.
Reinvention 101
So here’s something I didn’t see coming: I’m a student again.
Yep. Backpack, class schedule, ID card with an unflattering photo—the whole bit.
One of the reasons I left Santa Cruz was to put some distance between myself and the beautiful mess I’d been marinating in for years. The job loss, the breakup, the noise (literal and metaphorical)—I didn’t just want out. I wanted off the map. I needed something new to orbit around.
So I enrolled in the Outdoor Recreation Leadership program at Feather River College here in Quincy. That’s right: leadership, as in leading other people. Outdoors, no less. Nature, apparently, is going to be my new professor. I’ve got syllabi and hiking boots.
It’s part therapy, part curiosity, part midlife shake-up.
And honestly? It feels kind of great. Strange, humbling, exciting… but great. Like hitting the reset button and realizing it actually does something.
We’ll see where it goes. I might end up in a tent giving motivational talks to marmots. Or I might just learn how to tie better knots—in my ropes and in my life.
Either way, I’m in.
