Lost Books of Childhood

One of the unexpected pleasures of this internet age has been rediscovering the books of my childhood. Like many people in the fifties and sixties, our family relied on the public library for books. Until recently, I thought many of those books had disappeared. Now, however, through sites like AbeBooks.com and even Amazon, it’s possible to find a dog-eared copy and have it delivered to my own door. How can these small booksellers afford to sell books for a penny, or even a dollar? Do they gain that much on the $3.99 shipping fee? Or are they just book lovers who can’t bear to destroy a book, happy to send it instead to a loving home?

A number of those books have made it to my home lately. It’s interesting which ones I’ve sought out. Sometimes it’s a concept I remember. My sister and brother and I were fascinated by The Upside-Down Boy. Amazingly, one day a set of footprints appeared on the sloped ceiling above our beds – just like in the book! Fifty years later, I found a copy of the original Dorothy Ivens book (from 1958) and gave it to my mom, who remembered my dad stenciling the prints above our heads as we slept.

Often it’s the story and characters that matter the most. Carol Ryrie Brink is best known for Caddie Woodlawn, a pioneer story that’s stayed in print for years. But I have much stronger memories of two other very different books. In Baby Island, two young girls are shipwrecked with four babies. It’s the ultimate girls’ adventure story, a parody of desert island books – there’s even a footprint with a missing toe. We read this to Rhiannon when she was five, her first chapter book. (As it happens, we started it in a hut by Lake Oku in Africa, drawing in various biologists, but that’s another story.) I’ve since given copies to several other five-year-olds.

The other Brink book, The Headland (checked out more than once from the library), is quite different. It’s a long 1955 novel about five children who find themselves in northern France as World War II begins. The story of how the war changed their relationships stayed with me for years, becoming part of my frame of reference about how men and women might live in the world. When I recently rediscovered the book, I found it still just as compelling as an adult – as all the best teen novels are. My daughter Emily, now doing a PhD in English, found it a satisfying read as well.

It’s the place that’s drawn me back to High Trail, by Vivian Breck. When I first read this book as a child in Oregon, I hoped one day to try something called “backpacking.” Breck’s books were among the few adventure stories for girls. There were some about horses, and one about a river trip, but High Trail – published in 1948 – was the one I remembered best. When I tracked it down, I found it was set in my own back yard, in Sequoia National Park.

As World War II ends, Chloe and her father finally go on a long-delayed backpacking trip. But west of Mt. Whitney, her father breaks a leg, and it’s up to Chloe to go for help. As Chloe struggles east over the flank of the mountain, an early storm comes in. Luckily, she encounters two young men, recently back from the war, and for the rest of the book, the three work together to survive the storm and find help for Chloe’s dad.

The book appealed to me because it was about a young girl in the wilderness. From what my maps show, it’s geographically accurate. Breck writes of birds and plants I know. While I haven’t traveled the specific trails in the book – Chloe, unlike me, is young and slim and long-legged – I’ve been nearby. So in one sense, I’m still fascinated by this book because it’s set near a place I know and love.

I’m interested both in what’s changed and what’s stayed the same since 1948. I suspect new trails have been added; a Sequoia historian would know. Chloe and her dad gather wood to build a giant fire against a rock; these days we rely on little stoves. When Chloe needs to rappel down a ledge, the men help her wrap the rope around her body, and down she goes – no harness or special rappelling devices. In fact, that’s how I first rappelled myself, in a local quarry; as I read the book, I could still feel the rope sliding roughly along my body.

As an English teacher, I’m also interested in feminist issues. The fact that Chloe is out on the trail at all was unusual for the times. Most teen girls’ books then – and even now – don’t involve wilderness. Chloe is adventurous, but she’s hiking with her dad. Mom stays home doing whatever moms do – she doesn’t merit much mention. What were the forces affecting both Chloe and her mom in those days, and how did mothers affect their daughters?

It may seem surprising that a man in his late twenties would be a suitable romantic interest for a teenager. These days, that would be odd in a teen novel. But when I look at my parents’ generation, many of those marriages involve age differences of at least seven or eight years.

I’ve often wondered about the women of my father’s age. They watched their classmates go off to die in the war, some of them keeping the offices and shipyards going as Rosie the Riveter – and then the survivors came home to marry young girls just out of their teens. What happened to those older women? I suppose they were the spinster teachers of my childhood, the single ladies doing good works. But what were they really thinking? Where would I find their stories?

And what was the effect on all those young women of marrying men so much older and more experienced? Did it reinforce the man’s traditional privileged role? My mother, with just a Bachelor’s degree, was a faculty wife at age twenty-three. It was only when I hit my teens that she started library school – having first ensured the future of the local library by helping to orchestrate a funding campaign.

High Trail is a teen novel that’s made me ask questions on various levels. I was always a voracious reader; in eighth grade, I read 123 books (which shows how exciting life was). Along with all those stories, I absorbed ideas about men and women and how they were to behave. I was liberated enough, even then, to appreciate books where girls resisted expectations.

I also learned about places – among them, the Sierra Range. Before applying for my current job, I knew nothing of Visalia. But when the rangers bring Chloe’s father out on a stretcher, they take him down through Mineral King to the Visalia hospital. Apparently, I have been here, at least through stories – I just didn’t remember. It makes me wonder what else I’ve forgotten, and how my early reading was affecting me even before I even knew it.

A Week on the East Side: Exploring the Eastern Sierra

The week didn’t start so well. I’d planned to hike every day, getting used to the altitude. But as I drove through Yosemite on Monday, the 4th of July, I couldn’t find any trails. My first choice was blocked by a chilly arm of Tenaya Lake; when the water reached my shorts, I gave up. The next trailhead had simply disappeared, lost in a maze of blocked-off “Closed for the Season” roads (last season, presumably). The third started off across deep snow.
In the end, I just wandered on Tioga Pass – nearly 10,000 feet – and headed down the east side. A photogenic surprise: Tioga Lake was still covered in ice, pieces of mountains reflected between the chunks.

At the first campground, Lake Mary – reserved in the last minute through Recreation.gov – my site was surrounded by other campers. That didn’t stop a bear from investigating my bear box. Sitting by the fire just fifteen feet away, I’d foolishly failed to lock it. I shouted, and she went away. A bit more shouting, and her cub in the tree above my table was gone as well. I locked the box, and then locked myself in the car to sleep.

The next morning, I rejected two more snow-covered trails. A third was blocked off: “Carbon dioxide hazard area” – at least that made a change from high water and snow. I gave up on the Mammoth Lakes area and headed south to Rock Creek, recommended by the woman who’d sold me my boots at REI.

This was an easy hike, not too steep, starting above 10,000 feet and rising gently past picturesque little lakes. But the day was overcast – dull pictures – and my feet and knees ached. Maybe this wasn’t going to work. Maybe at sixty I’m simply too old to hike. I tried to believe I was having fun, but I wasn’t convinced.

But that evening, heading up the White Mountain road, things felt different. I like deserts. I like them a lot – but Joshua Tree and Death Valley are too hot by summer. Yet here was a desert – sage brush, junipers, pinyon pines – on top of a mountain. The flowers were only beginning to bloom. At the Grandview Campground (8,500 feet; free, but a $5 donation), we few campers encircled a sage flat, talking when we met. That evening, driving up a rocky track to chase the sunset, I felt in my element again.

I spent Wednesday exploring. Beyond the first Bristlecone Pine Grove at around 10,000 feet, the road continues toward the Patriarch Grove at 11,000. Snow blocked car access, so the road became a hiking trail. A loop trail took me up the Cottonwood Overlook.

Maybe I was a bit affected by the altitude – it was only afterwards, seeing my pictures, that I realized just how other-worldly that landscape had been: white dolomite rocks, golden tree trunks, black storm clouds.

Later, I drove north across tundra-like landscape to the locked gate. Beyond, a seven-mile track led to the top of White Mountain at 14,246 feet – less than 250 feet lower than Mt. Whitney. I didn’t follow it. Instead, I drove back to my campground, where the rain attacked just after dinner. The passenger seat was as comfy as my easy chair at home, and I was content downloading pictures and catching up on the day.

When I awoke in my Subaru on Thursday, the sky was clear. Without waiting, I drove up to the Sierra View Vista Point. Once I’d photographed the mountains, I heated a kettle and fried my egg and sausage – breakfast at the viewpoint! And then I re-visited the first Bristlecone grove and charged up the Discovery Trail, knees and lungs and feet all working just fine.

“I’m ready for backpacking!” I told Rhiannon a bit later, calling from the Sierra View overlook. (“If you can see Bishop, your phone should work,” someone had told me.)

But that afternoon, I wasn’t so sure. My trail in the Sierra Range above Big Pine started at around 7,200 feet – much too low for an afternoon hike. Despite stunning views of red paintbrush and yellow Lomatium, it was hot, and I felt just as slow as ever.

By Saturday morning – after meetings near Mammoth Lakes, where I was told at the motel to empty my car of food because of bears – I was ready for another hike: Piute Pass, up from North Lake above Bishop.

This trail started at 9,300 feet, rising gently through aspen forest to switchbacks below the first lake. This time I had perfect weather; the lakes were a brilliant blue. Yellow columbine and rosy sedum lined the path.

I talked with everyone. “Follow the dirty snow,” someone said – that was the trail. The pass was do-able, others reassured me: “Lots of snow, but there’s nothing sketchy about it.” “You’re almost there,” a young couple with a Sheltie dog told me. “Don’t turn back now.”

And so I continued. As passes go, it was pretty easy, even at 11,400 feet. I worked my way from rock outcrop to outcrop, crossing pocketed snowfields, following footprints up to the pass itself.

And from the top? – it was the view I’d seen from the plane so long ago: white-sheeted mountains, a frozen lake. I admired it, eating peanuts and cheese, and then started back down. The late-afternoon light inspired more and more pictures. As I trudged east down the trail, the sun seemed to hang without moving over the pass; the moon moved closer and closer to the golden-lit rocks.

It was a long day – eleven hours. Somewhere I’d gained a second wind. Maybe it was the practice hikes in the White Mountains. Or maybe I was inspired and rejuvenated by the mountain light itself.

For the last part of the trip, I used my headlamp (“Do you have a headlamp?” someone had asked me – Yes, always). And as I came down through the trees, the headlamp and the half moon shone on the aspen trunks. The bark gleamed white ahead of me, lighting the way to my car.