A tryst with nature...

I guess it is high time I stop writing philosophy... Man, that is because I am happy... And no one writes philosophy while in high spirits...

So here I go with this blog about my date with nature! I never said I would be less poetic.

It was a five hour drive to the mountain range... Inyo National park... Driving, yet another of my passions, was painful that morning because of lack of sleep the previous night exacerbated by the early morning fog... It was about 8 a.m. when we reached the ranger station... We picked our camping passes and set off for the trailhead which was about 7 miles from the station. We were seven guys in all... grabbed some breakfast on the way to the trailhead... the route to the start of the trail was winding and getting us a little dizzy... At about eleven we got started on the trail... We set out to scale MOUNT LANGLEY, a majestic 14 er (14,047 feet) in the Sierra Nevada range.

The first day of the hike was to just get closer to the summit. We covered only one fourth of the total distance... Heavy backpacks, scorching sun and an apparent underestimation of the terrain had gotten us tired... We decided to camp by one of the four lakes... of course, by now you would have guessed... we camped by the lake that was closest to the summit...

The water in the lake was chill and refreshing... The fine texture of the lake bed was soothing to the foot... The places where the texture changed from being fine to being coarse gave some good acupunture treatment to the sore legs... Crystal clear water, clear blue skies, Mt. Langley in the backdrop and a few scattered palm trees gave the place an ethereal touch... After a light lunch and a mid day siesta, four of us left the camp to find out about the trail to follow. We had been lucky the first day because we used a marked and maintained trail. We discovered only late in the evening about what lay in store for the next morning...

We were supposed to take the old army pass... a jigsaw puzzle would have any day been better to solve than to figure out where the pass was... Fortunately with some wrong way of map reading (with a compass of course) and some guidance from fellow hikers who were faced with the same daunting task, we were able to find it... The remainder of the day was rather smooth, but for the fact that we got lost for an hour before being able to find out the way to the camp!

The next morning, we left the camp at around 5:00 in the morning... We were at an elevation of 10,000 feet then... and were all set to brave the Old Army Pass, the heat and the herculean 14 er... We reached the foot of the old Army pass only to discover that it was a beast... The switchbacks drove us crazy... Heavy backpacks, sharp and steep switchbacks made us scamper our way up the passs... Once up there it was rather flat... But the forks in the path put us in a spot of bother time and again... As the saying goes "All roads lead to Rome", all these forks still led us to the same place... We lesser mortals did not realise this until some wisecrack in the team asserted it...

We realized that the Old Army pass had been a lot gentle to us when we reached the foot of the summit... We literally had to do rock climbing... A couple of wise people left their heavy backpacks and loaded themselves with only fluids and energy shots... It took six energy shots for a guy before he made it to the summit... Six out of seven penned our names in the summit register at 10:30 a.m. ... Well, to do some justice to the name of the post, let me make a remark here: It was beautiful from up there... :)

The way back was downhill and was a piece of cake... We reached the camp at around 1:00 p.m... After a short while of rest, we resumed our journey back to the trail head... The total hike was for 24 miles... One hell of a trip... But the best thing about it was that we tamed a 14er... Awaiting to have more 14ers in the bag and more posts in the blog...

A day's crush

This post is about a girl that caught my attention during my visit to Six Flags, Magic Mountains, CA.

Amid a lot of hot blondes, I saw her... managing a bunch of kids, she seemed to be the most responsible one I have seen in recent time... her poise was unmatched... despite the fact that it was hot, the lines to the rides were long, the trouble precipitated by the mischievous kids around, she did a good job of holding her nerve...

Now to the more interesting part... I liked her eyes, the beautiful chain around her neck, the flowing locks that she kept tucking behind those dainty ears, her svelte figure and the lovely smile that came upon her face... She had the word "rusty" written on her clothes which eventually became the word I used for her name... For sometime I went to all places she went... I would stand all day and keep watching the smile that she gave when she grew sentient of the fact that I was after her... It would have been wonderful if I had been bestowed with the gift of stalling time... I felt a little embarassed after that and walked off sheepishly but I do not regret it because it makes me smile now...

The Divide

It is mid day and I look out through the window of my lab located on the 8th floor of a high rise building... It is a warm n sunny day... People walking leisurely to grab lunch from the eatouts nearby, almost no traffic on the roads... The serenity only gets more as I look farther away... Mountainous terrain with grasslands marked by a few trails... the fitness freaks trying to tame them under the mid-day sun... no more buildings or people as I see farther... just a few pylons standing tall and nothing else but the mountains hidden behind haze... Clear blue sky and some scattered vegetation give the much needed contrast to the otherwise featureless panaroma...

As I get lost in it, I am brought back to the other side by the ring of my phone... I turn to see people... people swarming around to fix issues on a project... Racks of computers, wires running around all over the place... workbenches that are sensitive to electrostatic discharge marked by caution tapes... It all looks like a maze...

The chasm between the two worlds appears deep... Where do I belong? I do not have an answer... And from one side, the other always looks more appealing...

That was a call for lunch... My turn to take a relaxed walk to grab food...

Why am I Blogging...?

Sitting in a room lit only by my laptop screen, staring into its glare, I ask myself a reason for my sudden interest in wanting to start blogging... Is it fashionable? kinda cool? nerdy? a nice hobby? a vent? Well the last one seems to have matched better although the other ones fit to a good degree...

I have always been amazed by the human mind... The ways it adopts to heal itself... Alter egos born to set free a troubled mind...

Yes, this writer here is a result of an emotional turmoil... But would probably be the alter ego who sees more brighter sides of life than his master... and that explains the name of the blog spot...

However, to the reader who is getting a little anxious about my master, here is the message: "He always wanted to be a blogger... But never ventured into one..." There are loads of good things to write about and the writer is sworn to write stuff that would lift up the spirit of the readers lest they should be burdened with woes...

As the silence of the night creeps in with the soft n mellifluous music blending well into the ambience, master looks at me with a rather quizzical eye... He wonders if this blogspot is a result of his longstanding fervour for writing or if it just a knee jerk reaction to his present state of mind. But my conviction says that master is gonna be happy that he got me started on this...

With the promise of producing millions of interesting reads, I prepare to rest for the day...

Guys, that is the metaphorical way of saying that you are reading the last line of the blog...

Song: Poove Vaypesa Vendum 12B