PROMISES TO KEEP
Mike and Jennifer had delayed their honeymoon. Although they'd married in June, they were unable to get camping reservations for the Yosemite Valley until August. Mike, the native Californian, had camped there with his family almost every summer that he could remember; so nothing would do but for him to share the place he loved with the woman he loved. And now, August finally here, a sleepy Jennifer stretched out in the huge, red, flannel-lined sleeping bag they shared. It had taken a woodpecker tapping busily outside the sun flooded tent, grown suddenly uncomfortably warm and stuffy, to call her. It was the first day of their trip that she'd awakened alone. This morning, Mike had risen early in order to repeat his yearly hike to the top of Half Dome, that majestic monolith left by the same glacial activity that had formed the Valley.
The night before, as they'd enjoyed their campfire, he'd tried to encourage her to join him. Knowing it was a difficult trail, she'd looked away a moment and then replied, "Mike, I'm going to have to take a tough hike one of these days, really I am. I promise. I'm just not ready yet."
"Come on," he said. "We'll see the sunrise together half way up along the trail. We could even camp at the top overnight."
"I know, Mike," she answered, nuzzling her snub nose against his jacket. "I'll love it when I do." He didn't say anything and she looked up and saw that his usually unfathomable brown eyes reflected not only the flickering firelight but some deep inner intensity. He cared about this.
The thought of dusty but happy couples coming down from the back country, laden with back packs and bed rolls, came to her and almost stirred her to say "yes," but then unwelcome fears of aching muscles, shortness of breath and dizzying heights crowded in and she found herself saying, "Don't you think I've done pretty well already with the walks and hikes we've been taking?"
Mike reached over to the dying fire to break up the one last glowing log with the stick he kept for that purpose and possibly remembering how game she'd been every time he'd included any climbing in their outings, answered sleepily, "All right, but next week the four-mile hike and the Panorama Trail. Okay?"
"Okay, Mike." She watched the bright sparks rise, cool, then turn to ash. Easy to say with next week and four miles straight up--well almost straight up--days away, with plenty of time meanwhile to swim and lie on the warm river sand.
After checking their fire, they'd gone to bed and had fallen asleep early, lying together, listening to the gentle brushing of the needles of the tall sugar pines high over their tent.
Now Jennifer shivered as she splashed the river-cold water over her face in the women's restroom, shaded by those same pines, and wondered if she'd ever get used to not having hot water. "Some pioneer I'd have made," she said to the sleepy face in the mirror. She filled their bucket at the outside spigot and carried it back to the campsite, marveling further at the strength and fortitude of those trail-blazing women she'd read about in history classes. She filled the teakettle and prepared a simple breakfast of tea and hot cereal on their new, green campstove instead of the hardier bacon, eggs and potatoes Mike loved to cook over the open fire.
Reminiscing about the experiences of the past week, she remembered the first, sudden, breathtaking view of the Valley as they'd emerged from the long, rock-lined tunnel and the fresh clarity of the air compared to the grime they'd left behind in the city. To her surprise she hadn't even had to shampoo her hair yet, though they'd hiked with dust underfoot and had been surrounded by camp smoke. Today, though, she was looking forward to a wash and hair cleansing in the soft valley water found even in the public pay showers. As she rummaged around in their overnight case, gathering bathing supplies to bring along to the showers, the sight of Mike's unused razor blades reminded her that for the first time since she'd known him he'd foregone shaving. He was waiting for a full mountaineer's beard to appear, and had begun to look and feel scruffy to her touch. She was amused but had gone light on the teasing.
"Mmmm," Jennifer had been rinsing too long but it was hard to part from the warm, steamy shower. A glance under the curtain of her shower cubicle told her that a line was forming outside. And to think that she took this for granted at home! What a difference also from her large childhood home where each family member had had a private bathroom. "Almost through," she called out to the assembled feet and voices. She began to hastily dry herself.
Later, after a sandwich and a trip to the tourist-crowded village store for supplies and ice and to the even more crowded laundromat, Jennifer, tidy in clean shirt and jeans, couldn't resist purchasing an ice cream cone at a snack stand. She decided to follow the boardwalk across a meadow filled with wildflowers and humming insects that had been beckoning her since they'd first arrived. As she walked toward the granite boulders outlining the Valley at the foot of the mountains, and which lay almost as if they'd been dropped by a child scattering jacks, she was tempted to curl up and nap in a still-warm spot in the inviting meadow grass where a deer had clearly lain not too long before. A sudden urge for Mike's nearness and companionship came to her as she surveyed the impression left where the deer's warm body had mown down the grass. Laughing at herself, she snapped out of her whimsical state as she came to the end of the meadow.
She began to follow a shadowy trail which ran between the huge rocks and the trees which grew around them. She knew the general direction it was taking her although she and Mike had never explored this side of the Valley. Even though trail signs and the dried remains of horse manure told her she was on a bridle path, she felt as if she were far from civilization, for the only sounds she heard were those made by an occasional squirrel or Blue Jay. But as she was growing accustomed to this quiet solitude, the trail was paralleled by a road which turned from the edge of the meadow along which she'd walked and soon she was passing to the side of an arched stone gateway that read: AHWAHNEE.
Jennifer remembered that Mike had described the Indians who had once lived in the Valley and who had called themselves Ahwahneechee.
Suddenly, a huge building loomed up before her which, with its rock chimneys and timbered columns, seemed to have grown out of the mountainside. Even its turquoise-painted shutters hardly seemed out of place. Now, as she peered past a small pond to a parking lot where several people were unloading suitcases from their cars, she realized that she was viewing the same Ahwahnee Hotel the shuttle bus driver had mentioned when he had called out various destinations.
But most of these hotel guests were not dressed like the campers she had mingled among for the past week. As she walked under the trees circling the hotel grounds, she came to the edge of a lawn which extended to a lush green meadow and fronted a terrace of the hotel. Here, many of the guests sat at umbrella-topped tables or in comfortable lounge chairs. No these people were not campers; rather, members of a wedding party. The men in Gatsby-like attire and women in summer gossamer who stood around with drinks in hand seemed to her of another world, that of her own youthful memories of summers spent on Long Island estates. Jennifer looked down at her faded jeans and sturdy boots. She'd known soon after she'd come to California and had fallen in love with Mike, that except for Sunday church services he wasn't much for anything that smacked of formality. Luckily her parents had flown west for their small wedding and simple reception. He'd never have survived the society weddings Jennifer had attended in New York. She'd known, too, the kind of honeymoon she would have, though she had never dreamed it would be in such beautiful surroundings. She wouldn't have traded the past week for anything.
Yet, now, a wistful something tugged at her as she walked behind the immense stone room, with its tall windows, which jutted out into the meadow, and she found herself peeking through an open door to discover what seemed like hundreds of chandeliers overhead reflected by high polished beams illuminating the most beautiful dining room she'd ever seen. But the sight of waiters preparing the tables for dinner and the delicious smells coming from the kitchen area prompted Jennifer to turn and note the lengthening shadows on the meadow grass which reminded her that Mike would be returning in an hour or so, tired and hungry, and that it would take her awhile to prepare dinner. He'd told her to just plan to warm up a can of beans, but she knew his appetite, especially after a long hike.
She waited at the Ahwahnee bus stop, caught the shuttle and was soon back where she'd left the car. As she was taking the groceries and ice chest out of the car at the campsite, she was startled. Someone was moving around inside their tent. She set the groceries on the picnic table and took a step backwards. "Mike, that's not you is it?"
He poked his head out of the tent. "You were expecting Englebert Humperdink?"
"No, you silly, but you said you wouldn't be back till..."
A grin. "Guess I'm in better condition this year than I thought. Marriage must agree with me. Come here."
He drew her into the tent and hugged her. But what was this? She ran her fingers along his moist chin. He was no longer a fuzz-face, but looked a little pink and raw. As they emerged from the tent, a closer look at the picnic table showed her a teakettle, razor, brush and soap. As he continued drying his face with the towel that had been around his neck, she realized that she had forgotten that he had that dimple in his chin.
"Are you ready?" he asked her. "Ready for what?" She was never quite sure with Mike. "I knew I'd really be hungry tonight so I made reservations for us to have dinner at the Ahwahnee."
"The Ahwahnee? Oh Mike, I saw it today! It's beauti...Mike, stop teasing me. We're not staying there."
"Doesn't mean we can't have dinner there. I hear the food's good. Jack Kennedy, Queen Elizabeth and some others have eaten there."
"But I didn't bring anything along except camping clothes." "Oh yes you did." He pulled her over to the car trunk, opened it and brought out a smal suitcase which he'd carefully packed with their Sunday best.
"Michael!"
He put his arm around her and looked at her with his deep brown eyes. Again she knew he was sharing a dream with her. "As soon as my brothers and I were old enough to look after ourselves at camp, my folks would get all cleaned up, put on their best clothes and go off for a "date" at the Ahwahnee one night, every year. They'd even come back holding hands. Something they didn't usually do. All that candlelight, I guess. Anyway, I promised myself someday..."
Jennifer kissed him. "Someday's here, Mike. Four-mile Hike, day after tomorrow. We might be too sleepy tomorrow morning. And next year: you, me, Half Dome, the stars at night."
"Promise?"
"I promise."