Moon light election night

In the front country, Obama and McCain fought their final fights for the White House, and I struggled with a classic midcountry dilemma: tune out and bliss out, or tune in and embrace conscious membership in society. The elections were, indeed, weighing on my mind. I had caught Obama fever, even volunteered on the campaign trail.

Matt Bynum, Joe Dyer, and Julia Morton catching up on politics between pitches in the VW van.

But without cell service or internet access, and with pretty fuzzy radio reception, I defaulted to ignorance. So, my climbing partners and I settled in to the heart of midcountry: climbing camp night life. We prepared food by lantern and headlamp to share with our nieghbors.

On our walk back from the crags, a camper named Chokae’ — whose resume includes such things as massage therapist, videographer, card-carrying witch, frolickologist, and psychic – was once again starting the fire and pouring the wine at his campsite in Hidden Valley Campground.

Chokae', the frolicologist and climbing camp wiseman.

We sat around the fire with friends and strangers alike waiting for a cinnamon and sugar butternut squash to cook in foil on the fire. Chokae’ (pronounced like Choke-eye) didn’t climb much, but he did seem to enjoy the climbers’ camps. He had just been in Yosemite for a while, and was enjoying the social scene in J-tree. He was a bit of a spiritual and emotional mentor to many in the nomadic community. Some young guys who Chokai had rescued that day from a poorly planned and even more poorly executed mushroom trip were groggily recounting their experience, which consisted mostly of ensuring everyone that, “dude, you don’t even know, I was tripping balls.” Later, I sat on the ground next to Chokae’ and he told me stories about philosophizing with Ram Dass. He stopped suddenly, smiled down at me from his high, mesh lawn chair, and said, “You know, you should go out at sunset, draw a circle in the sand, and walk counter-clockwise around it. It will blow your mind.” (Side note: a year later I did, and about circle number three I felt tingly, wild, spiritual.)

Moonlight climbers en route to the keg on Intersection Rock via Upper Right Ski Track (5.3)

Down the road some campers were celebrating up on top of intersection rock: we watched headlamps ascend a fixed rope up the 5.3 Upper Right Ski Track, and other headlamps rappel off the other side. They had hauled a couple kegs up there, and from the sound of some loud coaching, they were hauling some very beginner climbers up there, too.

The stars were bright despite the nearly full moon, and the landscape felt lunar in the white moon light. The spiny, Dr.-Seussian Joshua Trees profiled on the dusky horizon, and the sharpness of the night’s cold felt impossible, hallucinatory compared to the intense sun and heat of the day.

I left Chokae’s fire to stroll the campground with my friends, Julia, Joe and Luke (Luke, who we had just met, had ridden his bike from southwest British Columbia to Joshua Tree, and was sharing our camp). As we watched other fire circles from afar, and listened to tribal cries echoing between granite monoliths, I though of Ed Abbey’s line from his Havasupai chapter in Desert Solitaire: “Like the Taoist Chuang-tse, I worried about butterflies and who was dreaming what.”

I imagined Obama and McCain in a climbing camp: McCain, complaining around the fire that Barack had short-roped him on his redpoint attempt, and Obama, fist bumping the rangers for not ticketing his overdue camping fees.  In the surreality of a Joshua Tree night, politics — even a “ground-breaking” election like this — was a universe apart.

Around midnight, after walking back to camp, Julia and I sat in her Subaru and scrolled through the radio stations. A D.C.-area native and politically involved and concientious woman, Julia seemed even more torn between active awareness and the easy romance of drop-out bumhood.

The Old Woman: 3, 2, 1, lift off.

Finally we found decent reception we listened to melodramatic election updates.  With the seats layed back, we nodded off to blue-this, red-that, delegates and percentage points and “The latest polls show…” We headed to the tent, figured we could wait until morning to find out. Around 5 o’clock in the morning, however, we heard the news. A shout from across the campground woke us up: “Obama!” And then silence. I burrowed into my bag, and went back to sleep.

A few hours later, to celebrate, my neighbors and I did what we do best: we packed up and went climbing. The president may have changed, but gravity and friction were still doing their age-old thing.