Saturday, May 12, 2018

Walking the John Muir Trail and the Harmonic Covergence by AntonioSolisGomez

I have always been a walker. In the early 1970’s, I had gone for a short walk on the Mt. Wilson trail and after walking a few miles, realized I didn’t want to stop. I didn’t have any water and it was twelve miles to the top but I was young and strong so I kept going. At the top was Skyline Park run by Metromedia and I convinced the gatekeeper to let me buy a hamburger at the restaurant without paying the entrance fee as I didn’t have enough money for both.

In the summer of 1987, I began having an unrelenting urge to get out and hike.  By then I was living in Tucson and had done a fair amount of day hiking in the Santa Catalina Mountains that tower in the northern section of the city. But this unrelenting urge was for more than a day hike, I wanted to backpack somewhere. 

 
I don’t why I focused on the John Muir Trail, it being an era prior to the wealth of information obtainable on the Internet and I didn’t belong to any hiking club.  But I was a reference librarian at the public library and had access to lots of books and maybe that’s how I came upon it. Frankly though there wasn’t much to be gleaned even from the library books. About all I learned was that it was about two hundred miles in length and that I could enter the trail at Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite and exit above Lone Pine in the Owens Valley. That was all I knew and I began preparing for a two week hike, figuring I could walk about 13 miles a day and finish it.

Being a vegetarian, I wanted to take food that required no cooking such as nuts and seeds and some freeze dried items. I also thought that I could purify my water with Iodine tablets, as one fact I did learn was that the stream water on the trail could be contaminated with Giardia, causing stomach pain and Diarrhea. My backpack was heavy the day my sister dropped me off at Tuolumne Meadows, full of enthusiasm and courage. I say courage because I had decided that I was willing to die if need be to accomplish this goal.


 
It was a beautiful morning the day I commenced my walk and I saw deer and thought it a good omen. The trial was a deep rut made by the many hikers that had gone before and that also encouraged me. One missing fact from my limited understanding of the trail was that the altitude was much above anything I had ever walked. I started at about ten thousand feet and that first day after only about six miles I was exhausted. 

 
I thought that the heaviness of my backpack was the reason I was not able to walk the necessary 13 miles in order to finish within my two week vacation. But to lighten my load meant that I wouldn’t have enough food for the entire 200 mile journey. I went to sleep at two in the afternoon that first day, discouraged and tired, I didn’t wake up until the next morning.

Refreshed by a good long sleep, I began examining alternatives and decided that I would lighten my backpack and walk for five days and then turn around. I started off feeling surprisingly strong and happy to be immersed in nature.


Sometime that afternoon of the second day, I met up with Earl, another lone hiker and we began walking together. We walked some 15 miles that day and I was puzzled. It was Earl that explained the tiredness associated with the high altitude. He had prepared by taking hemoglobin shots and although I hadn’t known of high altitude fatigue by the second day, I had acclimatized and was feeling great. My regret now was having gotten rid of some of my food but Earl said that there was a place just off the trail where food could be had. Armed with the knowledge of restocking my food and my physical regeneration, I determined anew to finish my quest.

 
Another of my misconceptions was that the trail went along the crest of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Not so at all. It was one day walking in the lush valley and then climbing above the tree line and walking through mountain passes at 12 or 13 thousand feet in elevation and then down the other side, only to do something very similar in a day or two. But the scenery was incredible. In the valleys among the trees there were beautiful fast running streams and in those high reaches, majestic crystalline lakes and unparallelled vistas of mountain peaks that stretched forever. 

 
And there was plenty of solitude for contemplation. We hiked separately and met very few people that were also hiking the entire trail. Sometimes we’d meet up with a day hiker who had entered through one of several trailheads that initially I didn’t know existed.

About two days from the end of the trail, I started peeing blood, probably a combination of physical fatigue and under nourishment. I was also repulsed by the Iodine I had used to purify my water and Earl once again came to my rescue by offering to boil extra water for me. 

Earl and I reached Lone Pine thirteen days after starting out.  It was an accomplishment and I was exhausted but I hadn’t died. I was elated.



Fast forward to sometime after 2012 when I was attending a talk by the new age clairvoyant Patricia Cota-Robles who mentioned that during the Harmonic Convergence in the fall of 1987 some people felt compelled to walk the ley lines of Earth. So what are ley lines? Here’s a definition from Conscious Life News

Just like we have veins that flow in and out of the heart, Mother Earth has Ley Lines, which are lines of energy that coil around the earth in a similar fashion as a strand of DNA. In fact, where the Ley Lines intersect are believed to be high points of energy or high concentrations of electrical charge. 

Wow! Apparently I wasn't the only person to feel such a strong compulsion during the Harmonic Covergence, which was the period of time prophecised by the Mayans and given a definition by Jose Arrguelles as "the point at which the counter spin of history finally comes to a momentary halt and the still imperceptible spin of post histoy commences."


We are now in that period of post history where humanity is beginning to create a world of unity and peace and where the old world and its adherents are desperately trying to maintain what is being lost i.e. separation, greed, violence and inequality.

1 comment:

Daniel Cano said...

Antonio, it's nice to know there are others out there who share the same excitement and experiences about hiking (or just walking). I saw some 70-somethings, men and women, last year out there hiking above Kings Canyon, 7 days in the back country. I hope this pain in my heel goes away by this summer, so I can continue, even mild climbing. I love nature, and only by hiking can one really appreciate where no cars can go. Oh, I think you left out the
work "know" in paragraph 3 or 4. If you, or any blogueros out there, see any missed words, or errors, in anything I write, please feel free to edit without asking. Gracias.