That’s when I realized I could never write for somebody else. Travel writing is only travel writing if it is purely independent. Anything else, anything propped up by advertising has an agenda, and the travel industry’s agenda is anathema to the genre of travel writing. If the travel writer is not independent, he is not writing travel.
By the time I am done considering all of this, I have parked Jane’s car and gone walking. The Tuolomne Meadows is a large sub-alpine stretch of meadows, sedge habitats and flooded riverbed terrain high up in Eastern Yosemite. In the late summer months, these meadows bloom, making the whole place eden-like.
The meadows are so friendly to wandering that I continue for hours. I am about six miles along the river when I spot four deer. They are a mile away, chewing on grass in the meadow. Because I am so far from the road, there is nobody around me. It feels like a part of the meadows where nobody has ever been.
I approach the deer slowly, as if I’m stalking them. The wind is in my favor. The light is growing dim. Within about fifty feet of the deer is a ridge.
I approach the ridge bent on my knees. When I arrive, I get on all fours and quietly climb the ridge. When I make it to the top, I peer over the ridge. They are right underneath me. The deer so close I can see the hairy fibers of their antlers.
In the Los Angeles Times travel section, what they’ll tell you now is about how spiritual it was that they communed with the deer at sunset. But what I’m really thinking is, grownups don’t follow deer. I am thinking, responsible people don’t run around in meadows for a living. And this thought, I have to quench it, because I still have fifteen-hundred miles to drive, and work to get done.
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