Feral Field Notes 006: In the Shade of a Sequoia Tree

Day 6 of 100: Finally in one place long enough to write-write and let my loneliness "ferment and season" me, I guess.

Jun 29, 2025

Welcome to Feral Field Notes, a series where I’m documenting my 100 day writing pilgrimage across the US (begin here).

Pilgrim Passport

Start/End

Sunset Campground, Kings Canyon National Park

Feral Field Notes

I’ve once again found myself writing in the shade of a tree. Except this time, it was a towering Sequoia.

Though I kept trying to move with it as the sun continued its climb, I did get a little sunkissed. It’s just hard sometimes when you’re in flow/focus (flocus?) mode to notice a sunbeam has found its way onto your skin. I’m getting better though.

This morning’s reading time of Long Quiet Highway by Natalie Goldberg really resonated.

Her passages on grief, suffering, and letting go made me reflect on what I was struggling with just before leaving: saying goodbye to the friend with cancer I’d been living with and my other friends and community just as things felt like they’d started falling into “place.” Plus, the guilt and fear stuff when it comes to the friend I left… I still don’t feel up to writing in any kind of detail about that but it’s present. It’s always present.

There’s just something about Natalie’s writing that makes me feel so alive. It’s contagious, and I notice it’s affecting my own writing, energy, and this whole trip overall. It feels more like a book study, a lesson, or even a “conversation” across time and across the page with her than simple reading time.

After finishing my morning routine, I took a break where I listened to some music while enjoying the view and eating a simple lunch of carrots, red pepper, hummus, mozzarella cheese, crackers, dried mango, 2 small apricots, and a banana that remained a plate accessory in the end.

I was enjoying the music (by M83) so much that after I was done eating, I made a cup of coffee and then another and just kept scooching my chair to follow the beam of shade from that same giant Sequoia.

I’d previously only heard M83’s popular “Midnight City” song, but because I’m trying to get back to how I used to enjoy music (as in, actually experiencing it versus only being background noise), I found the whole album and listened to it all from the beginning.

It’s not the kind of music I’ve ever really listened to before, but I’m obsessed. It’s amazing. And not just the music itself, which I have no idea how to describe genre-wise (I’m learning just how musically illiterate I am), but the lyrics are so beautiful too, like these from the Intro:

We didn't need a story, we didn't need a real world
We just had to keep walking
And we became the stories, we became the places
We were the lights, the deserts, the faraway worlds
We were you before you even existed

After my break, I was just getting started again in my notebook when a car pulled up right next to mine. It felt like the equivalent of being the only one in a theatre mid-movie when suddenly, someone walks in and sits right next to you despite a hundred other empty seats.

A guy in his mid-20s got out to ask if he had the right spot (it was a shared parking pad). I said yes, and we ended up chatting. He was super sweet; he’d decided to drive up from San Diego even though his girlfriend cancelled on him last-minute, and he had just 2 days to explore. He’d only ever camped alone once, but he decided to just go for it.

“Hell yeah!” I’d said to this. I elaborated by saying something like, “So many people are always waiting for the right time or perfect conditions to do something they really want to do, and even when they have those perfect conditions, they’re afraid to do it alone. So we just end up waiting and waiting to live and anyway (blah blah blah) good job dude!”

It was a great little blip of human connection in a day where I’d otherwise speak to no one except a stray chipmunk or two… oh and a quick question to a park employee to ask where I could find showers since I was getting pretty ripe, and the campground I was at didn’t have any.

Right before My New Friend left, he asked, “What about you? What are you doing today?” And I just gestured vaguely to my chair and notebook and mountain vista and said, “Um… writing more!” and laughed.

We said goodbye since he had more to explore, and I got back to it. It was a bit warm now at peak heat time, but I kept seeking out that shade.

I was itchy to move my legs by 4ish, so I walked a long lap around the campground and then ended up driving the 2 minutes to the Grove Visitor Center area. I wanted a different (and more comfortable) workspace. So I went to the cafe, ordered a root beer from the kiosk, then took a seat outside where I’d have a whole big real table in the shade with a view of a lovely meadow.

After a few hours of writing (and watching some deer and their babies move through the field to munch on everything), I returned to the campground and started making dinner and another fire. Not wanting to mess with dishes or fuss with my stove, I sharpened the end of a stick and cooked my sausages on it while soaking up the sunset.

This place isn’t called Sunset Campground for nothing. As I ate, I’d look up every few moments to take it all in, watching couples and families come and go (I saw nobody on their own). They’d enjoy the stunning views together until finally, the sun fully set, and they’d return to their campsites.

The post-sunset show might be even better than the main event though. I just love the way the horizon is like a living, shifting painting, but I noticed something new tonight, too—a little pang. I wished I could be sharing this moment with someone—my partner, my friends, my dog.

The pang brought to mind the Hafiz poem that I’m sure everyone is getting tired of hearing me bring up recently:

“Don't surrender your loneliness so quickly. Let it cut you more deep. Let it ferment and season you as few humans and even divine ingredients can. Something missing in my heart tonight has made my eyes so soft, my voice so tender, my need for God absolutely clear.”

I don’t believe in God but I now treat the word as a fill-in-the-blank for whatever our truth is so that beautiful teachings and poems can be more accessible to me instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, like I used to do.

Anyway, I sat with that all for a while and wondered and watched and ate and felt sad and also happy and warm, and then I was ready for bed.

From my journal that night:

“Now here I am [in the car], jam jams on (as my best friend says and so now also me), starry lights glowing above me, slightly sunburnt, M83 playing “Soon My Friend,” and looking forward to a little bit of reading She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb—a book I reread voraciously as a teenager for some reason…”

I wonder where I’ll end up tomorrow.

… hopefully in a shower.