There is a version of a family road trip that exists in my head before we leave. Everyone is comfortable. The packing is manageable. We spend our days discovering beautiful places, and our children are appropriately moved by the experience.
Then there is the actual trip, which involves four children, a screeching baby, and a 100-pound Doberman who believes he is the fifth child.
We need a seven-passenger vehicle, despite having only four children. The math starts to make sense when you meet Hank, who takes up more room than any of them and insists on sitting like the person he believes himself to be: butt on the seat, paws on the floor, his enormous head resting in the toddler's lap as he dozes in and out. He has found his place in the family and made himself very comfortable there. The rest of us arrange ourselves accordingly.
This time, we were headed toward the Bishop area, hoping to explore just a few of the hundreds of wonders scattered along Highway 395. That stretch of the Eastern Sierra has a way of making a single trip feel far too small. There is always another mountain, another turn, another place you wish you had time to wander.
There was also a motel attached to a gas station. We will get to that.
Our first stop was Alabama Hills. The kids had done a decent job tolerating a long drive with a screeching toddler as their soundtrack, but it was time to get their bodies out of the car and moving. Jeff had been recommending this place for years. Somehow, I had never been.
As soon as we stepped out, the air felt a little otherworldly: warm, with a chilled breeze passing through it, large and tumbling rain clouds bringing periodic drizzles of rain. The weather seemed as undecided as we were about where to look first. Around us, enormous rounded rocks rose in strange, wonderful shapes, with the mountains beyond them making the whole scene feel almost imagined.
It immediately became one of the coolest hikes I have ever been on.
And we kept looking at each other.
All of us. Taking in a view, then finding someone else's eyes, checking that they were seeing it, too. Are you seeing this right now? Sometimes the question came out loud. Sometimes it was just a smile, a little disbelief passing between us. The kids were visibly awestruck, and I was right there with them, seeing it all for the first time.
I love exploring how extraordinary the natural world is. That curiosity is one of the most persistent parts of me, and getting to share it with my children means more than I can meaningfully explain. There is so much competing for their attention these days, and sometimes parenting feels like an endless effort to keep their minds safe, to fight for their attention, to give them room to remain children. I want to leave space for the sort of wonder that takes a little time to arrive.
Then we find ourselves somewhere like this, and I can see that space is still there. They can stand in the quiet of something enormous and feel it. They can look around with reverence, with curiosity, with those beautiful, disbelieving smiles. And I get to watch them realize how amazing the world is, knowing how much of it is still waiting for them.
Of course, even a family having a profound encounter with nature eventually needs beds.
Finding accommodations for six people and a monster puppy was its own project. We ended up at the Bristlecone Motel in Big Pine, part of a wonderfully improbable arrangement involving a gas station, mini market, hardware store, and laundromat. A surprisingly ambitious collection of services in one place.
Our room felt more like an offbeat apartment. Was it the nicest place we have ever stayed? No. No…
But it had more than enough room for us, worked for what we paid, provided excellent customer service and accommodated our entire crew. There was even a little fenced area where we could let Hank out to do his business, which anyone traveling with four children and a large dog will recognize as a meaningful amenity.
It was quirky and wonderfully convenient. The carpet had seen things. But there was room for all of us, and sometimes having somewhere your entire family actually fits is a luxury of its own.
The Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest was the part of this trip I knew would fascinate me. I did not know it would leave me thinking quite so deeply about the simple act of merely leaning against a tree.
First, though, there was the uphill hiking. The entire first part of our hike was a climb, and I was very grateful for toddler backpacks, snacks, water, and a baby hiking carrier. Admiring ancient life requires a little logistical support when you bring very young life along with you.
We had done our best to prepare the kids, explaining what the climb would be like while also getting them excited for it. Everyone had a job. Someone would pick our resting spots. Someone would choose the snack, treat, or reward for making it that far. Someone would invent a trail game to keep us moving: find something square; find something with more than four legs.
The mountain was still uphill, but now there were small missions unfolding along the way. A reason to look closely. A little say in when we stopped. Something to anticipate around the next bend.
Then there were the trees themselves: gnarled, twisted, tangled, and devastatingly and roughly beautiful.
The oldest bristlecones have lived for close to 5,000 years.
Five thousand. It can land like just another large number in a museum guide's explanation, somewhere between an interesting fact and the moment your mind begins wandering toward lunch.
But wait. Let’s give that number somewhere to live.
You know Abraham from the Bible? That Sunday School Song.. “Father Abraham had many sons, and many sons had Father Abraham” That Abraham. In the traditional timeline of his life, the oldest of these trees would already have been centuries old.
My mind starts rummaging through all those ancient stories for something familiar to hold on to. Even Noah's Ark comes floating through; you know - that horror story we somehow collectively agreed would make lovely nursery decor? That's the distance my imagination is trying to travel. Biblical-story distance. Far enough back that people and places begin to feel almost unreachable.
And here is a tree. Still alive. Rooted in the earth beside me.
I can read a number and move on. Standing next to something whose life stretches that far back is another matter entirely.
And their survival is stranger and more interesting than I expected. A bristlecone can lose entire sections and continue living through the portions that remain. Different roots support different sections of the tree, so the death of one part does not necessarily mean the death of the whole. That weathered, almost skeletal appearance can conceal an astonishing amount of persistence.
Some needles can remain on a tree for more than 40 years. Their young cones are deep purple, which helps them absorb heat, and take two years to mature. Even fallen bristlecone wood can be thousands of years old. There is a lot of history here, including in things you might otherwise walk past.
At some point during our hike, my toddler sat down in the shade and thumped his tired little body against a tree trunk to rest.
My immediate thought was, Oh, maybe he shouldn't do that. These trees are so old.
I had almost started thinking of them as delicate museum specimens. Something precious that we should admire carefully from a respectful distance.
Then the very same thought turned itself around in my mind.
These trees are so old.
They had endured generation after generation of mountain weather. Snow settling into their branches. Wind working at them. Bitter cold, dry seasons, the long patience of standing in one place while the world changed around them. I thought about everything this landscape had experienced, everything these trees had weathered, and then looked at my tired little boy resting against one.
Its age had made me think first of fragility. Standing beside it, I began to think about strength.
When I think about reverence and awe, my thoughts naturally reach toward spiritual things. Toward God.
Whatever language we use when we try to describe something greater than ourselves—God, the universe, what have you—I wonder whether that sense of immensity sometimes makes us step back. For me, it is God. And sometimes my reverence seems to put Him at a distance, as though He is too powerful, too important, too far beyond my understanding for me to approach with my ordinary, small exhaustion.
As though the things weighing on me ought to be more impressive before I bring them to Him. As though I should tidy myself up a little first, get a better grip on everything, arrive with less to carry.
And all the while, He is asking me to come closer. To bring the weight with me. To let Him hold what I keep trying to manage in my own tired arms.
My toddler knew nothing of the significance of the age of the tree behind him. He had no idea what it had weathered, or how long it had stood there. He was tired, and here was something strong to lean against and big enough to provide shade.
Watching him, I saw the parallel. How readily I stand in reverence of God, and how that very reverence can make accepting His comfort feel almost inappropriate. I manage my worries, tend to my responsibilities, and worry some more about all the things I should be managing better. Meanwhile, I fail to rest in the One who wants to carry my burdens. Who has asked me to let Him.
I reached out and laid my hand against the gnarled trunk. Reverence and closeness could exist here together. I could respect the strength beneath my hand, marvel at all that had shaped it, and still find something tender in the way its weathered branches seemed to welcome and make room for a tired child.
Perhaps I could allow myself that same small trust. Let myself lean into a strength I didn’t have to supply, and rest without feeling I needed to earn it first.
I left feeling lighter, which was quite an accomplishment considering the 40-pound “baby” I was carrying on my back. The weight in the carrier was very much accounted for. The heaviness in my heart, I realized, which may have been traveling with me so quietly all along, that the thought didn’t occur to me to set it down.
I was still riding that feeling on the drive back when we began passing little dirt roads branching away from the main road. As we approached one unmarked turn, something in my brain said, Try it.
So I did.
A left, a right, another right, possibly another left. Jeff was understandably concerned about whether my enthusiasm included a reliable plan for finding our way back. Which was fair. I am notoriously better at having these ideas than thinking them all the way through.
Eventually, the road delivered us to a hill with an enormous view. Open land, distant ridges, mountains layered into the horizon. I remember looking toward what I recognized as Death Valley, then looking over and picking out Mount Whitney in the distance, trying to fit the sheer scale of it all into my understanding.
I was standing on one little hill, thinking about the two extremes gathered into this part of the world: Death Valley, home to the lowest point in North America, and Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the contiguous United States. After walking among trees whose lives reach back thousands of years, I was now trying to comprehend the land falling so low and rising so high, all within this extraordinary region.
It felt like more wonder than one day ought reasonably to hold.
And we had found this little spot because I took a turn.
I love a planned destination. Apparently, I also love giving my husband mild navigational anxiety in pursuit of an unplanned one.
Our time around Whitney Portal brought another kind of surprise. While Santa Clarita was baking in temperatures over 100 degrees, we were up in the mountains feeling absolutely freezing. At one point, I wondered whether it was snowing. There was rain, hail, ice, possibly some snow mixed in. Whatever the exact meteorological explanation, frozen things were falling from the sky.
We got food at the portal and explored, marveling at how we could leave that much heat and find ourselves in weather like this.
The mountain hike to Lone Pine Lake was another favorite. Summiting Whitney is not a project for our family at this stage of life, but we could experience a piece of that landscape together. The climb was comfortably difficult for us: enough effort to feel we had gone somewhere, with a destination that made me very glad we had.
I know mountain lakes exist. I understand this intellectually. Apparently, some part of my brain still expects all the bodies of water to be below me, rather than tucked into a mountain roughly 10,000 feet above sea level.
After climbing through so much steep terrain, arriving at this still body of water felt improbable. We had worked our way up there, and here was an entire little world already going about its business.
The fish question turns out to be worth asking. Many high Sierra waters were historically “fishless” until people stocked them. In Yosemite, fish were once brought in by hand and mule, and eventually by airplane. That doesn't tell me the history of the particular fish we saw, but it gives a whole new dimension to my question about how they got up there.
Our final stop was a train museum, because our two smallest boys love trains, and there was no way we were passing up that opportunity.
Emerson, our third-born, expresses excitement with his entire body. Everything goes rigid. His fingers and toes point, his hands tremble, and he rises onto his tiptoes. People who haven't seen it before sometimes look concerned. To us, it is familiar: Emerson is absolutely delighted.
The older two were less absorbed by the trains, but there were little houses and spaces to explore, grass to chase each other across, and beauty around us to enjoy. Everyone found something.
I think about the effort these trips take. The packing, the driving, the baby screeching, the room search. The weight of a little person in a hiking carrier. The responsibility of getting everyone somewhere and back again, hopefully with enough snacks.
And I think about the moments I would have missed if we had stayed home.
Our glances finding each other among the rocks at Alabama Hills. My toddler settling into the shade of an ancient tree. Emerson so excited his body could barely contain it. The feeling of leaving something heavy behind me, beneath those twisted branches.
But one moment at Mount Whitney comes back to me more than any other.
We were quietly admiring the beauty around us when Everly turned to me. I hadn't asked whether she liked it. I hadn't prompted her with my usual Isn't that cool? or What do you think?
She just looked at me and said,
“Thank you for taking us here, Mom. And showing us these beautiful places.”
