Today I'm partnering with WOW! Women on Writing to share some excerpts from Force of Nature, by Joan M. Griffin!
Force of Nature: Three Women Tackle the John Muir TrailJoan M. Griffin
Published September 28, 2023
Force of Nature is equal parts gripping adventure tale, personal memoir, and vivid nature writing.
Three friends, women in their fifties, set out to hike “the most beautiful long-distance trail in the world,” the John Muir Trail. From the outset, their adventure is complicated by self-inflicted accidents and ferocious weather, then enriched when they “adopt” a young hiker abandoned by her partner along the trail.
The women experience the terror of lightning at eleven-thousand feet, the thrill of walking through a towering waterfall, and the joy of dancing among midnight moonshadows. For a month, they live immersed in vast natural beauty, tackle the trail’s physical demands, and find camaraderie among an ensemble cast of eccentric trail characters. Together, they are pulled forward toward the trail’s end atop the highest peak in the High Sierra, Mt. Whitney, and the culmination of their transformative journey. - from Goodreads
And now, for some excerpts!
We were hiking uphill as fast as our fifty-year-old legs would carry us. Behind us, the sky was a bright California summer blue. But ahead, above the granite mountain ridge we were climbing, it grew gray, then grayer. Still early, it was barely two in the afternoon. Our plan was to be over the pass and setting up camp down in the valley on the other side long before the Sierra’s typical evening rains began.
Cresting eleven-thousand-foot Donohue Pass, however, we were shocked to find ourselves face to face with a monster storm lurking behind the ridge. Angry black clouds now rose like towers, filling the sky.
Shoulder to shoulder, we froze. Not only did this army of lightning-laced thunderheads block our forward motion, but it was charging directly at us, riding on an icy wind. There was no time for the three of us to retreat to lower, safer ground.
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The late afternoon sky, periwinkle blue polka-dotted with white clouds, was reflected in the perfect mirror of the small pond—and in each of the cups and pools arranged across the granite bowl. Like holograms, each pool, cup, puddle, and pond held the entire sky and surrounding mountain peaks—the mirrored surfaces broken only by the little marble islets.
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I plunged forward, head and shoulders down. My feet found solid footing. The torrent flew over my head and past my right shoulder. The back spray of frigid water engulfed me—more airy foam than water. I gasped. I shrieked in shock—then in delight!
It was not difficult, after all—like wading through thick bubbles. It was exhilarating, thrilling, wonderful! I slowed down to savor the last steps of my stroll through a waterfall.
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Our little camping room was bathed in an alpenglow spotlight. We were immersed in pink and orange. The pond reflected it, and the room’s vertical walls and boulders glowed as though illuminated from within. It was like being inside a magical snow globe filled, not with white snow, but with glowing photons of fiery light that swirled all around us. We stopped our work to watch the colors and shadows shift and change around us like colorful fluids spreading and mixing and flowing away.
Alpenglow is always fleeting. After too short a time, we stood witness as the darkness chased the last of the vivid colors across the space to leave us behind in the dullness of night’s full shadow.
I blinked my eyes. “I didn’t even know that was a thing you could experience.”
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