• Life’s Little Lessons

If I run a stop sign, you might say I ran a stop sign. I drove illegally that day. Guilty as charged. But does that make me an “illegal driver”?  No. The thing I did is not generally assigned to me as a status of my person.

But boy, if you cross a border illegally one time, you bear the mark of freaking Cain! You didn’t do an illegal thing. You ARE illegal.  People allow themselves to view you as essentially a non-person, because it is a mark of your essential being now. YOU are illegal.

That is a huge rhetorical problem, because it allows people to get on a high horse about the technicality of legality. Legality and moral character are magically interchangeable. An illegal person is an immoral person, a non-person. Non-persons can be denied all rights, not just the rights of citizenship, but increasingly, it seems, basic human rights.

An “illegal immigrant” is seen as a person getting away with something, somehow taking something away from the rest of us “legals”. The illegal immigrant is a criminal, and that just gets the goat of law-abiding citizens. A person who needs money can choose to work, or choose to steal, and that is a choice. But a person who wishes to enter a country does not have an equally viable path to legal entry if the entry process is made difficult by quotas or other laws discouraging immigration. If the legal status of persons is the real issue, why keep making new laws which will produce more illegal immigrants? How about making laws which produce fewer illegal immigrants, like making it easier to enter the country legally?

I propose that we drop “illegal immigrant” in favor of  “migrant workers”, since contrary to the scare tactics of the immigration freakouters, most do in fact come here to work, not get white babies hooked on drugs while raping them. That migrant workers may or may not have entered the country illegally tells you about as much about that person’s moral character as the fact that I once bought beer in a wet country and then drank it in a dry county tells you about my moral character. Furthermore, one could easily turn the moral character angle completely around. If you are a farmer, or a farm laborer, and are unable to work due to economic conditions in your country, and you knew of work across the border, and obtaining this work could help you provide for your family, but in order to enter that country, you had to do so illegally, what would be the moral, Christian thing to do? Let your family starve, on the principle of not entering a country illegally? Or take some personal risk to provide for them? Isn’t it clear that the moral thing to do would be to disregard the immigration law in favor of your family’s economic security? Of course it is — therefore what defines people in this predicament is that they are migrant workers, not illegal immigrants.

Migrant workers with no legal rights are the least enfranchised people in our country. Far from being the cause of any problem, they are the victims of economic and labor policies and discrimination perpetrated against them by very well enfranchised, well connected political elites in both countries. Bringing the full measure of the state down upon the very least enfranchised members of our society — besides being cruel — is guaranteed to accomplish nothing and please no one. It’s like trying to cure leukemia by arresting cancer victims.

This was a pretty easy hike — mostly flat (although we gained 1000′ feet from Tuolumne Meadows to the pass area). It was unseasonably cool — we were warned about a snow storm. It definitely was freezing overnight and did snow lightly, but no accumulation in our area. This was a pretty spontaneously planned hike. Terry just happened to be in town and I snagged some days off. Most of his gear is at my house, but he was a little under-equipped for cold weather.

Anyway, we lit out early Wednesday morning, arrived to get our permits at the ranger station around 9, and after gathering some last minute supplies (warm clothes for Terry and some lunch) we were finally on the trail around 1:30.  We hiked in about 6 miles to a point beyond Ireland Creek where we had never been before. It’s always fun to explore virgin terrirory. We found a really excellent site — flat, soft earth, plety of trees for our hammocks (Terry’s tent is a hammock dealy. I have a simple hammock for resting during the day but my tent is a single person tent on the ground.) Close to the Lyell Fork for water, a pretty little falls. Previous campers left some little presents for us — a copy of the novel All Tomorrow’s Parties to use as kindling, some sunblock and a handkerchief.

There seemed to be tons of pack trains on this trail — this is a segment of the John Muir Trail and most hikers are going much farther than we did. Lots of groups were hikers plus horses plus mules. We also saw one Llama train! That was cool. Two hikers leading around four or five llamas. They did not carry as much load as the mules did but they were really beautiful and exotic.

On day two, Thursday morning, it was snowing. We had some hot coffee and Ramen noodles for breakfast, then head down the trail for a day hike. We passed more pack trains and chatted with hikers. One British dude we met was 6 days into a 4 week hike of the full JMT — which culminates with a hike up to the summit of Mt. Whitney. He’s out there now, presumably, so do raise a pint for him. He bid us “Cheerio!” which struck us as archaic, although I greeted him with a “Howdy” so…

We hiked up the switchbacks at the end of the meadow — it really isn’t Yosemite unless you do switchbacks, according to Terry anyway. Got more views of the pass and the meadows we had just come from. But it was a little too cold to linger too long. We hiked back down to camp, lit a nice fire and mixed ourselves some High Sierra Margaritas: water + instant lemonade + tequila + snow.

Friday morning we lingered at the site. The sun threatened to emerge but basically it was still cloudy and windy and cool for the hike out. We drove to Oakdale for our traditional Mountain Mike’s post hike pizza and it was a wrap.

In terms of wildlife, we saw: mama deers with their fawns, a garter snake (first non-poisonous snake we’ve seen in Yose), horses, mules, llamas. No bears, so our success rate for this area dropped from %100 to %66.666. But that’s OK, especially since we saw something rarer. It was either an American Marten or a Fisher. We had stopped on our hike out at Rafferty Creek by a bridge. Right as I was ditching my pack, I saw across the stream an animal that scurried across the rock and stoop and looked at me. I said to Terry, “That’s a huge marmot!” Then the creature slinked away and as it did so I noticed it had a more elongated shape than a marmot. It had similar coloring — a brownish coat with a light colored chest. But the behavior was not at all marmot like — a marmot would have come right up to us to steal our food. Also I have never seen a marmot at this elevation (around 8800′) — they usually appear higher than that and in more rocky terrain. This was woodland. The elongated shape and size were the main giveaways. I came home and wikipediaed the thing and basically narrowed it down to Marten ro Fisher. It looked more like a marten but the size was more like the fisher. So cool, I saw my first new mammal, and a hunter as opposed to a scavenger.

That was a real highlight. Also the lack of mosquitoes or bugs due to the cold weather. Virgin territory, new animals, no skeeters, and snow added up to a really pleasant, highly successful hike. Also cool is that this canyon is a fork of the Tuolumne River, so I essentially hiked all the way to the very headwaters of the source of the water that is eventually captured in the Hetch Hetchy reservoir. Next month when I do my “Restore Hetch Hetchy” hike, I’ll connect up by hiking from Tuolumne Meadows down to the reservoir. So that means I’ll have walked the length of the watershed.

Old lady: “Oh, look, it’s Jane Fonda’s hotel.”

Old man: “Hanoi Jane? I’m not going in there.”

so true, too.

If you *really* want me to stop eating peanut butter and peanut butter related products, you’ll have to stop saying “peanut butter”. I’ve eaten more peanut butter in the last two weeks than I have in the last two years.

Peanut butter! Peanut butter! Creamy, crunchy, nutty goodness! Pea! Nut! Butt! Er!

Why is it better for the planet and all that for him to drive it for the next ten years than for me to be driving it?

For every person who claims he’ll vote for Obama then secretly votes for McCain, I’m sure there’s also a person who publicly claims to support McCain who will really vote for Obama. Right? I mean, isn’t this idea of people who make public statements then secretly do the opposite something that happens all the time, in all directions, for all kinds of different reasons? And doesn’t the fact that it does happen in both directions tend to dampen any statistical significance?

You know there are people who don’t want to publicly reveal they have changed their mind about McCain and will vote for Obama.