“You Can’t Be This Close To Los Angeles And Expect Solitude.”
Kearsarge Basin is invading my dreams!!! Our campsite was on the rock sitting middle left, in the middle of wonderful spell of Sierra July. It was Mike, Abe and I. While camping at another site, across the lake and east up the basin, a group of two set their tents 40 feet from us. I walked over and politely mentioned that the choice of their site defeated the purpose of our shared location: solitude. Looking back I should have also mentioned that we’d be all be shit-sharing the same spot behind the one downed tree up the hill but oh well. Either way, they did not agree. He started with “you can’t be this close to Los Angeles and expect solitude” and then I’m pretty sure ended it with bruh. Almost immediately it became apparent that they were not intending to move any time soon. There was also a family across the lake’s artery, within shouting distance, and I wondered if we had done the same thing to them.
We decided to walk around the lake for an after-dinner stroll and found the spot in the photograph above. An established site, with a clear view up the basin towards the high granite, on a shelf close to the water, separated from others by topography. How it was open I do not know.
Two lessons learned from this set of events stand out from the many that I tried to absorb from the trip. First, be thankful for friends who are both eager to change the plan and are capable of actually pulling it off before nightfall - that combination is rare. Second, be thankful when a SoCalBro tells you to “find a better spot for me and I’ll move.” Anti-smarm is apparently a powerful incentive and so is the need to feel closer to nature than to other random people. I’m thankful that we found the positive out of a surprisingly tense backpacking exchange and I’m thankful that we somehow found an isolated spot in an extremely popular thoroughfare because of it.
