Reporting from Merced County, Calif. — The rangy young hiker trudged along the narrow shoulder of Pacheco Pass. Trucks clanked loudly by, close enough to make his baggy pant legs flap in their wake. Grit blew. Trash swirled.
And the smells! Car exhaust. Smoking tires. Overheated clutches.
FOR THE RECORD
John Muir's trek: A map accompanying an article in Saturday's Section A about a Stanford University graduate student who is retracing the conservationist's 1868 trek from San Francisco to Yosemite Valley misspelled Millerton Lake as Mullerton Lake.
When you walk in John Muir's footsteps, it's not supposed to be like this.
"Every car that passes you has a different sound, and you wonder which one will be the death knell," Alex McInturff said as he walked along California 152, hiking poles bristling from his loaded-down pack.
The night he crested Pacheco's summit, his dreams were filled with flashing images and "the same kind of anxiety I felt during the day as the cars went by."
What a difference a century or so makes. In the spring of 1868, Muir landed in San Francisco and walked to Yosemite Valley -- the famed conservationist's first ramble through the Golden State.
Muir called Pacheco "this rich garden pass" and enthused in an 1872 essay that it dropped him into a Central Valley that resembled "one flowerbed, nearly four hundred miles in length by thirty in width . . . bounded by the mountains on which we stood, and by the lofty, snow-capped Sierra Nevada."
The 320-mile hike is believed to have been replicated only once before McInturff strapped on his backpack in San Francisco and hit the road April 6. The goal of the Stanford University earth sciences graduate student is to see how California manages open space from its most picturesque city to its most famous park.
McInturff, 23, hopes to reach his destination early next week. But even by the midpoint in his nearly six-week journey, a few things had become abundantly clear: Much of Muir's garden "of peerless grandeur" has given way to vineyards, orchards and row crops. Smog and dust obscure the Sierra Nevada.
Government agencies and private organizations struggle to maintain the largest remaining swath of wetlands in inland California. And, in a state renowned for backcountry trekking, it's now awfully hard to hike the beaten path.
Legal campsites are few and far apart. Parks and preserves aren't linked by trails. Maps don't tell a hiker everything. (Where in East Oakland is it safe to walk?) And with all due respect to Google, not all of California has been scrutinized by cartographers. (Do you turn right or left at that windmill in the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge?)
