Yosemite National Park Ranger Margaret Eissler walks along Soda Springs trail in Tuolumne Meadows and remembers how Tioga Road used to follow the same route as it meandered toward Tioga Pass.

"You can still see signs of the old road," she says, pointing to a raised roadbed hikers now use to reach Parsons Lodge and the site of an old Sierra Club campground once managed by Eissler's parents. The campground is gone now, but the lodge, acquired by the National Park Service in 1973, serves as a high country nature center.

Fred and Anne Eissler took care of the campground from 1956 to '61 and brought their two daughters with them every summer. Back then, Tioga Road was single- lane for much of its length, with wider areas here and there for cars to pass.

"For me, this was the finest of playgrounds," says Eissler, 52, her eyes sweeping over the largest sub-alpine meadow in the Sierra.

At 8,575 feet, Tuolumne Meadows is a roomy bowl of grass and wildflowers surrounded by mountains thick with trees. Hiking and rock climbing are the primary activities. People also come for bird watching and to enjoy the night sky, which is free of the light pollution found in cities.

As a child, Eissler played in the mud along Tuolumne River and made sparkling lemonade with carbonated water from Soda Springs.

"I was too young to be scared going over Tioga Pass," she says. "But I can remember looking out the window and seeing the powerhouse at the bottom of Lee Vining Canyon. I also learned that cars going uphill had the right of way. If you were going downhill and met another car, you had to back up until you found a place to turn out."

Eissler was a flutist for the Santa Barbara Symphony Orchestra for 18 years, but she never lost her love for Yosemite's high country, and became a park ranger in 1987. She lives and works in Tuolumne Meadows during summer and is assigned to Yosemite Valley the rest of the year.

Winter is the mother of beauty in Tuolumne Meadows, she says.

"Because winter is so long up here, you have three seasons compressed into three months. Things are constantly changing."