Our first visit to Yosemite started on a Friday night in late fall, 1970. I had managed to convince my then fiance to leave her students’ papers grading for another day, and drive east with me into the Sierra mountains. We drove from San Francisco in a rainstorm, checked into our cabin in Curry Village, and slept like two logs through the night. We were awakened in the morning by bright sunlight and low chomping sounds coming from the closet. A cute chipmunk was busily having breakfast of leftover corn flakes in the corner of the closet. We walked outside — it was deserted — and looked up at the granite cliff face in front of us, and up and up until we saw the clearest blue sky imaginable topping it all off. We’d seen none of this coming into the valley, so it was a memorable surprise for us both, and something we shared many times over those many years. My wife passed away several years ago. We camped in Tuolumne Meadows tent cabins and elsewhere for many years, but the magic of that first morning awakening in the clear, fresh air washed from the rains of the night before, was never quite duplicated.
Roger Potash, Legacy Society Member