At the top of El Cap, directly above the top-out of the Nose, is the most amazing juniper tree. It’s probably close to a thousand years old and has a wildly sculpted look. The trunk has grown over and around boulders, cradling them like stone babies, anchors against the high sierra wind. It’s branches are twisted stocky stubs winding this way and that for balance against the forces of nature.
“The top is almost always dead in old trees. Some are mere weathered stumps, decorated with a few leafy sprays, reminding me of the crumbling towers of some ancient castle (Muir 1894)
This year January in Yosemite was super mild and warm, and this tree dropped an enormous amount of berries. Thousand and thousands of sticky fragrant fat juniper cones. You could scoop a handful off the ground, and crush them by rolling them between your palms, releasing a pure tangy sweet scent. The sticky residue is awesome for climbing --- and it smells way better than chalk!
This beautiful living tree sprouts out of cracked sheets of granite at over 7000’ elevation at the apex of el cap’s sheer face, with the all time stellar view of Half Dome to the east framed by miles of high sierra landscape.
And the Merced river carves its path through forests and meadows 3500 feet below, straddled by silver cliffs that stretch skyward.
It’s a very special place! Wind, and the sounds of water falls and falling rocks, ravens and frogs and that high sierra smell that penetrates your clothes, your skin so that hours or days even later you catch whiffs of it that carry you back on alpine winds to open blue crystal skies, to snow and rocks, to conifer forests surrounded by sun drenched glacial polished slabs. Sun-warmed rock smell all over you.
And that’s how it is for that cosmic juniper, at the top of el cap. Centuries of peace.
