Ansel Adams (5 page)

How Yosemite got its name is a matter of conjecture. Perhaps Bunnell, in his attempts to communicate with the Ahwahneechees, erroneously concluded that the valley was called Uzamati (actually their name for grizzly bear) and through that mistake, and a small twist of tongue, it became known as Yosemite.
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Other theories posit that the name was selected as an ursine metaphor for the belligerent Ahwahneechee, or, alternatively, that the vain white soldiers appropriated the word to refer to their own grizzly-bear-like bravery.
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A fourth version is the most interesting. To the Ahwahneechee, the phrase “Yo-che-ma-te” meant “some among them are killers.” The name Yosemite may thus have been the Ahwahneechee’s chilling description of the Mariposa Battalion, a reminder even today of the violent usurpation of the valley.
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No sooner had most of the Ahwahneechee been removed from the valley than curiosity seekers appeared. Writers produced adulatory tomes, and if they did not do full justice to Yosemite, they nevertheless made this much clear: a great religious experience awaited the visitor. By the time the first stagecoach road was completed in 1874, 2,656 tourists had visited the valley, now engraved with newly blazed trails and simple inns. Only fifty Native Americans remained, most employed as maids or trail laborers. The author of the book that so excited Ansel, J. M. Hutchings, wrote and published many promotional articles about Yosemite’s glories in his position as editor of
California Magazine.
He became the valley’s major hotel proprietor and was acknowledged as the impresario of Yosemite.
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On June 30, 1864, at a time when the country was torn asunder by the cataclysm of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln signed into law the Yosemite Grant Act placing Yosemite Valley under the protection of the state of California in the very first instance of preservation of scenic lands for the nation.
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This affirmation of the future was accomplished with the stroke of a pen, not with a sword. California was mandated to “accept this grant upon the express conditions that the premises shall be held for public use, resort, and recreation [and] shall be inalienable for all time.”
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Mankind’s prevailing attitude for eons had been that land that was not used—be it for hunting, tilling, or building—had no value; perhaps America had to finally run out of land, the entire country conquered clear to the Pacific, before there could be an awareness that some places must be saved.
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By 1916, Yosemite had been transformed into a vacation spot, with all the necessary comforts. His imagination fired by Hutchings’s book, Ansel realized that the park was only two days’ journey from San Francisco. His father had been promising a real vacation, and Ansel now insisted it must be Yosemite. Reservations were made and on June 1, 1916, Charlie, Ollie, and Ansel boarded the train in Oakland. Aunt Mary stayed at home with Grandpa Bray because she couldn’t bear to leave Blinkers, the cat.
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The train trip was a grand event for Ansel. The changing scenery enchanted him, from the grimy sections of the city to the rolling, grass-covered hills from which the train emerged into the great San Joaquin Valley. They disembarked in Merced and enjoyed a proper lunch at a hotel before boarding the Yosemite Valley Railroad, nicknamed the Shortline to Paradise, bound for El Portal, the gateway to Yosemite.

Heat rippled off the earth. The Adamses were wearing conventional traveling attire, covered in layers from head to toe to protect them from dust, but they also had to contend with one-hundred-degree-plus temperatures. Ollie relented just a bit, permitting outer appearances to slip somewhat by agreeing that Ansel and Charlie could remove their jackets. She herself, however, maintained propriety in a long skirt, bloomers, high-necked blouse, jacket, and all. Decorously, she allowed that she felt a little damp.
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The night they spent at the luxurious four-story Del Portal Hotel, with its two dining rooms, pool room, music room, bar, and barber shop, seemed endless to Ansel, who awoke at dawn, bursting with impatience to board the large and completely open touring bus that would take them into the valley proper.
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The rough gravel road climbed two thousand feet in ten miles, joining the old Coulterville Road (completed in 1874 as the first route into the valley for wheeled vehicles) for the final leg.
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Hats tied firmly to heads and heavy clothes were obligatory protection against the clouds of dust that swirled about them, which even the park’s administrators warned against, acknowledging, “The one great drawback to the visitor’s pleasure is the fact that he is driven over rough roads so dusty that when he arrives at his destination his dearest friend could not recognize him.”
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But this same air also held the sweet fragrance of pine.
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Ansel delighted in it all.

The bus rumbled along the banks of the Merced River, revealing little until they found themselves on the valley floor, turned a bend, pulled into a scenic turnout, and beheld Valley View. Ansel’s first vantage point set his very small self into humbling perspective, as he saw everything not from the grand heights of Inspiration Point—the most dramatic and popular entrance into Yosemite, where the great natural stone monuments appear at eye level—but instead from the base of the valley itself, looking up and up and up. El Capitan loomed above him on the left, and Bridalveil Fall tumbled down the precipitous cliff on his right. Between these two landmarks, the vertical granite walls of Yosemite Valley marched in recession, punctuated by occasional domes and spires and capped at their very end by a glimpse of the top of Half Dome. Ansel’s bright eyes flitted from wonder to wonder, but the impression that would last his lifetime was that of soaring gray granite cliffs. An early guest at Hutchings’s hotel in 1871 had recorded his own view of the scene, noting, “It seemed to me as though we were in a huge Sarcophagus for the almost perpendicular wall of granite seemed to shut us in, their crests varying from two to five thousand feet.”
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Those same confining walls seemed to hold nothing but promise for Ansel.

The Adams family arrived at Camp Curry and alighted upon a platform, where they were feather-dusted by the young staff and greeted by the owner, David Curry, whose thunderous proclamation “Welcome to Camp Curry!” echoed off the close-by cliffs and proved him worthy of his title, “The Stentor of Yosemite.” (Upon their departure, Curry provided a theatrical sendoff by shouting “Farewell!” likewise at a decibel level well above that of mere mortal man.)
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David and his wife, Jennie, had opened their small camp with a total of seven tents at the foot of Glacier Point in 1899 as an economical alternative to the pricey Sentinel Hotel. When the Adamses arrived in 1916, tourism in Yosemite was booming. Camp Curry had grown steadily thanks to its attractive prices and warm, family atmosphere, and by 1916, the Currys could accommodate nearly a thousand guests at a time. Charlie, Ollie, and Ansel were but three of the ten thousand people who stayed at Camp Curry that year.
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While planning their Yosemite vacation, Ansel’s parents had studied Camp Curry’s twelve-page-long brochure for 1916, which promised “ice cream daily, chicken every Sunday . . . two pianos, a barber shop, the only swimming tank in the Valley, and the largest and best hardwood dancing floor in Yosemite—experts say it is not surpassed in California—all for $2.50 a day or $15.00 per week. All roads formerly led to Rome. All roads now lead to Camp Curry.”
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Porters, college students from Stanford and Berkeley on summer vacation, wheeled the Adamses’ luggage to Tent 305, which had a wooden floor, a canvas roof and sides, real beds with clean sheets, and a washbasin. Baths, although available, were not included in the room rate, but the Currys assured visitors that bathing in the Merced River was free.

Camp Curry was known for its nightly campfire and evening programs boasting professional entertainers who told stories, acted out skits, played the piano, and produced various theme pageants, including a Hawaiian extravaganza complete with hula dancers. The practice was on temporary hiatus in 1916, but sanctions were lifted the following year, and each night’s festivities ended with a bellow from the camp to “Let the Fire Fall!” whereupon a huge bonfire would be pushed off the edge of Glacier Point 3,214 feet above, to tumble, sparks flying, to its demise on a rocky ledge below. This Hollywood-style spectacular, begun in 1872, had been stopped, if only briefly, by government men of good sense.
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As an adult, Ansel would swear that he had felt the Fire Fall to be a blight upon the natural wonder of Yosemite from the first moment he witnessed it.
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To record their vacation, his parents gave Ansel his first camera, a Kodak No. 1 Brownie, which he took everywhere.
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The rapport among Ansel, the camera, and Yosemite was immediate. His long-smothered energy was finally allowed to burn. He hiked down the Tenaya Canyon and up the steep switchback trail to the top of Yosemite Falls, returning to camp hot and exhausted every afternoon to jump in the swimming pool. Although nearly friendless at home, at Camp Curry he found playmates and learned to play croquet and pool. Upon his arrival in Yosemite, Ansel had been a sickly, enervated fourteen-year-old; once there, he found health, happiness, and companionship.

The next year, Ansel came back to Camp Curry with his mother. Money was tight, so Charlie remained behind to toil diligently at his new job at the Merchants’ Exchange. Ansel’s letters “To Pop” were brimful with enthusiasm, reporting that in the first two weeks he hiked fifty-five miles, and not long after that, 175.
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Ollie’s postals had a different tone, suggesting that it was taking all her strength to control their rambunctious son, to the extent that she had to block the door of their tent at night with a chair to keep him from sneaking out.
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Ansel was such a live wire that everyone in camp soon knew him; given that there were a thousand other guests, that was quite a feat. A frequent hiking companion at that time recommended that Ansel consider going into the law: he was such a chatterbox that he would surely be able to talk a jury to death.
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A retired geologist and amateur ornithologist named Francis Holman invited Ansel on a camping trip to Merced Lake above Yosemite. Uncle Frank, as Ansel called him, became his guide to the outdoors; over the next summers, he would teach his young charge camping, climbing, and a serious respect for the fragile qualities of wilderness.
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The two left Camp Curry on July 7, 1917, with a mule loaded with their tent, bedrolls, camping equipment, and food. Uncle Frank ensured they would have good grub, packing a side of bacon, coffee, sugar, hardtack, and pancake flour; he expected fresh-caught trout to supply the protein for breakfast and dinner. That night was Ansel’s first away from his parents. He would be gone three nights more on this, his first trip into the High Sierra.
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With confidence, the next summer, his third, Ansel came to Yosemite alone. Money had become even tighter in the Adams household. There was only enough for a vacation for Ansel. He was just sixteen years old, but his parents felt comfortable placing him in the charge of Jennie Curry, who was commonly known as Mother Curry, and Uncle Frank. Yosemite’s spell on Ansel had grown. Insisting he needed more time there, Ansel arrived on May 25 and proudly inaugurated the just-filled swimming pool.
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At five the next morning, he and Uncle Frank left on a full day’s hike to Mount Starr King. When Uncle Frank decided to climb its ice-covered peak by cutting footholds with his ice ax, Ansel, who had promised his parents that he would be very careful, retreated to a nearby meadow to watch.
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Soon enough, however, Ansel was accompanying Uncle Frank on every ascent, the two foolishly roped together and ignorant of mountaineering techniques such as belaying. Their climbing practices meant that if one had slipped, the other would certainly have been pulled down as well, or, even worse, been cut in half by the narrow cord.

They had more than one close call. One morning they left their campsite at four-thirty, intending to climb Red Peak. More than fifty years later, Ansel could still remember the events of that day as if it had been yesterday:

We were going up with the old ice pick and the window sash cords, chopping little steps. It was frozen snow, it wasn’t ice, and about a thousand steep feet of it. About eight hundred feet up, I slipped. And of course I started to slide—it was about 60 degrees to 70 degrees steep—pulled Mr. Holman off his feet, and we both went down. He was yelling, “Keep your feet front—front! Don’t roll!” And finally we got down. We were sliding face-down, and if you just touched your hands to the frozen snow it would take the skin off. We were really going awfully fast. And there was a whole lot of rock and snow piled at the bottom, and we went right through that—but missed all the rocks! Mr. Holman sort of sat there and rubbed the snow out of his eyes and said, “Well, we’ll go right up again.” That was the best philosophy. So back we went.
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For Ansel, the schism between the healthy world of Yosemite and his humdrum life in San Francisco became even more pronounced. During the autumn of 1918, the Spanish influenza pandemic hit the city, and by the middle of October, the schools, churches, and theaters were closed and people were required by law to wear gauze masks at all times. Thousands died in San Francisco alone, and half a million in the United States; the worldwide toll was twenty-two million, twice the number that died in all of World War I, which ended on November 11 of that year.
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