“Mountain Man”
By Bilal Bikile
Selected for Publication in Obsidian Literary Journal (2025)
Selected for Publication in Obsidian Literary Journal (2025)
“You always doing some White people shit.”
I really had gotten tired of hearing that. Kickflip on a skateboard and I’m a White boy. Ask the barber to put the Padres game on and it’s – “Nigga you White?”. Order my egg sunny side up – somehow also White. Now, since I purchased a tent and decided I’d take a solo camping trip, I could already anticipate the reactions. My people will consider it a certainty that my skin color has officially inverted, and my neck hurts from shaking my head at the thought.
It's something I picked up recently, camping. A few years ago, on my way to record an album at my friend James’ studio in Berkeley, I passed through Yosemite National Park. Swerving the corners and sequoia-lined backroads of Wawona Road, up through and into the mountains, that panoramic view of Half Dome in the valley was all it took for me. The problem was, I couldn’t even enjoy it. After pulling into the parking lot, surrounded by tourists from all over the world – Chinese, Mexicans, Japanese, Indians, Scandinavians, Brazilians, and all the White Americans you’d only expect, there was not a single Black person in sight.
Breath taken by the vista views, my fists simultaneously clenched in frustration. Firstly, at how much I was enjoying it, and secondly, at the fact that no one had previously informed me it would be like this.
“How on earth did we manage to trick ourselves into thinking nature was only for White people?” I thought.
As soon as I got back home to San Diego, I took a 3-day weekend and packed my Rav4 with as much camping paraphernalia I could fit, then made the trek back up north. I reserved site number 436 at Crane Flat Campgrounds just around the bend from Tuolumne Grove, where tremendous sequoia trees tower over the hiking trails. You could look up and up and not even locate where the treetops ceased, as if they grazed the blue of the sky above. My campsite sat just at the edge of Crane Creek which flowed beyond a small trench nearing where my car was parked on a small dirt mound. I had a fire pit and picnic table to myself and a large flat ground area to pitch the tent. The site was quieter than I expected, all with the neighboring campers in their groups with large dogs and Bluetooth speakers. It was particularly isolated and further away than they were from each other in distance, with mere brush and thistles closing in the gaps around me. I felt rather uneasy turning around to see pure wilderness ahead, the trench and trees layered densely into a spuriously peaceful landscape. I envisioned a bear or murderer charging forth from beyond the trees, but forcibly eradicated the thought.
The day was still early with the sun now at its zenith. It was late May, and the warm spring had melted most of the snow and slush even high up in altitude. I still needed to figure out how to pitch my tent and settle in before embarking on any park activities. Despite driving since 3 AM, I was high in energy from espressos and light meals with a hike planned for the day. “You gotta hike the waterfalls, man”, my friend Thomas, a Swiss and avid camper, had told me. Yosemite waterfalls are at peak runoff in the spring, so the hikes were apparently a must.
I’d many White friends like Thomas who happily would have come along, especially since I’d purchased a four-person tent with the sole purpose of a group experience. Going alone was not in my plan, but I’d gone on hikes with my childhood friends from Paradise Hills, the ‘hood’ of San Diego, and they only ever drag their feet complaining after 30 minutes, opting to retreat to the movie theater or back seat lounging in a restaurant parking lot.
Throughout grade school, I only knew one White kid, and the N word was a staple in his vernacular. Luckily, when I went to university, I met many other White people and learned how to actually hold a normal conversation with them, even connect with them on a personal level – something unheard of where I’m from. We were still very different, however, and they did many things I simply could not tolerate on a camping trip.
One thing I learned from living with my two college roommates, Cole and Aaron, was that showering is not necessarily a part of their daily routine. Instead, they opt for doing laundry, and a lot of it. Cole and Aaron would wake up from long nights of partying, get dressed, take a wet wipe and remove the crust off their faces, then turn to me and ask if I’d like to grab breakfast on a regular basis. The stenches I’d run into at times would be so beyond unbearable that I’d need to leave the house for a few days just to cleanse my nostrils. Therefore, by no means was I ready to wrestle with another’s body odor locked in a car and nine-by-seven-foot tent for three days.
I unboxed the tent and began scrutinizing the instructions to get a grasp on the process. An image of two human figures pitching the tent in collaboration was at the header of the page, so I acted like I didn’t see it and kept reading. I pulled each item from the bag in the order listed in the assembly parts section: 2 main tent poles, 2 side poles, 4 stakes, 1 rainfly, and the tent. Instructions: “Select a level campsite clear of rocks.” I gently kicked a few pebbles aside and threw a pinecone into the creek. “Do not set up your tent under trees.” I looked up at the 50-foot sequoias staring down at me. They’re not falling over anytime soon, I thought. Keep going. “Insert poles into pole sleeves to form an ‘X’. Connect corner pins to ends of 2 main tent poles.” I slid the tent poles into the sleeves, and with some grunting and careful maneuvering, successfully connected them to the pins, firmly erecting the body of the tent. With a mini sledgehammer, I took the four stakes and, with a gentle flick of my wrist, beat them firmly into the forest floor. “Rainfly assembly optional.” You don’t have to tell me twice. Tent pitched and the site claimed, I grabbed my blankets and sleeping bag, threw them inside my shelter for the next few nights, and hit the road for a hike.
My AllTrails app had suggested Chilnualna Falls Trail as a proper hike for the spring season. I wanted to be around as few people as possible to really get a feeling of disconnection, and it appeared from the reviews, fewer people hiked it often, which I quickly found may have been due to the trailhead’s sequestered location. In order to reach the trail, I needed to drive through a small town within the park. Passing by Yosemite-Wawona elementary, a fire station, homesteads, shops, and cabin stays with large hand-painted homemade signage, it came as a surprise to me that people actually lived here.
A toothpick in my mouth, and my windows down, Tom Waits’s “Burma Shave” with Herb Hardesty reverberated loudly out of my speakers. Slowly, I trudged forward in appreciation of the secluded city’s tranquility, when, as if spawning from nowhere at all, a park ranger in his beaten white pickup truck pulled up beside me. He wore a gray, unkempt beard and overgrown mustache that hung lazily over his top lip. His chest hairs seemed to be winning the fight against his uniform as they’d managed to burst out of the top half of his button-up. He lifted the tip of his Stetson and firmly stated, “Hey buddy, you can’t drive through here,” pointing in the very direction I was headed.
I glanced at my phone on the dashboard. The navigation app pinned the trailhead to be just around the corner ahead. There was no block in the road, nor signage saying I couldn’t continue forward.
“I’m just going to the trailhead up there,” I said.
With a straight face and no semblance of well-intention, he said, “There is no trail on this road.”
Hmm, I thought. He’s a park ranger; he probably knows what he is talking about. But my intuition said otherwise.
“Really?” I said. “My maps are directing me down that way, to Chilnualna Falls trailhead. Is the entrance not over here?”
“Ain’t no waterfall, and ain’t no trail down that way, " he replied. You’ll have to turn around here and head back to the valley.”
“Alright, will do. Thank you for letting me know, Sir,” I said, with the utmost respect.
I parked in front of the local shop to let him exit the area before continuing to the trailhead, which, surely enough, waited for me just at the end of the way with a parking lot three-fourths filled and hikers descending the mountain haphazardly.
I started on the trail with my Swiss Gear backpack I got from Goodwill, stocked with Clif Bars and countless water bottles. Only a few steps in, and the steep terrain was trying to my calves, tired from the long drive. I’d expected a long, challenging hike. Long for my standards, at least, and especially that of my friends. We’re from the city, so I don’t blame them, but trying to experience new things and break out of one’s comfort zone gets frustrating when the people you want to bring along don’t go as far as eating at a restaurant they’ve never been to.
As I silently ascended the granite staircase, I recalled a conversation from the night before in the parking lot outside of Ali’s Chicken and Waffles off of Fairmount Avenue. My friend Hassan, Mujahid, and I were posted outside, eating off the hood of my car. The streets were active as usual on a Friday night with sirens as soundtrack. There was a late night preacher holding the block down with a Qur’an in hand, proclaiming newly possessed information about aliens and Muslim heretics. We joked that he must have been an operative, for he dressed fairly well, with a crisp Saudi thobe and clean Air Max 95s. A few crackheads were contorted in the corner behind the trash bins, and as if on a schedule, a cohort of Mexicans on bicycles circled around the block, side-eyeing us to see if we wanted to get into some trouble.
I didn’t even want to bring up the fact that I was going camping. Hassan leaned over the plate and took a large bite out of his chicken sandwich, and immediately after, took a sip from his can of Coke. I shuddered at the thought of the Coke soaking the patty in his mouth.
“What you getting into this weekend?” said Hassan with his mouth half full.
“Don’t worry bout it nigga. You not gon’ be down anyway.” I replied. I meant to say it jokingly, but came off defensively neurotic. I realized I should have just told him my plan.
Hassan set down his sandwich and took a step back, squinting his eyes in confusion.
I’d seen Mujahid earlier in the week and mentioned my plan to him, so he scoffed at my failed diversion attempt.
“Why is this nigga always so cryptic?” Hassan shouted at both of us. “I just asked what you’re doing this weekend!”
“Alright, alright! My bad!” I shouted back. I paused for a bit, trying to see if there was a better way to present it, but just decided to tell him.
“I'm going on a camping trip… up in Yosemite. ” I said.
“A camping trip?” Hassan replied. His eyes squinted so hard, and his lips and nose curled as if the smell of the garbage bin next to my car had sat beneath his nostrils.
“Yes, nigga. See, I knew you would just clown, that’s why I ain’t want to tell you.” I said.
“Yeah, ’cause you wildin’. And you right, I’m cool off that White shit. Don’t go gettin’ eaten by no bear,” he said.
That’s how the conversation always ends. I’m never wished off well, told to enjoy the trip, or given safe travel tips. Just don’t get eaten by a bear, and if you do, “I told that nigga not to go,” is how they’ll relay the story.
Walking the seemingly never-ending steps, I kept my head down, focused on my feet not making any missteps for the cliff just to my right. Looking down also kept me from looking up at how far I needed to walk. Shifting my backpack to my torso, I wielded my bug spray and may as well have showered in it the way bugs and mosquitoes were smarming me. My blood must be a delicacy, I thought, where even with fully covered clothing, they’d pierce incessantly through my garments just for a taste.
Engrossed in the forest with trees and birdsongs, the faint sound of the waterfall crafting ponds and bowls of water in any rounded crevice it fell on, the setting was lurid in nature. So bright was the orange tint of the sunlight, giving life to this place that at night becomes black as desert evenings. The green leaves and brown earth of the surrounding were also painfully beautiful, and I found myself isolated, alone in the wilderness for the first time.
“Why do I enjoy this?” I asked myself, without a clear answer. It was strenuous, but gorgeous, and I was dauntingly alone. I thought I had a grasp on my mind, but solitude in nature brought about new perspective. Every facet of the experience was a wholly altered perspective. As I walked, it dawned on me that I am not just on a hike, I am inside the landscape. I am walking through the trees the owl from that nature documentary I watched currently resides. I hear him howl when I sleep. I am where Ansel Adams stood with his camera in hand, surveying the live composition of that image he made, which I wrote an essay about in college. I see it. The mountains, the clouds gathering – I am here, right now.
I then recalled something I’d read in a short story published in The Paris Review. While on lunch at the central library where I work as a library technician, the story followed an earnest man who found himself stranded in a Texan desert. His car’s engine blew out, yet he considered it fateful that he was returning from a camping trip and had water, a tent, and a few blankets in his car. Instead of calling for a tow and waiting around for a car to stop and help, he walked further into the desert and decided to stick it out for a few days. He had no food, but his water, which was hot in the day, would cool enough for him to drink in the night. He watched a coyote sniff around his tent one evening, making eye contact with him through the mesh, when he said something I never forgot. It was something like, “When I’m in nature, I am out of my element, but it makes me one with the elements.”
He didn’t leave the desert until a passing family discovered his stranded car and foot trail. They were passing through in an RV and decided to drive out to check on whoever it belonged to, when to their surprise, they found him lying on a boulder gazing into the empty landscape, fine and perfectly healthy. Anyone else would have been malnourished or at least sickened from stress and heat stroke. They hitched his car to the back, took him to eat, and drove him and his things back to the city.
***
As the elevation steepened even more, I began to slow down. Resting on a rock that overlooked the valley, I sipped water from my Hydroflask, still cold from filling up the night before. A mother and her daughter, who couldn’t be older than 8 years old, came speed walking up the trail. Their fists carried near their chest as they swung their arms rhythmically in unison, step by step, seemingly without ever breaking a sweat. Their faces carried a little red, but they had a porcelain glow to their skin, and aerodynamic features to their facial structure and physique. I presumed they must have been from some Nordic country naturally high in elevation.
Replenishing myself and snatching left and right desperately to reclaim my breath, maybe I’m not built for this, I thought. Ethiopians are long-distance runners and farmers, not mountain men. I placed my hand on my chest, imagining how my lungs must be smaller in capacity than theirs. That must be why I’m already tired. I was nearly there, however, so I kept going.
I took a few more sips of water, then began speed walking with the same arm movements the Nordic mother and daughter used until it felt silly and stopped. I wasn’t born in Ethiopia though, I thought, my parents were. I was born in Paradise Hills. All I know is hills. The skyline. Hot summer days, pushing myself uphill to go skate in some school or a friend’s backyard. I could have turned around long ago, but maybe that is why I’m still here.
I reached the top of the waterfall after two hours and a half. Craters and natural pools sat along the edge of an immense, ice-cold running waterfall overlooking miles and miles of trees and shrouded wilderness that one could never fully traverse. I took out my camera and snapped a photo of the landscape. Not everyone has been here, but I have, I thought. I reminisced on elementary studies of the new frontier, Louis and Clark, and the Native Americans, who spent years of their lives dedicated to exploring and preserving these lands.
The mother and daughter walked past me in the downhill direction as I stood in awe of the view. In a granite alcove beyond the falls, was a couple just finishing up swimming in one of the natural pools that filled inside the rock formations. Various pools lined the top of the mountain where water flowed downstream from the spring, slowed and filled pools in flattened cavernous terrain, then continued raging off alongside the edge of the mountain. I observed them pleasantly wading in the water, a holy sense of relief and contentment in their faces, looking beyond the cliffs, fresh spring water on their skin, a feeling of weightlessness almost, when a thought entered my mind.
The one consensus all skin colors have seemed to unite upon, regarding that of Black people, is that we cannot swim. Before I could even question myself, in a state of ecstasy and pure adrenaline, I found myself stripped down to boxer briefs, looking down into the pool from above. It was no more than 7 feet deep. I looked into enough pools from above, wrestling my subconscious to jump in and swim, but never succeeded. I had taken swimming lessons three separate times as an adult as well, but still, to this day, could not bring myself to go into depths where my feet do not touch the ground.
All I could think of was what my swim instructors told me time and again, whenever I asked them how to float.
“Everyone floats naturally,” they would say.
“Why do I sink then?”
“Because you’re afraid of sinking. It's all in your head.”
It's all in my head, I repeated to myself. It's all in my head… so it’s not in my head anymore. I then jumped forth. My feet slightly lifted off the ground as I rose in the air, then descended into the granite-lined pool beneath me. I opened my eyes to a hazy wall of dark blue and gray, bubbles rising and disappearing into the surface above, when I felt my chest begin to grow slightly constricted. Bubbles blew out of my nose and mouth until there simply were no more bubbles to blow. Instinctively, I inhaled only to feel a sharp burn in my nostrils, water now dripping down into my throat, inciting a fiery desire to cough. My body stood vertically in the water as my feet touched the ground, my toes pushing off the surface every time they touched it, frightened to be grounded below.
Float, I thought, I’m supposed to be floating, but my head was underneath the water. I was face-to-face with rock, surrounded and submerged. I grabbed desperately for the edge but was immediately pulled back down into the depths. I kicked off the granite walls to find them coated in slimy material, slipping off my skin, eradicating any possible friction. “I’m good,” I kept telling myself, swallowing water bit by bit in a dire need to breathe. If I wasn’t floating, and water is filling my stomach, I was sinking. These instructors lied to me, I thought. I tried swimming upwards with a few strokes and kicks, then reached at the ledge with my hand, only to slip back down to the ground.
I was on the cusp of panic. I started gulping the water because I wanted to breathe so badly, but I thought if I could just get my head above water, I could at least take a breath so I could figure out what to do. I just need more time… more air. I crouched low, and holding what little breath I had left in my small water-filled lungs, I pushed off the ground, reaching my hands and head above water when I saw a hand reach forth to simultaneously grab hold of mine.
Heavily, the hand dragged me out onto the flat wet surface, looking up towards the sun which I felt I hadn’t seen in ages. A man sat by my head with his hands on my shoulders, helping me reorient myself to life on land. “Thank you,” I tried to say, but had to turn on my side to cough up and blow out the remainder of water burning my throat and nostrils. It was the man and his wife who were swimming down near the alcove. They were just leaving the mountain when they saw me jump into the water with what seemed to be a hesitant look on my face, “Like you’ve never been here before,” they said.
“Are you good?” the man said. He sat on his knees with no shirt and swim trunks, looking down at me lying on the ground. His wife walked over and also stood near me, blocking out the sun, leaving my face in her shade.
“I’m great,” I replied. My chest hurt, and the man’s voice was muffled by the water clogging my ears. But I felt great. I don’t know why, but I did.
His voice quieted, and as if he felt the need to convince me, he said, “You could have died man.”
“You’re right, man,” I replied. “But I didn’t.”