SIERRA TIME

Before he won the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards for his science fiction, Kim Stanley Robinson was a hiker in the Sierra Nevada. He still is. Walk with him in this exclusive excerpt from his new book, The High Sierra: A Love Story.

- KIM STANLEY ROBINSON

I woke in my sleeping bag and saw my friend Terry sitting up in his. It was still dark, but the sky was blue in the east, beyond the great gulf of Owens Valley. I had slept poorly, a little high on Diamox, altitude, and the knowledge I was back in the Sierra. Around us stood tents and picnic tables and grills: the car campground at Horseshoe Meadows. A girl in a nearby tent had put us to sleep the night before by reading aloud to her friends, her musical voice like a lullaby. Now tall pines soared over us, black in the dawn.

All the people around us were still asleep. Where else do you find so many people sleeping outdoors together? It's a thing from an earlier time. We packed as quietly as we could and took our stuff to the nearby parking lot. Sitting on the asphalt by my old station wagon, we brewed up some coffee and finished loading our packs. It was cold but not too cold. With a final check we were off. Destination: Mt. Langley, the tallest peak at the south end of the Sierra.

We had done it again: another Sierra trip. We've made well over 50 of them at this point, Terry and I, almost half of those just the two of us. Rambling the Sierra with my moody friend: at various times he would be gloomy, exuberant, calm, remote. It didn't matter. Both of us were there for the Sierra. In that sense we were a good match. We were used to each other. Now we flowed up o the trail, hiking fast through shadows-a long, gentle, uphill walk through narrow meadows, threading an open forest. Everything was cool and still, the shadows horizontal, the light yellow.