When I reach the edge of the Park, I see a forest fire billowing smoke in front of a glorious Yosemite sunset, and I realize that my friends have somehow tricked me into driving, on a whim, into the heart of a National Park that’s literally on fire. As I drive through the Los Angeles traffic on Melrose Avenue, I think to myself, Good riddance, urban sprawl. I grab my backpack, a tent, and some Clif Bars, jump into my car, and drive toward the Park. ever, ever again, and then I tell her I’m on my way. I call Laura back, demand that she never call me at 6 A.M. Later, when I read that early environmental crusader and Sierra Club-founder John Muir described Half Dome as “the most beautiful and most sublime of all the wonderful Yosemite rocks,” it further cemented my desire to tackle it. When she then showed me stunning photos of her boyfriend’s on-top-of-the-Dome marriage proposal, I reluctantly conceded that I had missed my chance with her, but her pictures of the bewilderingly enormous granite Dome captured my imagination. I haven’t visited Yosemite National Park since middle school, but I’ve wanted to hike to the top of Half Dome ever since a girl, whom I secretly wanted to date after working with her in an office in Los Angeles, described her Half Dome hike to me one day. “We’re going to hike to the top of Half Dome tomorrow.” “Get in your car right now and drive the six hours to meet us in Yosemite!” I hear Laura yelling enthusiastically from San Jose when I reluctantly play back the voicemail message. I feel like maybe the urban sprawl of Los Angeles may be gnawing at me a bit too much, penetrating and poisoning my core. Goodbye.” It then occurs to me that creating a nasty voicemail greeting may not be a healthy or mature response to being woken up early on a weekend day. I imagine it: “I screened your call because I hate you. When I wake again at ten o’clock, I see a big red dot on my phone’s screen, an indicator that I need to record a new voice mail greeting: one that’s even more unsympathetic, harsh, and threatening. Then I roll over, make a mental note to hire a hit man to kill them, and go back to sleep. It doesn’t even instruct callers to leave a message, because if I never get another voicemail message for the rest of my life, I’ll die a happy man. I push a button on my phone, sending them to the darkest bowels of the AT&T voicemail system: my cold, cruel voicemail greeting. I hate them because it’s six o’clock in the morning on a Saturday, and my cell phone is ringing, and it’s them calling, and no one should ever call me at 6 A.M. MAI’m lying in bed thinking how much I hate my friends Laura and Justin.
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