On our first day in Yosemite, the raccoon tried to steal my dinner and then, when he started to recover from being blasted by my blood-curdling scream, he looked at me with a mixture of sadness, searching, and something else, as I wrote about in Heed the Raccoon, Part 1.
Our second day, we suffered a car breakdown, and had to deflect our plans due to out-of-control fires and road closures from rock slides.
Because we had spent most of a day waiting for a tow truck, we decided to stay an extra day, but thick smoke from the still-burning fires obscured views, so we headed in the opposite direction of the fires to Mariposa grove to see the giant Sequoia trees, a life-long goal of mine.
We decided to take an hour-long walking tour to learn about the trees. Before embarking on the tour, Vince asked me if I wanted him to go back to the car and get water, but I shook my head, confident in my ability to abstain from fluids for an hour, and because I didn’t want him to take the time to go back to the car.
A young, soft-spoken ranger led the tour. He didn’t even break a sweat on the mostly upward-slanted tour while most of us were breathing heavily. The ranger explained that the grove supposedly possessed rejuvenating powers and he had found that to be true since coming to work there in his 50s. It was funny because he looked like he was barely in his early 20s and maybe hadn’t even started to shave yet, but he delivered the line in totally deadpan, Steven Wright-style. Though clearly a joke, I breathed deeply just in case, soaking up the air that, at least at that moment, was smoke-free.
The trees are a marvel: Tree trunks thick enough for a small car to drive through, with sprawling surface root systems to soak up the maximum amount of water and perceptible personalities so pronounced that humans give them colorful names that reflect their unique shapes and growth patterns, such as the California Tunnel Tree, the Bachelor and Three Graces, and the Grizzly Giant, the oldest tree in the grove, thought to be 2,700 years old.
At the end of the informative tour, the ranger gave us the option of going back the way we came—the fastest option—or going off in a couple of directions, one of which would enable us to see the Faithful Couple, two giant Sequoias that had grown into one. By then, I was tired and thirsty, but the idea of seeing the Faithful Couple seemed irresistibly romantic.
Under ordinary circumstances, the extra distance to see the Faithful Couple wouldn’t have seemed far, but my throat was parched and my muscles were starting to ache, partially from exertion, but probably mostly from dehydration. Still, we kept going. I was captivated by the notion of seeing the Faithful Couple, and when we found them, it was worth the walk. Two giant trunks had fused at the base, joined in a stirring symbol of two life forms that had become mutually dependent, inseparable. We found a nearby couple willing to take our photo in front of the grand trees, a photo we could treasure and look back on in our old age, after our own lives were inextricably entwined, a process that was already well underway.
The next morning, on our third and last day in Yosemite, we exited our hotel, which was located in El Portal, eight miles from the park. The smoke from still-ablaze fires was so thick that it stung our eyes and our car was covered with ash, fallen from the sky. We found out later that El Portal had to be evacuated.
Back in Oakland, we had a wonderful visit with Vince’s son Jason, his wife Yvette and their daughter Lydia, but that’s another story. Oddly enough, on our way up a hill to see a steam train in Berkeley, Yvette’s Honda CVS--which until then had been an incredibly reliable car—overheated and we had to head back. We began to wonder if someone had put a California car curse on us.
On the Sunday morning that we were to leave, Vince loaded our luggage into the trunk of the rental car and then headed about 20 feet back to the house to get a cup of coffee. He grabbed the last bag of luggage, but when he went to put it into the car, the luggage was gone. Suddenly, he understood why he had heard car wheels peeling out.
When Vince told me that someone had snatched our luggage out of the trunk, I thought at first he was joking. Then, it started to sink in. All of his clothes were gone except those on his back, as well as my toiletry bag, and our notebook computer. And what else?
“Welcome to Oakland,” said Jason, clearly stricken.
Fortunately, we still had our wallets, so we could still catch our plane, leaving it up to Jason to make a police report. On the plane, we began to take inventory: the computer not only contained a lot of music tracks, documents, and photos, but also Vince’s business files and TurboTax, which contained our financial info and Social Security numbers. In addition to everything else, they had stolen the keys to the car we had left in the airport parking lot. Not just the keys, but the ticket to help us to locate the car in the airport lot. How would we even get home? And if we could find a locksmith at 10 p.m., how could we convince him that the car was ours, since it’s registered to my son who is living at the moment in South Korea, and who has a different last name?
I’ll gloss over the gory details, but we finally got home.
At first, there seemed to be no financial repercussions, and I still had all my credit cards, but I kept an eye on my finances. One day I was checking my accounts online when I saw a check had gone through for $728 to a Best Buy in Dublin, CA. It was a copy of my check, but with a different name and Social Security number. I realized that I must have thrown a pad of checks into my toiletry bag, and someone had evidently photo-shopped another identity onto my checks.
I spent all night on the phone making reports and, the next day, I went to the bank to freeze my accounts and open new ones, something I should have done right away. I thought I had taken care of everything.
Then, I checked my account online and there it was: In the checking account column, it said minus $889,000. I started to hyper-ventilate. Something must have gone wrong!
Eventually, I found someone on the phone who told me that’s the bank’s method of putting a hold on your account, posting a ridiculously high amount. I’m still leery that I’ll be held accountable somehow, but the jury is out.
Then, I thought about what else had been stolen. Our only copy, downloaded onto the computer, of us standing in front of the Faithful Couple.
And I remembered the raccoon. Now I understood that the raccoon was trying to warn me that it’s a dangerous world, and that despite the threat of instinct-driven thieves, there’s an even more dangerous version, predators by choice with no respect for hard-earned ownership or the investment of someone else's blood, sweat and tears, who want to redistribute whatever wealth exists with themselves as the beneficiaries out of a sense of entitlement and disrespect for any higher authority.
OK, so maybe the raccoon didn’t say that--but his eyes did.
Vince and I had to spend many more dollars and much more energy-draining time shopping to replace everything that was lost, but some things can’t be replaced, like that photo of us with the Faithful Couple.
So you’ll have to take our word for it—or ask the raccoon, if you can find him. Somehow, I think he was watching all along.
--Jeanne Johnson (Ms. Sticky)
Oh my goodness Jeanne, you have the best stories and you write beautifully. You need to publish this stuff! I see movies and tv dramas!!! Xo
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