I have OCD. Otherwise known as Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

Oh, you know the sufferers. They’re the ones aligning the silverware at the table, the ones washing their hands, the ones living in fear that you will discover their condition, which they’re ashamed of.

I spent numerous hours cleaning my records in the seventies. I thought it was about keeping the vinyl pristine. But really, it had to do with my OCD, needing my records to be perfect, in order to cope.

Now everybody has a bit of OCD, everybody wonders occasionally whether they left the stove lit. At the other extreme there are people who are essentially paralyzed, unable to function. I fall somewhere in between. I can get in an OCD loop and fall mentally off the grid, but I return…the obsession eventually fades. Actually, that’s kind of the treatment. You’re supposed to face your fears. Starting in tiny little doses. They call them exposures. To the point where you’re no longer bothered by the situation anymore.

I’ll give you an example. Yesterday we were skiing in Mammoth and the wind was blowing so hard, they couldn’t run the gondola. Which I find scary enough. There’s one point where it’s perched high in the air between two peaks and when it stopped there a few years back, I just about crumpled to the floor, to endure the five minutes before it began running again. I mean it could fall off, right? And I’d die! It’s happened! But, like I said, they couldn’t run the gondola yesterday, so they fired up Chair 23. Chair 23 goes straight up the face of what is known as the Cornice. The very topmost part of Mammoth Mountain, peaking at 11,000 feet. If there’s a more vertical ride, I want to know about it. But it’s worse. The lift is slow and there’s no safety bar! That’s against the law in Vermont. You’ve got to have a safety bar. But in California, there’s a school of thought that safety bars actually cause accidents, so they’re not required. So, the point is, with the gondola, scary enough in its own right, closed, could I ride Chair 23?

The bedrock of OCD is avoidance. Kind of like the people who won’t step on sidewalk cracks. They’re not sure what’s going to happen to them, but it’s definitely something awful, and they want to avoid it. I wanted to avoid riding Chair 23. But, after years of treatment, I knew I had to… Assuming Felice was up for it. And, unfortunately, she was. I now had no excuse. Shit, I was trembling on the way up Chair 3, in anticipation, a ride that usually never bothers me. And when we finally got on Chair 23, I sat right by the pole and hung on tight as we endured the fifty mile an hour winds as we flew too high above the slope. Hell, it’s so windy at the top of Chair 23 that they built a glass house for you to get off in. And when we finally emerged onto the slope… Believe me, you’ve never experienced such winds. I felt my helmet was going to blow off! But I was not bothered a bit, because I’d ridden Chair 23! I’d triumphed! If I could ride it in this fakokta weather, now I could ride it all winter… As long as I continued to practice. Like rust, OCD never sleeps.

But I wouldn’t have even made an attempt if I hadn’t faced my fear, er, OCD, the day before and triumphed. On our drive up Tioga Pass, to Yosemite.

We’d started off on a journey to Mono Lake. About twenty minutes north of Mammoth. And after waxing rhapsodic to Felice for years about the majesty of Yosemite, the sign told us that although the entrance was closed, the pass not being completely plowed out, you could drive twelve miles up to the park entrance.

I’m up for that. I’m up for adventure. And Felice is too. So I peel her Lexus off the main road and we start ascending.

I’m not thinking too much of it. Wondered for a second if we should have filled up at the Mobil station at the intersection with 395, but how could I run out of gas in twelve miles? I had almost half a tank!

And I’m cruising along, doing the fifty the speed limit allows, when suddenly we make a turn and mountains shoot up in the sky with a drama akin to the Himalayas. This ain’t no Rocky Mountain High. This is like the Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau, but more. And as I’m staring in amazement through the windshield, one side of the road peels away. Now I’m not saying one half was washed out, it’s just that on the other side of the road, there was…nothing. And I started to freak.

Well, we’d driven a few miles by this point. How much further could it be? Then, off in the distance, I saw at an elevation two miles high, the road.

No, it couldn’t be. Can’t be the same road. How do you get there from here?

Numerous switchbacks. All clinging to the edge of these vertical mountains. But it was worse. On the way back, I’d have to drive on the other side! Right next to the drop!

My foot is receding from the gas pedal. My hands are trembling. I get the urge to either stop or drive off the cliff and end it right there. As for turning around… Like I’m going to inch closer to the precipice?

I felt like I was losing control. I couldn’t go any further. But there was no place to stop. And only a wimp would stop. But what if I lost control and we were killed? The tension was too much!

So I told Felice. She said we could turn around. But deep inside I knew I had to press forward, I’d had enough treatment, I knew what my doctor would say, this was a perfect exposure.

Funny how most people don’t associate California with physical beauty, with vistas. They have no idea of the majesty of the Sierras. But these peaks are as magnificent as the Tetons, and there are more of them. And to illustrate the drama, Mt. Whitney and Death Valley are only eighty miles apart. Yes, the highest point in the continental United States and the lowest are just that close. Meaning these mountains absolutely tower! It’s ten thousand feet from the top of Whitney to the valley floor. It’s staggering.

And I felt like I was going to stagger. I was lightheaded behind the wheel. Worrying about losing it as we climbed ever higher.

Finally, we got to the Pass. A solemn plateau, with a never-ending range of mountains emerging. We strode around the log gate and we were inside. In Yosemite.

This is not the Yosemite most people are familiar with. They’re aware of the Valley floor. Which is even more spectacular. But the loneliness… Actually, that’s not true. The feeling of being at one with nature, of being closer to God, is no more palpable than it is here, at the seeming roof of the world.

Felice was giddy. I couldn’t stop staring. It was so cool!

And also a twelve mile ride back to 395, to reality, down this treacherous mountain road.

But going down, it didn’t seem quite as treacherous. Granted, I left the car in second gear and went about twenty five miles per hour the whole way down, but I wasn’t frightened. Well, except when we stopped at a turnout and the information plaque appeared to be right at the precipice. I sunk into a crouch as I approached it.

And when we got to the bottom, I felt I had triumphed. I felt that there was less in the world that could overwhelm me, stifle me, prevent me from moving forward. If not to my destiny, then my heart’s desire.

And we drove north to Bridgeport, where I saw a shriveled guy rejected for a Marlboro ad buy three hundred dollars worth of lottery tickets at the Shell station where I paid $4.79 a gallon. And when we eventually stopped at Mono Lake, I found out that birds stop there for R&R on their way back and forth from the Arctic to Argentina! Proving that Los Angeles shouldn’t have let the water level sink by fifty feet, endangering wildlife that had endured for millennia.

And when we got back to Mammoth, touring the real estate, we encountered a couple of bears. They were looking for garbage, but ended up foraging amongst the bushes. They were so close!

And I thought about my dad, who never encountered a road he felt was impassable, whether it be Pike’s Peak, Loveland Pass or a snow covered I-91. And skiing the next day I had a smile on my face. This life is something else. If you just get out into the landscape, break through your anxieties and challenge yourself a bit, you are rewarded with exhilaration!

Or, to expand upon what John Muir said on the plaque just below Tioga Pass, when you’re high in the mountains, your fears fall away.

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings, Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. As age comes on, one source of enjoyment after another is closed, but nature’s sources never fail.

John Muir – "Our National Parks"