Walking the McGurk Meadow trail
We visited Yosemite National Park mainly to see the Giant Sequoias, scenic waterfalls and wildflowers. After a week in the Yosemite National Park, we had hiked many beautiful trails. We saw several big mammals, breathtaking sceneries, many butterflies, birds & wildflowers to an extent that our senses were overwhelmed . There were wide varieties of wildflowers and we enjoyed seeing few orchids too but they were all in small patches. We had read about beautiful meadows in Yosemite and we planned our trails accordingly but somehow we were missing the carpet blooms.
The Cook’s meadow loop, Wawona meadow loop, Wapama falls, Taft point, Sentinel Dome, Tuolumne meadows were on our list and we visited all these trails. We enjoyed the trails tremendously but there were not many wildflower blooms like we expected. In Tuolumne meadows, we were told by the park admin that the meadow was under reconstruction as it suffered severe damage from stomping by tourists. Anyway, we saw wildflowers like Scarlet monkeyflower, Meadow penstemon, Snow plant, Shooting star, Alpine buttercup, Alpine columbine etc in different sections of Yosemite.
On the final day before leaving to Point reyes national park, we planned to visit a small trail for a relaxed walk. While driving around I saw an Black-headed grosbeak sitting with it’s meal on a branch. So we stopped the car to look it closely.
The bird flew away to a nest nearby and I noticed a trail marked in that place. The place we had stopped incidentally was on the way to Bridalveil waterfalls, a famous tourist place. The trail name was mentioned as McGurk meadow, it was a 5.6 km out and back trail. In Yosemite most trail names are linked to Native Indians which kind of irritates me because after all the genocide it was like making fun of them. This trail though had a different name, so I was curious about this trail .
The beautiful coral orchid.
Vinod pointed a Spotted coralroot near the trail entrance, so without second thought we decided to take a walk in the McGurk meadow trail. There were no other tourists in that trail. One of the advantage of not taking the famous trails, you have the entire place for yourself.
We saw few woodland flowers like Trout lily and Anemone inside the trail but otherwise it was all grasses and pine trees. The trail was well maintained and it was a easy walk. So we just walked intaking the scenery. The bird activities were also quite low but anyway it was our final day in Yosemite national park and all we were hoping was a casual walk in the woods. The freshly emerged Comma butterflies were fluttering around merrily in vivid colors. We walked ruminating about our wild experiences in the Yosemite park and grumbled how days flew so quickly in wild.
John McGurk Cabin
We reached the site of an old cabin which belonged to a cattle man John McGurk, hence the name of the trail. After reading about the trail I found that he was evicted by army after a dispute over the title of the land. To say the truth it was a bit creepy to see the cabin in that beautiful location. Anyway it was just our view, most of the tourists take this trail only to see this cabin as it was listed on National Register of Historic places. We also clicked a picture for remembrance and moved on.
After the cabin, the landscape started looking a bit different and soon we reached a section where the ground had turned to red. It was all because of the Paintbrush flowers. We had seen paintbrush flowers in few other areas but not like this. The place looked ethereal and we were glad that we took this less trafficked McGurk meadow trail. I learnt later that the flowers of Indian paintbrush are edible and they were eaten by Native Indians. If I did know the information earlier, I would have tasted a couple of petals.
We were enticed with the surroundings and got immersed in the wildflower meadow. Not everyday you could spend time in a meadow filled with paintbrush flowers especially for people like us from India where a flowering meadow is a rarity. While I was trying to grasp the beauty infront of me, there was a call from a nearby tree. Vinod spotted the Stellar Jay sitting on a branch and the Jay started it’s chit-chat. We had already spotted Blue Jay, Mountain Jay and Florida Scrub Jay in North America. So adding Stellar Jay to our Jay list was really exciting and this Stellar Jay had a cute hairstyle compared to other Jays we had seen.
After the Stellar Jay flew away, we concentrated again on the wildflowers and sauntered around for some more time. We wished to spend the entire day in the McGurk Meadow trail but we had a long drive ahead of us. So we half-heartedly bid good bye to the serene location inside Yosemite National Park and started our walk back. Even though we had to rush back, we stopped frequently to enjoy the surroundings.
I don’t know much about the tribes in India but I learnt a lot about Red Indians from various media sources. I have great admiration about their lifestyle in wild and always feel sad how they are living now in so called “reservations”. When I visited Yellowstone, Yosemite and Rocky Mountain National Parks, I felt a strong connection to the native people who lived in those places for centuries. They didn’t destroy the wilderness, cull the bisons, bring the wolves to near extinction. But within few centuries, the civilized people had brought all these pains to the land like it had never witnessed before. If these wild places are still in the hands of the native people, I believe the world would have been a much better place. With these thoughts in mind we started our journey from the fascinating Yosemite National Park to the messy California.