<Begin Segment 3>

RP: During the time that you lived there, your family began taking trips up to the Eastern Sierra area.

ES: Well, by the time I guess I was five years old I'd seen every state west of the Mississippi in the Model T Ford. So our first trip, big trip in California was to the Eastern Sierras and I can remember his forgetting the tent poles and we had to stop in Bishop and have tent poles made. And for that trip it was 1926, my uncle had a brother who lived in Colville so we stopped at June Lake and stayed there a few nights. And then stayed with the family in Colville and onto Lake Tahoe and then to Yosemite Valley.

RP: What were your early impressions of the country that you visited here?

ES: I just thought it was a long long trip for a six year old in the Model T Ford.

RP: What was it like riding in the Model T Ford?

ES: Well, I have so many memories of that car not making it up a steep grade and my mother getting out to help push. And I always had to get out and help push with her.

RP: And then later on you came up through the Owens Valley again in 1932, '33?

ES: I believe that was probably the first time. In 1927 we went to Sequoia, in 1929 we went back to Kansas to visit the relatives, and then the Depression. So I think San Gabriel in the Los Angeles National Forest area was our campground that year. We didn't go very far. And probably the next two or three years it was at Lake Arrowhead. So then I guess things were picking up in my dad's business and '33 and '34 we went to Glacier, Glacier Lodge out of Big Pine.

RP: What do you remember about that experience?

ES: That was a fun time we were there with relatives and remembered going horseback riding to I think it was Baker Lake up there and hiking up to the lakes one and two and three and so forth. But my dad had a customer who asked him why he didn't go to Tuolumne Meadows and my dad said he didn't know anything about it. But that same year after we got back from Glacier Lodge he went with my uncle to Tuolumne Meadows and there was no more beautiful place and that's where we went every year after. He never missed a year and he died in 1954 so from '34 to '54 he spent every summer at the Tuolumne.

RP: And where did you stay when you were there?

ES: In the campground.

RP: And did you hike?

ES: Oh yes.

RP: Where would you hike?

ES: I hiked a lot with Carl Sharsmith, the ranger naturalist, and then he had fallen off the mountain there and different rangers would come up to take his place for a number of years we had somebody else. So my first hiking was Mt. Dana and Mt. Canas and Cathedral Peak. And that was when I was fifteen and then after that over the years I climbed about every peak available around Tuolumne with a ranger. Those were the days when the rangers worked six days a week and hiked every day.

RP: Wow, we sure come down from that.

KP: We're embarrassed.

RP: Yeah, really I feel discounted.

ES: They weren't pansies then like they are today.

Off camera: Now it's name calling. [Laughs]

RP: Are you sure you want to get into this business? Pansies, they were real men.

ES: They were real men.

RP: So would you actually go out with a ranger in a group or would it just be your own personal ranger?

ES: With a group, no, no, with a group, always with a group.

RP: I want to talk a little bit about Carl because he was sort of a legend in, you know, in Yosemite and park ranger circles. What do you remember most about him? What about his personality or what made him such a great ranger?

ES: I think his personality and his really love of the mountains. Of course he was really a botanist. He knew every flower there was, not like the first ranger I hiked with up here everything was a senecio anything that was yellow was a senecio.

RP: Well, we've changed that now it's a damned yellow composite.

ES: [Laughs] Things change.

RP: So you got a great deal of knowledge from Carl about the plants.

ES: Yes, I also made a great friend of Tex Bryant who also, he was from Texas but he loved Tuolumne.

RP: There was another park ranger you mentioned, Burt Harwell.

ES: Oh, Burt Harwell he was the chief ranger naturalist for Yosemite, for Yosemite park. He also whistled and I climbed Cathedral Peak with him for the second time. I never saw a ranger or anybody could leap all those mountains like a mountain goat. All of us were clinging to those rocks climbing Cathedral Peak, he was just bouncing over them.

RP: You said you climbed Mt. Dana ten times?

ES: Ten times, yes, I climbed Mt. Dana.

RP: Is that your favorite peak?

ES: Well I don't know. It was just a peak the ranger went out every week. Not once in a coon's age but once a week there was always a trip to Mt. Dana. So if I wanted to hike that particular day I climbed Mt. Dana.

RP: So you spent most of your time in Tuolumne Meadows, did you ever go down into Yosemite Valley at all?

ES: Well, I hiked down to Yosemite. Once on the Snow Creek Zigzag Trail and another time over the Yosemite Falls Trail. And other time via Clouds Rest and Half Dome in the valley and then we'd stay all night.

RP: So you hiked down there how many days or was it a day trip?

ES: That was a day trip down.

RP: Did you ever stay at the High Sierra camps at all?

ES: Yes, I've stayed sometimes. I've never been able to make the loop. I've always wanted to make the loop but the only High Sierra camp I missed is Merced Lake. I've been to Glen Aulin and Sunset and Vogelsang, of course Yosemite. There must be another one that I've left out.

Off camera: May Lake.

ES: May Lake, yes. Well, May Lake was a favorite hike, favorite fishing place.

RP: I was going to ask you, did you fish at all?

ES: Well, when I was young, no I wanted to hike. I went out with my dad several times but I preferred hiking to fishing. Then when I got older I loved to fish with my husband.

RP: Did your parents hike at all too?

ES: My mother. My dad would hike any place if there was a lake at the end or a stream where he could fish. He was the fisherman of the family. And my mother loved to hike.

RP: You got a really good grounding in the outdoors as a teenager.

ES: Yes, you can see why maybe I wanted to be a physical education teacher.

RP: Yeah, that was exactly what I was heading for. Where did that inclination come from, your interest in sports or physical education?

ES: Well, I think my dad always wanted a boy, especially a boy who loved baseball. But instead he got a girl so I had to be good in sports to win his approval.

RP: Do you feel like you did?

ES: I feel like I did. I definitely had his approval.

RP: Now you said early on that your mother's background was teaching.

ES: Yes.

RP: Did she have any influence in your decision to be a teacher?

ES: Probably some. She was the one that really encouraged me to go to college.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright &copy; 2010 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.