Sequoia National Park is a special place to my family. My dad grew up in Visalia not far from the entrance, and he frequented it a lot growing up and as a young adult. I spent a summer working in neighboring Kings Canyon National Park and made plenty of memories of my own amid the towering sequoias in our sister park. After I got married and later once we had kids, I made sure to introduce this special place to the special people in my life, and we formed our own memories here.
This particular trip in the fall of 2020 was going to be my sister’s kids first introduction to the park. Just like when we took them to Yosemite, we had a checklist of things they needed to see: Hospital Rock, Beetle Rock, General Sherman, Lodgepole, Moro Rock, and Crescent Meadow. I would have loved to add Crystal Cave to that list, but it was closed for the season (and quite a bit longer due to fire and weather-related damage leading to restoration efforts that finally completed before the summer 2025 season). I’ve also never been to Mineral King, which remains on my list of places to go on subsequent visits.
Checking In
I’m a checklist person. It helps me set an intention and stay focused on what needs to get done. I get a dopamine hit every time I get to strike through a completed task, or tap the bubble in my Notes app and watch the item fall below the tasks still remaining, or watch a narwhal fly across Asana. I’ve even been known to write down a task I’ve already completed just for the pleasure of checking it off. Even this blog features a checklist of things we want to make sure we do at every national park we visit on our quest. Heck, the quest itself is a checklist!
We were doing a great job, ticking off each place to visit in due order. The plan was to spend the remainder of the day after arriving in the park stopping at Hospital Rock (check), Beetle Rock (check), General Sherman (check), and Lodgepole (check) before getting settled in our rooms at Wuksachi. I had a comprehensive checklist for the next day in Kings Canyon, then on our way back down the hill to go home, we would knock out the Giant Forest Museum, Moro Rock, and Crescent Meadow, including a hike around the meadow to Tharp’s Log and Chimney Tree. It was a simple, and very doable plan.
What’s That White Stuff?
Nature had other plans, though. We woke up to a thin blanket of white across the Wuksachi grounds. The kids were utterly delighted when flakes started falling from the sky. (We live in the Los Angeles basin and never get snow – to us, it’s something you have to consciously go to.) They started making snowballs and catching flakes on their tongues and doing what kids do in the snow. To add to the magic, it was Sequoia’s first snow of the season.
We got down to Giant Forest, snow still lightly falling, and noticed a couple of deer foraging behind the parking lot. We watched them for a while, then carefully made our way down to the museum. It was there we discovered that the road to Moro Rock and Crescent Meadow was closed due to the snow. The road there isn’t terribly long, and it would have been possible to walk it, but with five kids in tow and no chains in the cars if the snow got heavier, we prudently decided to call it a day and skip those last two checks.
Unfinished Business
I was not terribly pleased about leaving two really special places unvisited, and I had to promise the kids (but really myself) that we would come back sometime to show them. It makes me think of all the checklists in my life that get some or most of the way done, but can’t quite cross the finish line. Those books I start with gusto but lose steam halfway through and never finish. Those online courses I sign up for and get 4/6 lessons done but can’t seem to find time to get the last two. Even songs I’ve learned and very nearly mastered on the piano, but I lose interest and stop practicing rather than pressing record.
And I wonder why. For someone who loves checklists so much, what is it about a finished checklist (or project or book or course or piano piece) that is so elusive to me? To be sure, I do complete things, but my closure rate is nowhere close to what I would objectively think someone like me’s would be. I’ve always been a bit of a perfectionist; despite having spent the last decade consciously trying to combat those tendencies, I still take pride in a thorough, detailed job well done. It would seem that my desire for perfection would drive me to complete more tasks and projects.
But it doesn’t. And that got me thinking, maybe it’s because of my perfectionistic tendencies that I don’t complete things. Because as long as something is unfinished, it’s allowed to be imperfect. But once it’s done, that’s it. Any critiques are proof that it wasn’t perfect and the task was never actually finished. When I have written something or recorded a song on the piano, I have to fight, and I mean go to war, with my natural inclination to qualify a post about it with something like, “Perfect is the enemy of done!” or “Making progress!” – something that gives it permission to be less than perfect. That gives me permission to be less than perfect. As if I, or my work, have to be perfect to be worth anything.
Closure
My sister and I actually did end up returning with all five kids specifically for Moro Rock and Crescent Meadow – Tharp’s Log – Chimney Tree during a later trip to Visalia for a family funeral. It gave us a chance to extend the adventure of the original trip, and brought beauty and joy to an otherwise difficult trip.
And you know what? That’s how it should be. I may be four years behind on this blog, but time and space and life have given me much more to reflect upon as I remember these trips to America’s most special places. And that’s a gift. Each post doesn’t have to be perfect. It represents two moments in time – when we made the visit and now as I write about it – along with everything in between. My thoughts and perspectives may change as they already have since I first started this blog, and that’s okay, too. I have permission to be who I am in this moment, document it as it is, and have a record of it as a breadcrumb of the journey that is my life. And that’s pretty cool.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some Chopin to practice.
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