For the last four summers, my wife and I have made our home in Big Pine, thirteen miles south of Bishop. We’re climbers by trade, writers and teachers by profession. The latter leaves us a lot of freedom, the former not a lot of money. But from the moment we met each other in Joshua Tree (to think of all places to meet another climber) we were already planning on living large and deep in the Owens Valley. Somehow we’ve managed to pull it off and will continue to idly dig deeper roots until we are, without sentiment, buried here under the dry sage.

When we first moved here we focused on classic peaks and climbs in the backcountry. Having both climbed in the Sierra for at least one collective lifetime before meeting, we brought together a long list of have and have-nots. Yet beginning the first month of our first summer in the Sierra, we began to see that elevation and proportion is single-minded.

That certainly is the case with the High Sierra, where the eye draws upwards whether you’re a peak-bagger, rock climber, or mountaineer. It’s fair to say more people have summitted Mt. Whitney than have climbed in the Alabama Hills or the sweeping aprons of white granite of the Whitney Portal in plain view on the way up. It’s understandable. The “eye on the prize” blinds our vision.

Aside from the occasional bouldering session in the Buttermilk, I too neglected to see the front country climbing possibilities. I came to the Sierra with only two or three days off from work and I wanted something big, something that would stick to my lowland memory. Or more truthfully, something that would justify driving through Los Banos in the Central Valley on the way back to Santa Cruz, gas station coffee rattling my tired bones at three in the morning. Begging St. Christopher for a shower, a bed, shut-eyes, real food — never sure which should come first.

So why not just live here? A twenty-minute drive to the trailhead into the Palisades was all it took to sign a lease on a one-bedroom cottage, a cottage so close to Highway 395 it would be quieter if you slept in the sleeper of a semi — and sometimes it feels as though you are.

“Never mind,” says my German mother-in-law, her favorite English expression, one that she uses to mean your priorities are in order.