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My wife was mall shopping with a friend of hers and her 5-year-old daughter, who went missing. After a frantic search of the store, the little girl was discovered behind a round of dresses. The toddler defended her unannounced decision to play, explaining that ,"hiding is gorgeous."

In the course of language acquisition children don't always see the full picture behind a word's meaning. I remember, sometime during my single digits, misconstruing the word "pregnant." I thought it meant good looking. "Well, yes, she's pregnant," I remember thinking, "but she would be more pregnant if she lost some weight."

I was climbing a hill last week, on my bike, and it was a great day for riding. I felt pretty good on the bike and it occurred to me as I was riding up a 7 percent grade that climbing was.... gorgeous. There was just no other word for it.

I've written about climbing before, both on bikes and afoot, and affection for ascending is not universal. But I don't think you're a climber by nature if you're built for it, rather if the idea resonates with you. Just as triathlon is enjoyed by former football players as well as former distance runners, climbing is a state of mind as much as it is a state of leg.

I came across a book a couple of months ago that has become a devotional. It's called The Complete Guide to Climbing (By Bike). No, it's not a prayer book, nor a collection of inspiration quotes. A devotional, to me, is a book with contemplative passages to which I might refer numerous times. This book is a list of 144 climbs in the U.S., with a detail of each climb: average grade, total length, steepest grade, elevation gained, and the author, John Summerson, has a well-reasoned algorithm for determining the relative difficulty of each climb.

I'm blessed to have many of these climbs situated within three hours of me (one is situated five minutes from me). Summerson's book sits on my nightstand, and when I read about White Mountain or Onion Valley it's like reading a Psalm, if you're a climber.

I find that Complete Guide to Climbing is one of two books that, for me, are companions. My other longtime "devotional" is Donald Culross Peattie's A Natural History of Western Trees, and if you're a tree lover this is your essential volume.

I'm sure Summerson never thought Peattie's book formed, along with his, a virtual box set, but, for me, it does. For example, that ascent just outside my door, which Summerson calls "Table Top," starts in the high Mojave Desert, among creasote bushes and Joshua trees. I climbed this beast yesterday, and showy yellow rabbitbrush is blooming alongside Largo Vista Road, right where this ascent commences. In Autumn, when Southern Californians detect the faint, pungent desert scent during Santa Ana winds, rabbitbrush is what they're smelling. Much of the high desert blooms in Fall, which makes the Eastern Sierran ascents so appealing this time of year.

Four miles into this climb, California juniper is added to the mix. Two miles later, as the road enters the narrows of a twisty ravine, the junipers hand the baton to pinyon pines, often the introductory tree on the rain shadow side of a California mountain range.

The pinyon belt is exhausted on this climb at 6000 feet of elevation, giving way to bigcone Douglas firs, California black oaks, and canyon live oaks and, if you know what you're looking for, giant sequoias planted as forest ornamentals a century ago. By the time this very difficult climbs tops out at about 8000 feet in elevation incense cedars, jeffrey and sugar pines, and the first few high-altitude limber pines, dominate the forest.

Summerson's book is appropriate for those who're interested only in the quality of the climb. But Peattie is necessary, I think, if you climb General's Highway to Sequoia National Park. But if you've never seen a giant sequoia, do not fear: You won't need Peattie to identify one.

If you were one of those who watched the first viewing of Ken Burns' National Parks on PBS last week, you'll want to start in with some John Muir. The Mountains of California is a good place to begin, and, if you pay attention, you'll note Muir's affection for the boughs of a red fir as bedding material while sleeping in the wild, and the strength of the red fir as a perch while riding out a Sierran storm.

If you ride Tioga Pass out of Yosemite (rideable by bike sans car traffic if you catch the pass after it's cleared of Winter snow and just before its official Spring opening), you'll experience one of the great rides of your life because, of course, climbing is gorgeous. But it would be a shame if you passed through that pure stand of red firs 3000 feet above Yosemite Valley's floor, oblivious to its significance, let alone the Western junipers on the lee side of the pass, the largest and craggiest of which have been alive as long as many of the gargantuan sequoias in the park.