Pleasant Valley

Posted: Private Property.
Posted: No Trespassing.
These are two messages we became too familiar with during our time at the cabin this summer. It seems that the frontier spirit is still alive and well in the Sierra Nevada. People here have staked out their little piece of the West and protect it fiercely. Too numerous to count were our encounters with a sign on a tree or fence post that contained one of the two messages above. We saw those signs so often on the dirt roads we traveled that it became a running joke. Even the merest hint of such a sign would elicit a minute or two worth of us shouting back and forth to each other, "Posted!" (emphasis on the first syllable,of course). Ashe: "Get off my land! It's been posted!" Maciej: "Stop yer' trespassin'! It's been posted!"
We began to wonder about the kind of people we were sharing the forest and mountains with while at the cabin. Who were these people that felt the need to warn all passersby that the land they were passing was private. What is it exactly that people out here do on wild land they believe to be public? We'll never know.
Most of the time, we avoided spending any time on private land but, on our last day at the cabin, we did visit a piece of private land that we've wanted to see for quite some time. The land is Pleasant Valley, a more than just pleasant piece of land beyond the community of the same name near to Markleeville. We did call the owner of the land to get permission so that we could hike into Pleasant Valley without worry that we'd be shot at... or worse.