Leavings

How do the rest of you take leavings?  I left Tennessee, after a seven-year itch that stopped itching.  I left New Mexico after a six-year itch that was really scratching Tennessee. I left Ventura to escape from work and go places like Dunsmuir, California.  And tomorrow morning, I will leave Dunsmuir.

Maybe I was destined to be a firewoman, and so look content in this picture at the Mt. Shasta museum. 

Last view of Mt. Shasta, little changed from when I saw it a month ago, still unclimbed, still scary and majestic.  

Dogwood tree in a snowstorm on Black Butte, near Mt. Shasta, its flowers doomed unless it warms up quick.  So reminiscent of Tennessee dogwoods, so fresh and energetic, full of white hope.

Dandelion on the bank of the Sacramento River near Dunsmuir.  It could have been along the Cumberland River near home in Flynns Lick, Tennessee. 

The Other Side of the Mountain

The summit of Mt. Shasta 
from the southwest side
covered with lenticular clouds,
some say space ships,
indicating high winds
and unsafe climbing

Mt. Shasta and Shastina from the west side
from Black Butte 

There are so many ways to look at something if it stands tall among ordinary things.  It attracts attention and you want to learn more.  You can see its southwest side, as I have shown many times on this blog, and again here, because it’s the side I live next to, and the side I wanted climb.  And you have the west side, from when I climbed Black Butte and gave you both Shasta and Shastina, a lesser volcano on the flank of Shasta, which appears small only because Shasta is big.

See the windswept snow
from last night’s storm
as it streaks the rock with white
and piles up in the valleys

Mt. Shasta from Clear Creek Trail

Today, I give you the southeast side.

Clear Creek Trailhead

Mt. Shasta from the southeast side

I started up the ridge from the Clear Creek Trailhead, a recognized route to the summit, heading only for timberline to see the mountain from another perspective.  And it looks from here like a different mountain.

Crooked little tree

run over last winter

and the winter before

comes straight in summer

yes again this summer    

Bouquet from the Wild

Shasta Lily

.

Unholy Meadow

An unnamed meadow

A fifty-year-old blaze on a tree
to mark the trail 

The trail was easy up to Little Castle Lake.  Then it petered out.  I figured it would, since the website said I’d probably get lost.  “Find the old blazes chopped into the bark of trees fifty years ago,” it says.  My topo map shows the trail, and with compass and matching terrain to contours on the map, I was doing just fine I thought.  Only a few false turns, soon corrected.  

Past a little unnamed lake, and while crossing an unnamed meadow, it struck me.  Why is this meadow unholy, or at least not recognized for spiritual richness, and Panther Meadow is?  Both meadows have fine views of Mt. Shasta.  Both have grass and wildflowers, though here in this lovely meadow, at elevation 5,400 feet, the grass and flowers are thriving sooner than at 7,400-foot Panther Meadow.  The well-known Panther is on the slope of Mt. Shasta, while this one is across the Sacramento River Valley, in another range of mountains—the Klamath.  Yet the great Mt. Shasta stands majestic above this meadow, just as it does above Panther.  

Can it be that status in holy places arises on the basis of hearsay more than those intrinsic spiritual qualities touted as reasons for designating a place sacred?  Are legends and notions of holy ground somewhat like websites gone viral, where word spreads of wonders that only a few have seen, and if you simply go there, you too can become enlightened? 

In a place unpopular

unrecognized

I find no connection

between the esteemed

and the good   

Panther Meadow

Just below timberline on Mt. Shasta is the holiest site on the mountain.  Native peoples of several tribes have worshipped here over thousands of years, and newcomers arrive often to meditate in the spiritual richness of this sacred place.  Some call Mt. Shasta one of the seven holy mountains, right up there with Kilimanjaro, Fiji, Mt. Kailash in Tibet, and Israel’s Mt. Sinai.  But  the natives seldom climb to its difficult top, finding all the spiritual benefit they need here at 7,400 on its southwest flank in place called Panther Meadow.

Panther Meadow today

Panther Meadow in summer (not my picture)

The picture on the left is mine from today, but since the meadow is mostly snow-covered, I include on the right a summertime picture (not mine) when the meadow is most appealing and most visited.

The spiritual appeal of Mt. Shasta has attracted a large number of religious groups who consider it a shrine; but following the native American example, they have built no structures here, considering the mountain itself as shrine enough. They come from all over the world for workshops, gatherings, and to spend time on the mountain, praying or meditating.

Most people feel compelled to express their feelings upon seeing Mt. Shasta.  Mysterious powerful energy seems to radiate from the mountain.  I am no exception, having become so enthralled with its grandeur and beauty that I am spending a month in its vicinity. 

A snowment rill

Ice cracking on a little pond

I came to Panther Meadow to drink its spring water, which is supposed to enhance the spiritual experience.  I listened to the babble of rills carrying new snowmelt.  I watched ice cracking on a little pond, and listened to birds in the nearby forest.  I considered the crooked fir tree beside me, bent over each winter by moving snow, but always straightening up before the next winter.  I felt the warm sun as it rapidly rejuvenates this place into its most appealing season.  I was the only one here.  Beauty and peacefulness surrounded me, and a sense I often have in lovely places of unity with nature.  The place inspires soft words—Lemuria, Allah, Alleluia.  But I did not feel anything I can describe a spiritual experience.  Perhaps I am not capable of that. 

Mt. Lassen

Burney Falls on the way to Mt. Lassen Volcano

May 22, 1915

Mt. Lassen today
from the north side 

There’s a hidden story beneath the landscape in these parts.  Quiet now, so unlike the violence of 1915.  

 "Hot Rock" today
 from about the same place
as the Loomis picture 

“Hot Rock”
photographed by B. F. Loomis
after the eruption

Mt. Lassen erupted in a small way on May 19, 1915, then went quiet for three days.  Nobody knew that the crater had only let off a little steam, and that it continued to well up with lava.  Like a lid covering a boiling pot, the pressure built, and the mountain exploded on May 22.  Its plume rose 30,000 feet and was seen from 150 miles away.  This boulder, pictured some weeks after the eruption, came plummeting down the mountain in a flood of rock, lava, and melted snow and stopped in a pool of mud, which its heat sizzled for weeks.  I found the approximate place where the picture was taken.  The peak, clearly visible in the old photo, is barely seen through a forest that has grown up since the eruption.

Mt. Lassen Trail

Mt. Lassen Trailhead, 8,512 feet,
looking at the summit, 10,457 feet 

Having done a little research before starting up to the summit, I tried to read the landscape, perhaps decipher its fine print.  Surely, much is going on beneath this volcanic surface, and though I cannot study it as geologists have and do, some truths just might await an observing soul.  

Mt. Lassen Trail
gate at 1.3 miles up,
1.4 miles short of the summit  

Halfway up the mountain, a great insight struck me.  I could see the workers far up the trail as they loosened rocks that were about to tumble, protecting such as me from bumps on the head.  I took this last picture toward the summit, feeling fully capable of walking all the way, yet stopped.  Now what do you think about that?   

A Tale of Two Lakes

“You see, but you do not observe,” said Sherlock Holmes to Dr. Watson.

Castle Lake

Castle Lake

Ten thousand years ago a glacier was flowing like a sloth—steady, no hurry—down Castle Creek toward the Sacramento River Valley which runs between Mt. Shasta and Castle Crags.  The glacier was dying, and not only moved slower, it was dropping possessions along the way, baggage it had gathered over the years that now felt heavy.  If glaciers have intent, its was to leave a lovely legacy, to end well.  In its final years it stopped completely and slowly turned to liquid from whence it came, taking nothing with it.  The pile of rocks it left on departing blocked the flow of Castle Creek and formed this alpine lake that today we call Castle Lake.  The rock pile that formed it, the terminal moraine of an unnamed and forgotten glacier, has held this jewel for thousands of years. 

From atop Box Canyon Dam

Lake Siskiyou. 

Just sixty years ago a much larger obstruction to a creek happened near Mt. Shasta Town and quickly formed Lake Siskiyou.  I stood on the dam and took this picture of Box Canyon as it continues below the dam.  The lake serves its purposes of tourism development and flood control, even as many state parks that preserve natural environments are being closed. 

You recall that as I was climbing Mt. Shasta I met a man coming down who told me that he did not reach the summit.  I said to him that few people even think of trying, words that can now be seen as foreshadowing.  My words have echoed back to me in various forms from many of you. Some have left comments on the blog, but many more have answered by email.  Some have said as Holmes might have, “The mountain is right before you—observe.”  You don’t have to go up into its hazards to be awakened by what it has to show you.

I went to the city park today where the Sacramento River originates.  It bubbles out from under the rock you see, and people come from many distances to fill their bottles with its spiritually enhanced water.  I filled mine here today and expect now to observe, where before I only looked. 

McCloud River

Ponderosa Pine

Ponderosa Pine

Yesterday’s rest with writing, the Shasta failure half digested, a short walk, then a nap, I slept to dream-groans rising under me, foreshadowing laughs of demons.  Today, I drove to the peaceful and lovely McCloud River, walked the trail along it, hoping for its help in sorting out unhappy circumstance from enrichment that might not have come if I had reached the summit.  The pine trees seemed to say this is a good way to think about it.  

Morning mist rising from Middle Falls—thin, ephemeral, fading 

The falls behind it—strong, maker of mist, the ancient one

Yesterday’s mist—did anyone see, did mist even rise, or reach the top

What if it did—and what if it didn’t    

Above Middle Falls
on the McCloud River

Jet trails above Mt. Shasta

I rose on a trail above Middle Falls

on a jet above Shasta Mountain

see how small, how weak they are

mist from the jet, and mist from the falls

important now, remembered for years

but what of the process

the making of mist

that fading thing

that comes and goes

what of the process?    

Upper Falls
on the McCloud river

Upper Falls
on the McCloud river

I walked on up to Upper Falls, that splashing roaring tumult, and watched as it obeyed the laws we call of nature.  Loveliness and inspiration aside, it obeys without knowing, falls without caring.  It does what waterfalls do.  If all matter’s so constrained, leashed to genetics’ demand, then where is one who understands?  Some, it seems are free to go and say what no longer is.  

McCloud River above Upper Falls

There is a pool, they say, above the turbulence of falls, where Shasta lilies grow along its sides, and frogs contently rest.  A place where flow is gentle and there’s time to watch the birds, where no mountains loom to challenge lonely souls, and if there are, the soul’s at rest and simply looks.  

 Mt. Shasta from ten miles east
of McCloud on Hy 89 

A poem by Erika Wilk   

a snow cone

to be conquered

the lone climber

seeking the summit

what flavor will it be