Pacific Crest Trail

“You are lost the moment you set foot here.  You know the path but wander thrilled over the bare and pathless rock, as if it were solidified air and cloud.  That rocky, misty summit, secreted in the clouds, was far more thrillingly awful and sublime than the crater of a volcano spouting fire.”—Henry David Thoreau, Journal

This stick
supported me
from the top of Crags down. 
I fell at the top
and this brought me home. 
Please leave stick on trail.
5-2-12 RCM

There is little I can compare in unrealized ecstasy to sitting over coffee with a likeness of Henry David Thoreau.  His whimsy and impractical sense would light up my face, and I’d follow him to the top of Mt. Shasta.  Instead I wait for the weather to clear, the wind to die down, and the cold to stop, so I can do it alone.  I will sit bored for no man, nor in waiting for some unknown in nature to favor my climb. 

I am sure you know how fortunate we are in America—to have land on which we can walk and not be thrown off by the owner.  We can walk the entire length of California on the Pacific Crest Trail, a public way accessible from many points.  Today, I walked a portion of it south of Dunsmuir. 

Sacremento River

Sacramento River

From high in the Cascades, the Sacramento River flows cold with snowmelt down through Dunsmuir, into Lake Shasta, through the state capitol, and into the great Bay.  Here it is clear from a fisheye perspective and full of sparkles, seen from an alien eye on the bank. 

Klamath Mountains

Castle Crags

The Trail does not follow the river far, but climbs to the west into mountains that defy their eastern volcanic cousins.  I have studied the complicated geology of the Klamath Mountains and hope, in some future post, to explain what geologists seem to understand.  But for now, I can say that the seemingly simple pressure, explosion, destruction cycle of the volcanic Cascades, of which Mt. Shasta is part, has no part in the older and milder Klamaths.  Yet, above me in the mild mountains stand the fierce Castle Crags.  How is it that I care about happenings in the far past, ruptures in the earth’s crust that were not even in dinosaur memories?   Do I care because my thoughts run longer than others’ thought?

Demons of Shasta

         by

Tim Callahan

Wildflowers
along the Sacramento River 

Into the demon-haunted wilds of Shasta

peddled the bold undaunted Sharon,

peddled the steely stalwart Sharon.

From out their caves poured the Lemurians

Ten feet tall, robed in white,

riding large and leprous lemurs,

tried to seize her, tried to pull her

into their mount of malevolent mystery

Yet the ever stalwart Sharon

speedily sailed on her soaring Schwinn

leaving the lemurs languidly panting.

Then the Atlanteans strove to stop her

Stealthily strove to stymie the stalwart one.

Yet the mighty Sharon soared,

peddling perilously past each precipice,

invoking the name of Saint Germaine!

At that holy name they faltered

Wildflowers
along the Sacramento River 

Fearfully fleeing the founder of I AM.

Up the demon haunted slopes of Shasta

The stalwart Sharon ever strove.

Out of the hidden Shasta crater

Issued the surly scaly aliens,

rose the reptiloid residents of Rigel.

Silently their sinister silver saucers

secretly shadowed the stalwart Sharon.

Yet as she peddled beneath the pines,

Her piebald pallid pursuers paused,

Foiled by the foliage of the flaring firs.

So, ever up the slopes of Shasta undaunted

the steely stalwart Sharon

steadily straightaway strove.