1. The Allure of True Beauty

In order to reach the mountains, we must drive a couple of hours over the flat lands.  As a country boy I always have great affection for the rich, fertile, flat and expansive Central Valley of California.  It's so productive and well attended; abundance is written all over the places; it makes one wonder endlessly why some folks in this world of ours still go to bed hungry.

It's August.  The air was hot and exceptionally dry, perfect weather for crops that needed a great deal of sunlight, strong sunlight, virile sunlight--the secret of California's Central Valley and its great productivity.  We stopped at one of the rest areas along the highway.  Taking a deep breath of the musky air that bubbles in the thickly hazy sun shine, I suddenly felt that I, too, was becoming ripe along with the crops.  (Ripe and mature are two different concepts here, thought you might want to be reminded.)

Redding is the last big town at the north end of the Central Valley.  A few miles farther north we were into the Cascade Range.  Also starting from Redding, Interstate Highway 5 starts to wind around Sacramento River.  As a matter of fact, the road and the river crisscross each other so many times that it feels like we are rolling a boat upstream along the Sacramento River, as opposed to driving on a stretch of asphalt.  It was a maddening thought as my heart was experiencing the great agony caused by the loss of the opportunity of seeing the mysterious and angelic activity and beauty of the river and valley down below and alongside.  In our extremely modernized world a few feet can be crossed so easily and yet can be so far in a profound way.  Yes, the pine trees on the mountains and by the road are majestic, all the way, every way; but, the river, its many creeks, trout, salmon, fishermen, boats, fishing nets, fishing rods, plants exotic and ordinary, trees towering and dwarf, and birds big and small and maybe wild animals ... all was lost, maybe forever.

At our motel lobby, I met a gentleman from Oakland, California, which was next to the town I live.  The motel clerk, actually the owner as it was a family operated joint, had mistaken his reservation with mine because we have the same last name.  Anyway, the gentleman was in his early 70s, he said that when he was younger he used to come this far for trout fishing in the upper streams of the Sacramento River. Dunsmuir to be exact.  He hadn't been back in the past 15 years due to health reasons but missed it terribly in the meantime.  As soon as he was back on his feet, he showed up to where the call came, from the bottom of his heart, of course.  The beauty of the creeks and valleys hidden between huge mountains peaks and vast forest is irresistible.  Once touched by the beauty, you are charmed forever.  When I told the gentleman that we were there to see Mount Shasta, he didn't seem to be very impressed, except the possibility that I was still young and could still walk that last 2 or 3 miles to the top of the old volcano.  As a novice of this area, I was ignorant of where the true beauty resided.

Since we didn't schedule any time for the river and its many creeks, I could only imagine the immense allure.  And the pull caused by the gravity of the beauty, together with many other streams of thoughts, caused me to lose some sleep during the trip.

2.  Volcanoes Must Be Male

Mount Shasta stands out of all the peaks at this end of Cascade Range, simply because it's the tallest amongst them all.  Soon after we entered the Cascade Range, a towering peak stares through the windshield.  It is bald, shamelessly bald, in the color of brownish red from distance and big patches of snow around its neck area.  The contrast is rather sharp as its bare top towered over a sea of deep green mountains and charming valleys.  It's majestic and sad at the same time.  As Highway 5 twists and turns, negotiating with a range of mountains and myriad valleys, Mount Shasta moves off the view and only appears again with vengeance.  Maybe I had lost my sympathy for the extraordinary; that lone image of a bald and barren mountain top started to repulse me.  For one thing, a volcano looks like a male who has a hard time concealing its sex under the bright sun.  How can we tell a mountain to get civilized and behave itself?

Mount Shasta City is small and cute but largely a tourist resort town.  The water is clean, delicious thus folks are healthy and happy.  We gassed up and had some lunch.  Oh, wait, it's 5 o'clock.  The sun was still bright and shining, we decided to pay our pilgrimage to the god of virility; after all, "he" was the reason we came here.  Like every scenic attraction in the developed world, cars can reach pretty high up close to the twin peaks.  It didn't take us long to be at the 10,000 feet elevation with the peaks at our eyelashes.  Snow was only a few feet away.  The midweek crowd was all but non-existent.  Up there the air is thinner and life becomes rare.  Immediately we started to climb.  Because I didn't like to travel along the well trekked trails, it didn't take me long to wander off all by myself to the steeper terrains and bushes and loose rocks.

Big mountains make human feel small.  The slopes look barren or bare yet people can disappear so fast into the vast terrains and bushes.  Then there is this gigantic feeling of loneliness, and maybe fear.  Loneliness can be so cold and so devastating; after hundreds of years, it's still there and becoming even more acute.  My legs may have become heavier as I climbed up but my heart was depleted by such a feeling.  In that state of mind, a cluster of tiny purple flowers made my eyes bleary.  the environment is so harsh thus they are so exceptionally beautiful and strong and romantic.  I trekked on as my ambition to conquer the peaks rose again.

Why would a mountain have to erupt?  Why couldn't he control his own virility?  I guessed he couldn't because he is male and male must let himself go.  Life is thus made and solitude is thus created and cemented.  I was walking on sheets of brownish rocks.  Smooth and attractive.  The crunchy noise created by my boots reminded me of the ancient fire balls and the crystallization of the hot lava that purified some mineral and evaporated all the moisture and whatever was soft and tender.  It'd produced so much hard-edged solitude that still reaches across centuries to affect a stranger.

Maybe it was too late, maybe the feeling was too heavy.  I had to quit about passing the halfway point.  My muscles were already sore; sore was also my heart.

3.  Fantastic Evening

Two and half hours later we were back in Mount Shasta City.  Many businesses had closed before 8 o'clock, only a few bars and dancing and music halls were still entertaining out of town guests.  We had dinner in one of the few restaurants that were detached from hotels and still open.  The food was good and the service was excellent.

So the only nice thing to do was dipping in a hot jacuzzi and the swimming pool in intervals. Since both of them were outdoors, we had the evening in our plain view.  And it quickly became really fascinating.  Spectacular wild cloud formation drifted about from the shoulders of the mountain peak.  Since we were in the mountains, we fully expected the weather to behave like little kids.  As we sat in the jacuzzi and watched, an exceptional sunset painted the entire sky into a bright orange dome over darkened mountains.  The west horizon was splashed by a bold stroke of pure orange trimmed by darkness and deep black.  It was so huge and so rich of color and expression.  Everyone, including kids, looked up in awe.  We were mesmerized; we were flabbergasted. We were expecting nothing ... then "boom" and "splash."  A fantastic fireball blew up on the northern sky, highlighting Mount Shasta as only big fireworks could.  There was a wild rainstorm up north behind the majestic peaks, a storm that sent over a few cool breeze to us.  It was perfect for a good night to rest those aching muscles.
Ah, life is beautiful.

Yet I had a hard time sleeping that night.

4.  Country Roads

I wasn't too thrilled meeting an enormously lonely soul that is an ancient volcano, a male who hasn't done his deed for the past couple of centuries.  Then I had trouble sleeping.  So I spent some time sitting under the starry night to see the thunderstorm rolling by.  That was when I decided to take Road 89, instead of Highway 5, down to Lassen Volcanic National Park.  Originally we had our eye on Shasta Lake as our next day destination.  Shasta Lake is one of the jewels of the Sacramento River, we saw her as we came up during the day.  But that plan was scratched.

The morning sun in the densely wooded area was soft and tender.  Occasionally trucks with huge freshly cut logs drove by and permeated the air with a jet stream of pine aroma that sweetened the whole forest.  Although we have encountered some road construction along the way, the heart was at peace and felt rather serene.  We didn't mind the delays and waiting.  Maybe my heart belongs to green, tender and soft green, not the harshness of bare-chested mountains.  In the woods, I realize that part of our world is actually livable and charming.  Life can be a joy sometimes.

About two hours later we arrived at the Lassen Volcanic National Park.

5.  A More Active Volcano

The volcanoes around the Lassen Peak had a massive eruption as recently as 1915 and they act up rather frequently in the past few centuries.  Some of the lava is still being worked on by sulfur as gases of strong odor still shoot up into the air.  Man-made forest is still patching up with the original.  There are lakes, many small lakes scattered around huge peaks in high elevations, like jewelry.  Some lakes will be buried to create meadows so that trees can reclaim their original prosperity.  It's like our Earth is re-creating itself once again right under our nose.  It was a great drive up and down as the scenery was just breath-taking, with valleys, creeks and snow tops at every turn.

When we parked the car by the main peak, Lassen Peak of course, I immediately grabbed a bottle of water and started my determined rush up.  It was 2.2 miles of mildly steep climb as the trail zigzags, zigzags and zigzags again.  Unlike Mount Shasta where supervision by mountain rangers was almost non-existent, troops of mountain rangers actively repair the trail every step of the way in this park.  So many mountaineers come to enjoy the view and the challenge that trails are being damaged and mountains are being scarred.  But because there were so many people here or because I had just been to a much lonelier place, this place was bustling with life and its undisciplined ways.  Walking up and down for three plus hours was just a form of exercise.

It was so strange that one could sweat and freeze to death in the matter of few yards.  As the trail turns, one minute I was on the southern slope of the mountain where it was sunny and warm and the tightly winded body started to perspire.  Yet, only a few steps away, the northern slope greeted the body with fierce wind.  Because I had only a pair of shorts on, the snow or the glacier sent huge cold greetings with the gusty wind.  At one point, we had to walk through a path in the glacier which was deeper than 6 feet.  But it was nice to be on top of the peak to see the ocean of forest, true forest.  And even Mount Shasta was quite visible.

Looking down, there is Lake Helen, a small pond.  There used to be great mountain, Mount Tehama, which towered more than 1,000 feet over Lassen Peak.  That was the real Volcano.  But it erupted and collapsed, giving birth to all the little peaks around and made itself into a tiny pond.  Nature has its own sex transformation operation.  Only it takes a few millennia.  Mount Tehama collapsed about 600,000 years ago.

6.  The Feather River

The muscles again became sore.  There were so many spots to see.  Beautiful water falls display themselves in the deep creeks; hot springs bubble; at Bumpass Hell sulfur keeps working to dissolve lava.  Again, we didn't schedule any time for the numerous little trails that are the true charms of the park and wilderness.

When we descended from the Lassen National Park, we are at the joint where Cascade Range and Sierra Nevada Range are only separated by a few miles, or less than that.  We spent the night in the town called Chester which is on the shore of the great Lake Almanor.  Actually, it's a ski resort and the lake water was too cold to be any value for us.  And we were too tired to do anything but eat and sleep.

Next morning we kept on traveling down Road 89 to Quincy, or the southeast, though home is in the direction of the Southwest.  The Feather River gracefully followed along.  It's a gorgeous drive and water is green and meadows are alive.  Sometimes the valley becomes rather deep thus the drive a little more exciting.  We even went off the main road and traveled around the Round Lake on dirt road.  It was pretty messy but never a dull moment.  Running river, tender and soft green hills, those are the moments for life to relax, to enjoy and to become drunk in the positive way.

We gassed up at Quincy to take on an even smaller road, Route 119.  Both 89 and 119 are scenic byways.  Big trees, high peaks and deep valleys, many rock formations, were our company all the way to Lake Oroville.  The road can be so narrow that no trucks can get by and it is closed in winter.

We took a couple of hours to swim in the Lake and came back home around 5:30 in the afternoon.

7.  Ishi's Wilderness

I didn't find Ishi.  Ishi was the last Indian who came out of the wilderness to Oroville.  He tried to mix in with the so-called "civilized world."  He was the last stone age man growing up in the wilderness of the Lassen (Peter Lassen, an European pioneer) area; some people call this area Ishi's Wilderness which I feel is more appropriate.  The civilized world didn't treat Ishi civilly.  He became a museum piece.

For years since I heard of his story, I had felt that there was something in my chest to be vented in the spirit of Ishi.  So I went there to look for that sacred land of his, to worship and to connect.  But the overall beauty of the landscape melted me down.  At the end, I refuse to mourn.

If Ishi is alive above my head, please let me tell you that your country is extremely beautiful and I'm thoroughly charmed.

August 7-9, 1999