After thoroughly caffeinating in Salem on Wednesday morning, I drove south on I-5 to Mt. Shasta. One of my oldest friends has lived there for most of the last five years and this would be my second trip down to see her and experience the incredible places that she knows to hike and drive to within the magical terrain. The drive south through Oregon takes you through Rogue Valley towns and then the highways winds up dramatically to the Siskiyou Summit at 4,310 feet. From there, the views of the forests and mountains had me struggling to stay on the road. I visited first in March a few years ago and due to the weather didn’t see the top of the mountain during my stay. This time, though, the shroud of mist had burned off and Mt. Shasta loomed surprisingly close to the road.
I met Mikayla at Shastice Park in Mt. Shasta City where we helped her dog, Marco, celebrate his 2nd birthday. From there, I followed her to Dunsmuir—the once grand and star-studded train station town closest to the mountain that was recently awarded the title of “World’s Best Water”. I had a lot of editing work left to do so I produced a 5 minute spot on the trip so far for fellow KYRS program “So There I Was” talking about my Oregon interviews and introducing the idea of the Summer Road Show to that audience. That spot, titled “Rest Stop Revelations” (thanks Dad!) will air during “So There I Was” Fridays at 1:00 PM. My only real goals in Shasta were to edit my Praxis show and gather some of the incredible water at the headwaters of the Sacramento River to take with me through the drought and into places whose water has been poisoned by destructive extractive processes. We laid low that first night and I worked on the show, knowing that we would hike and adventure the next day.
For thousands of years, people who have encountered this mountain and the surrounding area have considered it sacred and it still remains a site of ritual and pilgrimage for groups ranging from Native tribes like the Wintu to Buddhists to a range of New Age type groups. Issues of respect, colonialism, and stewardship have perhaps obviously bubbled to the surface here as cultures mix in this undeniably special place. Mikayla had explained some of this to me on my first visit and the rules that the tribes have for taking care of both the ecosystem and the spiritual connection they have by, for example, not ascending above the tree line and not bringing large groups for an extended period of time. The latest case of mountain misuse comes from the New Age group The Rainbow Tribe, well known for their annual Rainbow Gathering, and now for their obliviousness to the ways their mostly white membership perpetuates colonial history. This summer’s gathering was planned to take place in the Black Hills of South Dakota until the Lakota people protested their sacred site being used by a group notorious for its large ecological footprint and unpredictable impact. Why Mt. Shasta would be considered as a less offensive back up plan is a mystery, but it’s the very spot that The Rainbow Tribe next set their sights. These two articles feature leaders of the Winnemem Wintu tribe discussing the cease and desist order that was delivered to the Rainbow tribe last weekend.
It upset me to hear this story, in which supposedly “enlightened” people fail to understand basic ecology and put their perceived value as a group over the value of, say, a delicate system like the one in Panther Meadows in Mt. Shasta. Part of the same continuum is another ongoing fight in the area over water. As I mentioned, the headwaters of the Sacramento River filter up through the mountain and spill out in a small park in Mt. Shasta City where people gather to drink and collect the water, which is reported to have healing properties. Similarly to the attitude of The Rainbow Tribe regarding sensitive sites, some people come to the headwaters to haul out dozens of gallons in large tanks. Most bring a jar or something slightly larger; I brought a gallon jug. All of this gathering does have an impact, but not a significant one on the total flow or cleanliness of the Sacramento as a whole. Now, though, Crystal Geyser is in the process of re-opening a dormant Coca-Cola bottling plant without any environmental review and despite huge public opposition. As the people who live here are asked, along with all Californians, to drastically reduce their personal water consumption, it seems sick to invite in a private water bottling operation to exploit these rare resources without limit. I plan to keep following this story and would encourage others to as well. There are a couple articles here and here for more information.
We went for an incredible drive into the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, where it started to rain—good punctuation for thinking about water and drought—and then hiked along the Pacific Crest Trail (Photos here). I was grateful to have this time in nature, the place that always makes sense, and tried to soak up the dense and magical forest before heading into less verdant places. John Muir famously visited Mt. Shasta, where he was saved from death in a blizzard by one of the natural hot springs on the mountain. His words will serve better than mine to capture why the wilderness is the place to be.“This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.”
We went into Weed that second night, checked out the brewery there, and slept in Friday morning. On the way out of town, I filled up a jug with the coldest imaginable water, dipped my hands in and drank from them, said goodbye and drove the hours south to the San Francisco Bay. The terrain changes dramatically on this stretch of I-5 as well—from the dramatic Shasta Cascade region down into the Central Valley where flowers line the central median and waves of corn are replaced by almonds, then corn again, then hay, then almonds, then other fruits, corn, and on until the gradually more industrial towns and scenes of the Bay. With so much going on in this area, I will be trying to get a broad picture and diverse interviews during a short time here. I can only hope that by sharing some of the epic nature of nature with people, along with the more dire aspects of what we’re dealing with today that we will start to act as though we care about our home. As John Muir also said, “God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools.”
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