“I tremble for my species when I reflect that God is just.”
— Thomas Jefferson
I got up at dawn (like I always do), and to avoid traffic I drove all the way up to the trailhead, stopping just once for gas – and a diversion that was far worse than I expected. It was the first time I had seen the astonishing devastation of the Carr fire earlier in the year, which obliterated hundreds of thousands of acres of forest. On Highway 299 west of Redding, traffic was stopped temporarily after the historic town of Shasta, where Cal Fire crews were still cleaning up. In utter disbelief, I stared at entire burned-out neighborhoods where only the melted hulks of vehicles remained. Black and brown skeletons of trees thrust their ugly bones to the sky, next to squares of gray ashes where entire homes had been incinerated.
On the other side of the ridge, Whiskeytown Lake was still pretty and sky-blue, but nearly all the forest around it was torched and brown as far as the eye could see. A few traumatized boats were moored in the marina, but it would take decades for the resort area to recover its charm. The fire damage continued up the Buckhorn Pass and all the way to Lewiston –probably 50 miles in all – until I turned west towards Highway 3 and the Bear Lakes trailhead. The tension of grief in my shoulders released as I saw green forest again. I eventually hit the trail by 11:30… only a half hour behind schedule. I greatly enjoyed the lightness of my pack, and the cool autumn air was refreshing. The fall colors were very attractive in the forest, with maple and alder turning yellow, and some unidentified, short trees with red wine-colored leaves. Of course, my knees and ankles protested mightily during the first part of the hike, but once I crossed the bridge, there was no turning back. My backup plan was to camp at the Twin Towers if my broken-down body proved unable to meet the challenge. Everywhere were pretty postcard pictures of fall foliage – something I hadn’t seen ever before on the trail – so I walked slowly and savored the beautiful forest. The path through the colorful trees was thickly covered with fallen leaves, large acorns, and long pine needles. At one point, I rounded a bend where the holy fire of morning sun radiated through yellow alders with such awesome power that I lost all sense of self. I would have fallen to my knees in praise, if it weren’t for the effort it would have taken to get back up again. The air was crisp with oxygen, but I took my time so my legs could enjoy the perfect hiking weather. My footsteps syncopated in the crunchy leaves and acorns. By the time I reached the Twin Towers about 3 hours later, I saw that some righteous soul had restored the campsite to its natural state, leaving only a modest fire ring. The camp was brown, dry, and uninviting, with just a trickle in Bear Creek, and I still had plenty of energy and daylight left to reach the lakes.
I labored over the difficult parts of the trail that followed, steadily gaining elevation, until I was inevitably affected by the altitude and my generally poor physical condition. Taking lots of breaks, and watching the sun angle away to the southwest, I soon realized it would be best to camp at Big Bear Lake overnight. That way, I could get a good rest and proceed to Little Bear Lake the next day. It was a feeble rationalization; the sort one makes to avoid feeling badly about defeat. Then I saw the reason that those thoughts had entered my awareness. High on the ridge above me, jutting massively into the sky like the prow of a ship, was a purple and indigo monolith of granite illuminated by the autumn sun. It veritably glowed with spirituality; as an inverted stained glass window might fold in on itself. The rays of its splendor transfixed me to that spot on the trail for a grand five minutes before I could even think… much less move. This was a lower spur of Sawtooth, situated in such a way that it appeared taller than the mountain itself. At the very peak was the unmistakable figurehead of an oversized grizzly bear, sculpted in granite and gazing sternly down at me; as if only I could prevent forest fires! Just at that moment, the light was at an oblique angle to make obvious all the details I had never noticed before. I observed the phenomenal bear monument for long intervals between the trees, as the sun crawled across the western rim of the lake. With renewed respect for the powerful earth energy emanating from the mountains, I resumed my ascent to the temple.
When I finally arrived at the lake, the citron disc of sun was disappearing behind the rim, but there would yet be two hours of daylight. I could hear voices – probably the owners of the other cars I saw at the trailhead – but they were hidden from view behind thick bushes. My consolation prize was that the best campsite wasn’t taken… probably because it was littered with old horseshit. I set up my tent in the cleanest area before my muscles gave out for the day. Overall, I felt pretty good – very tired of course – but my knees, ankles, and hips weren’t too sore from the unaccustomed exertion. The silence of the lake basin was immediately noticeable and pervasive, even with the barking dog in the campsite next to mine. My neighbors were keeping to themselves, and that was fine with me, as long as they also kept their dog quiet so I could enjoy the tranquility. But first, a cup of soup and some jerky! I enjoyed my modest supper on the same flat rock on which I’ve sat so many times before, and gazed out across the placid alpine lake; my eyes just a few feet above the surface. The water was lower than I’d ever seen it – another concession to the lateness of the season. A white circle of exposed shoreline traced the entire body of water, the way a teacher might highlight something important on the blackboard. Swifts patrolled their intricate courses, skimming just above the quicksilver surface in search of insects.
As the weak autumn light faded into night, the tops of the wide granite rim around the lake whispered there would soon be strong moonlight. Luna herself was rising somewhere to the southwest but was not yet visible. Interestingly, it never really got dark: it was more like the energy of the light was removed, revealing a negative image of the landscape. Everything took on an earthy green-gray tone, except on the rim above where the white granite was already illuminated by moonbeams. Soon the entire upper deck of the stadium was glowing, and I carefully navigated the boulders above camp to check out Sawtooth. The great ramparts were silently pulsing with a ghostly light that seemed to radiate from within. Visibility was so good that I could hop from rock to rock, so I used no headlamp that might trigger the dog. Exploring the nighttime lakeshore was like balancing between two worlds – the solid, moonlit earth, and the shadowy, dreamlike water. I found a perfect little beach with a miniature bluff that was left behind when the water went down. It was only about 10 feet long and 4 feet wide, but it featured small tufts of soft grass… for which my buttocks were obscenely grateful. I rested my tired legs in the relatively soft sand, and at last observed the moon over my left shoulder through the trees. It was not yet full (still 4 days from it), but extremely vigorous, and harsh to look at after all the subtlety of twilight. I preferred the numinous effects of the tertiary light on the rock rim surrounding the lake, and turned back to count the stars as they winked in one by one.
Even with the low murmuring of other human voices, and the glimmer of their campfire on the trees, I could enter the sleepwalking solace of solitude. As the night cooled, I still felt the familiar, warm embrace of the absolute totality from which I came, and to which I would someday return. This is the reason I work so hard to come up here, I reflected at the time, even though it was getting more and more difficult every year to reconnect with the all-that-is. The reward is to eliminate the clutter and clamor of civilization, and give my soul a vacation from the somber deprivation of society. I began this day enclosed in a plywood box in the suburbs, and wound up here, in between worlds. I could imagine myself being sociable, hailing the campfire, and sharing some good stories with my neighbors, who had the decency to be respectfully subdued in my church. But I was too tired, and heedful of a strong need to completely empty my mind.
All too abruptly, it became noticeably cold. My old knees felt it first. The thermometer I brought was already down to 40 degrees, but I wanted to continue my enjoyment of the night. I briefly visited my tent to bundle up with everything I brought: balaclava, knit cap, gloves, and down jacket. Returning to my soft bench, I was quite comfortable just watching the show for a while longer. It wasn’t very late yet – maybe 8 pm – and although I was tired, I knew I wouldn’t sleep much and should make the most of my time awake. By then the night sky was full of stars, and the ubiquitous blinking jet planes cruising by at 33,000 feet. When lit by the moon, their contrails shimmered as the ghostly tails of weird comets flashing green and red across the sky. I have learned that, unfortunately, this so-called wilderness area is beneath a popular flyway for commercial jets. They were very annoying, and it was strange to think of the hundreds of people up there, packed like cold sardines into a pressurized aluminum tube, and propelled through the atmosphere by barely-controlled explosions of highly flammable fuel. The silly thing was, most of them had no awareness of their imminent peril, and likely spent their time snoozing, watching movies, or playing with their devices. What a bizarre state we have evolved to as a species, where, without a second thought, we trust our lives to monstrous combustion engines built by the lowest bidder!
Actually, our species has now stopped evolving, and instead we advance our agenda through surrogates like machines, artificial intelligence, chemicals, and genetically altered life forms. We don’t pause to consider the ethical or biological ramifications of our hubris… we just do it because we can. This is about as irresponsible as giving a chainsaw to a child. Sure, they become powerful and are able to cut down trees, but they also might cut off an arm or a leg! There is no time anymore to really think things through – it’s just go, go, go all the time, so we can beat the other guy to the finish line and win the prize! (Hint: the prize is always money.) This accelerated sense of competition has everywhere replaced what used to be common courtesy, from finding a parking space to waiting in line at the grocery store.
At some point during my lifetime – in events that are unidentifiable except when viewed as a whole – our society lost its sense of “culture” in the whirlpool of changes that distracted and confused us. We lost our ability to navigate the rapids of technical and scientific advancements, and became helplessly carried along by the current. Nearly gone now are the thoughtfulness of books, magazines, and newspapers, which have been replaced by memes, sound bites, and Internet computer algorithms that track our interests and habits, and feed our biases and obsessions the way an infant suckles his mother’s breast. Harlan Ellison’s insightful label for television as “the glass teat” has been replaced by the mendacity of the “digital boob.” Few people think for themselves anymore; we have all willingly become the sum total of our propensities. Ceaselessly, the digital boob expresses its distractions, and greedily we slurp them down, oblivious to the indigestion of ignorance. We just can’t help ourselves anymore, having lost the insight that suggests we are in need of any help at all. Everything’s okay, as long as we keep getting our next paycheck so we can buy more things to fill the empty spaces in our lives that used to be crowded with true friends, responsible freedoms, and moral discernment. Having lost our connection with the earth and with each other, we seek only to vindicate our predispositions by ridiculing others who do not share our views. Anyone with an opposing point of view is automatically an enemy, and fair game for vicious attacks without compunction. That was how America was able to vote for a President who represented everything that is vile and degenerate about human culture, and how “we the people” were willing to go along with every degrading diatribe and denigrating debacle, as long as the economy was on the upswing so we could afford the latest high-tech gadgets. The silent majority now wrings its hands in despair, and hopes the bad men will go away, but we are unwilling to endure the financial hardships of true revolution. So we just row, row, row our boats gently down the stream, and “go with the flow” as the current drifts us closer, ever closer to the waterfall of self-destruction.
It was time to try and sleep; to see what dreams might come and rescue me from my reality.
“Though the years give way to uncertainty
And the fear of living for nothing strangles your will
There’s a part of me
That’s speaks to the heart of me
Though sometimes it’s hard to see
It’s never far from me
Alive in eternity
That nothing can kill.”
— Jackson Browne