— Thomas Moore
When the day of departure finally arrived, I couldn’t stand it anymore, and stopped work a couple of hours early. I loaded Dimari’s Civic with my carefully prepared backpack, plus more gear and supplies for the overnight stay at the trailhead. I promptly got stuck in the ubiquitous traffic that seems to congest earlier each day here in the Bay Area. It was oppressively hot in the Central Valley along Highway 5. Once the traffic thinned out some, I pulled off the scorching highway somewhere near Corning to get a sandwich for my meal tonight, and another for my trail lunch tomorrow.
Getting out of the car was like passing through a door into a furnace. I gratefully entered one of the many typical corporate vending machines for food, with stale, recycled air that was barely cooler than the parking lot. The guy behind the counter was one of those friendly yet desperate people who wanted very much to be liked. His professional courtesy was betrayed by a look in his eye that told me he would rather be anywhere else but here. We talked for a while, and it turned out he was from much cooler climes in Washington, and was homesick. I offered him a ride to Redding in jest, but he appeared to consider it seriously, as the wrestling emotions rolled across his face. At another time, he may have joined me – thrown his apron into the dumpster on a lark, and hopped in the car for an amazing wilderness experience. He chose to stay in his fluorescent, stainless steel, and plastic prison, and make my sandwiches. An image of his utterly defeated countenance rode with me for many miles.
How lucky I was to be able to get away from financial slavery for a few days to immerse myself in a healing bath of soul tonic! So many people don’t get that experience, ever. I wish that every soul on earth could spend at least a week alone in an environment that has no man-made references. I am convinced that this singularly individual experience would result in permanent, lasting peace for our species, if ever it could really happen for every single person.
Highway 299 west from Redding was getting a serious facelift. CalTrans was just starting this project back in 2014 when Kevin and I passed through, and they were nowhere near completing it. They were still carving massive cutouts and walls out of the horny, gnarled feet of the mountains. Huge, strangely shaped earth-moving machines were strewn about, as if a giant boy had suddenly stopped playing with his toys. The road goes up over 2,000 feet from the valley floor to Buckhorn Pass, in broad, sweeping curves that used to be banked poorly. In one construction zone, where the excavations rose over 150 feet high, I waited for almost 30 minutes for a pilot car. This part of the state runs on a different clock than the cities. The improvements will be welcome when they are finished, but man, it sure seems to take them a long time to finish any road work these days! Freeway projects now span decades, and rural road maintenance is passed on from father to son for generations!
After finally cresting the summit, I decided on a whim to take the turnoff to Lewiston. This route avoids Weaverville entirely and skirts the base of the Trinity Lake Dam, to meet up with Highway 3 well on the way north to Trinity Center. On road maps, this looks like a nifty shortcut. In reality, it’s a very twisted road with some nice views, for those who are not in a hurry. I was trying not to be, but the sun was nearly setting already. I took another cutoff that I later regretted, where the road got narrow and had a few hundred turns too many. Once I climbed above the dam, the view of the lake was a stomach punch. It appeared to be about 1/3 full, with wide swathes of red earth shoreline. At the vista point, an official sign explained apologetically that the water was being sent to the thirsty Central Valley farmlands. The sign had a couple of poorly-drawn cartoons of happy vegetables who were apparently benefitting from the irrigation. If these were supposed to make me feel better, they failed. The people in this state waste so much water, because most of them moved here from somewhere else where it actually rains regularly. I thought we’d had a pretty wet winter, what with the El Nino and all – but there did not seem to be any positive effect on the water level of the lake. In the years to come, clean water will become the dominant environmental topic of our culture. Scarcity attracts investors, who will make a profit selling drinking water. By the time Sheldon is in college, water will be a traded commodity like wheat and milk. The lack of cheap, clean water will encourage many diseases in poor communities, and it may be difficult to fight them due to drug resistant antibiotics. Climate change will be nothing in comparison to the coming storms of our own making.
I hastily drove on as it was getting dark. Left turn, right turn, left turn… the road slithered like a confused snake through the stressed-out trees. The entire region looked like a tinder box waiting for one spark to ignite it. It was dark before I reached the trailhead, and there were already 3 cars there, in the middle of the week. “Well, I knew I was going to have company,” I muttered to myself, and turned the Civic around very slowly, using its headlights to locate a suitable tent site. The other vehicles were vacant, so I had the woods to myself that night (except for thousands of ravenous mosquitoes!). There was nothing to do but sleep, and so I tried, but it took a very long time inside my tent for the buzz of the road to wear off, and be replaced by the buzz of frustrated insects. I remember seeing stars through the trees, and hearing the rushing creek and river nearby, and then it was dawn. Whether I actually slept or not, I had no idea.
I hit the trail as early as possible, delighted at the difference in weight on my back. My pack weighed less than 30 lbs. for the first time since I was 11 years old! To celebrate, I decided at the last minute to exchange my mosquito net shelter (10.85 oz.) for a small backpacking tent with no fly and only one pole (52.75 oz.). Yes, I had weighed everything to the hundredth of an ounce before leaving. After reading this far, did you seriously think I was sane? An extra 41.9 ounces would be no problem at all for a mentally ill person to accept. I hit the trail at 6:30, taking it nice and slow, drinking lots of precious filtered water I had brought all the way from Novato. I took a pack off rest to refill my 1 liter bottle at the bridge. It was then I realized I had forgotten my 1 gallon empty milk jug. That would have meant fewer water pumping sessions when I got to the lake, but I chose not to go back to the car for it.
On the steepest part of the trail that switchbacks up the arm of the ridge, I took many standing rests to subdue the pounding of my heart in my ears. Getting used to the altitude made for slow going, but I got the dustiest parts of the trail out of the way while it was still cool. I knew I had 13 hours of daylight to make it up 3,200 feet, so I could enjoy the scenic parts of the trail at a leisurely pace. My lighter “stealth pack” should aid the enjoyment considerably. The heat-blackened oaks and scrub manzanita weren’t very attractive in that section of the trail, but they had a sort of scruffy charm… now that I wasn’t busting over 60 lbs. up their rocky slopes!
I stopped for a full pack off lunch at the Two Towers. I had read on an informed blog that they are Ponderosa, not Jeffrey Pine. They are simply so massive that their jigsaw puzzle-shaped bark plates have expanded to look like that of the Jeffrey variety… but their needles are very different, and this identifies them as Ponderosas. This made the theme song from Bonanza start running though my head. They really did resemble the columns of a rustic gate through which it would be quite natural to ride a horse. These stately obelisks are set in an absolutely idyllic spot right next to the trail, with a nearby branch of Bear Creek running briskly at normal level. (Last year this branch of the creek was almost dry.) I scarfed my entire soggy sandwich for the carb load, even though it wasn’t close to lunchtime yet. Some quick, little red ants soon found my crumbs, and I wisely moved my pack far away.
I felt like I had lots of time, so I explored the area, and discovered some choice views. From one clearing I could see that one of the Two Towers was half dead, with only its lower branches (themselves as thick as lesser trees) having any green foliage. From another spot down by the creek, I could see all the way up the ridge and make out the Beater Cedar next to the cleft where Wee Bear sat. When I got up there, I would look back down this way, and find the dead Tower next to its twin. The Lord of the Rings references reeled in my brain. Down by the creek there were lots of flowers, including an azalea type I hadn’t seen before, with an aroma that was absolutely hypnotic. It had pearly white blossoms like orchids with super-long pistils, and a strong heavenly scent reminiscent of magnolia. Bumblebees were everywhere but they were not a bother… too busy feasting on nectar! I imagined that there could be a narcotic effect from flowers this enticing, and watched them enjoy their blossom rave in the meadow.
It struck me how easy it was to “stop and smell the flowers” when I wasn’t attacking my way up the trail, as if it was an enemy to be conquered. Truly, the entire American West was explored and settled by white folks who had to fight the wild, and be on guard all the time else they might perish. That constant tension developed into a sense that the land was a beast to be tamed and put to good use, instead of the wonderful web of life that they had every opportunity to join. Instead of admiring the scenery; however, most pioneers tried to conquer and take advantage of it for their own benefit. The strain of striving to gain resulted in a kind of circumstantial blindness to the true value of the land, which was its innate variety and diversity. North America was a continent that evolved rich with the diversity of life on this planet, and was subject to relatively little impact by its first human inhabitants. The entire subcontinent had evolved to its highest expression of balance and integrity, almost entirely without the influence of humans. After many large mammals had been hunted to extinction, the people learned the error of their ways, and developed a sense of fitting into the web as another strand, and not the spider. The Native Americans learned to live as part of the earth’s interdependent wheel of life. Then the white man came along, with his rapaciousness and greed, and essentially ravaged the continent with four hundred years of sustained lust. Only in recent times, when Americans became secure in their “civilized” homes, did a meaningful number of people begin to revere the precious beauty of the land. Slowly, as new generations grew up knowing this reverence for the earth, and seeing the results of destroying it, there developed a small but growing appreciation for the sanctity of the wilderness. Will it be too little, too late?
“Everything you love will probably be lost, but in the end, love will return in another way.
— Franz Kafka