Tag Archives: Pacific Crest Trail

Flamed Out

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Posted by on in animal and plant life, Assistance, collaborating, Community, Hiking and Nature, impediments, Inspiration, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving, Travel

July 27, 2024, Susanville, CA- The river that was named for Susan Roop is flowing nicely. The town that was named for the daughter of the area’s first settler is thriving, despite the fires that plague its surroundings. It is a sprawling, but comfortable town; auto-centered, but fairly easy to walk, as long as one doesn’t mind the 3/4 mile that exists between cross walks, along U.S. Highway 395, in the downtown sector.

I am comfortably ensconced in Apple Motel, with an appropriate scene outside my back window.

Chinese apple tree, Apple Inn, Susanville

The reserved, but kindly, couple were almost apologetic, but requested a cash payment for tonight’s lodging. A fire, started several days ago, by a deranged man who wanted to destroy the forest, is still far from here, but its smoke has limited visibility and activity, from just east of here, southwest to Quincy, and north to Bartle. It has rattled the residents of Paradise, which burned to the ground six years ago. It has closed Lassen Volcanic National Park and is threatening some iconic structures in that national treasure.

I was intending to re-visit Lassen today, along with several dozen other people, but a lunatic had other plans, and so we adjust. I was born under the fire sign, but have spent my life determined to use fire properly, as a tool and not as a weapon. The Wabenaki, from whom I am partially descended, employed fire carefully, to keep forests in order and in a state of health. I have taken that lesson seriously and have acted accordingly, in my own dealings with the element.

This area, from Mount Shasta to Pyramid Lake, strikes me as being sacred ground. It ought to be a place of reverence. Many of the people here in Susanville certainly feel this way-including the owners of this motel, the operators and wait staff at Kopper Kettle, the family restaurant where I got enough food to last me for three meals and the young people who were out and about, making the best of the slightly smoky downtown air. The sense of reverence was clear, in downtown Weed, from which Shasta may be seen, in its glory.

Mount Shasta, viewed from the north.

Reverence was ubiquitous in Old Station, a spot along the Pacific Crest Trail, where through hikers can get a good meal, shower and do laundry (I took advantage of that last one). It even showed in the confusion that a solitary driver expressed, when I signaled to him to turn back on the road to Lassen. It was most evident in the five wildland fire units that headed towards the national park, with the aim of defending places like Manzanita Lake and the Mineral Museum.

Lassen, Chico, Bartle and all threatened points in between, will rebuild from any fire damage-as communities most often do. Paradise has, and will again, if the Park Fire finds its way there. Lahaina is making steady progress, and so are the communities around the Mediterranean that have suffered great loss, in the wildfires of 2022-23. I am an eternal optimist and I am not alone.

Heat Rises, Even in the Mountains

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Posted by on in animal and plant life, Community, Hiking and Nature, Historical, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving, Travel

July 19, 2023, Medford, OR- As I drove through the southern Cascades and the Siskiyou Mountains, this afternoon, I was amazed at the consistency of the heat index, regardless of altitude. It remained a constant 95-102, from Sacramento to Ashland.

Yes, choices, choices…I made this bed and am actually quite happy in it-as long as I keep hydrating, sun-screening and safari-hat wearing, all will be well. So, here is how the day went, otherwise.

Sacramento- My third visit to HI Sacramento was another round of toddlers playing in a sand box-everyone getting along, but essentially doing their own thing. It was packed, yet not once did I feel like anyone was in anyone else’s way. A Korean gentleman and I were the first ones up, so we got first dibs on the men’s showers. We were also first to breakfast. I checked out around 9:40, then went over to Old Sacramento. The place is pretty much Stock Old West, but it doesn’t feel shopworn. I walked a loop, across Tower Bridge, along West Sacramento’s River Walk, then back across the Old Bridge, north of Old Town and back along dusty Main Street.

Along the way, I met a world-weary man, sitting in the park above River Walk and gave him some encouragement, along with a dollar bill-which I don’t usually do, but he looked like he had earned at least that much. I also shooed away a too-friendly squirrel and passed a flock of Canadian geese, who were diligently cleansing the park of bugs and grubs. My reward, back in Old Sacramento, was an Arnold Palmer (lemonade and iced tea) with a fresh blueberry scone, at Steamers Coffee House, so named for the steamships which connected Sacramento with San Francisco, in the latter 19th Century.

Tower Bridge, one of two spans connecting Sacramento with West Sacramento.

Sacramento Riverfront, from Tower Bridge
West Sacramento River Walk, with City Hall in background
The roses of Washington Park-in West Sacramento, not in Portland
View of Tower Bridge, from Riverwalk, West Sacramento
“Old” Bridge over Sacramento River
Sacramento River, from Old Bridge
Old Sacramento

Sacramento to Medford- Leaving Old Town at 11:30, gassed up at Costco, in Woodland, fifteen minutes north, and drove on to Dunnigan North Rest Area, where a crew was busily raking up leaves, in anticipation of the August “fire season”-which is now a year-round event. I noticed that there were huge piles of cut dead wood, on a lot not far north of there. There seems to be a will to reduce fire risk, at long last.

The highway started to get winding, after I stopped at the California Welcome Center, in Anderson, just south of Redding. I spent several minutes talking with the attendant, and a winsome fellow visitor, about the Pacific Crest Trail, of all things. The trail is nowhere near Anderson, but we each picked up a map of the route. There were a couple of spots thereafter, where the traffic backed up, as construction is in intermittent swing, between Redding and Dunsmuir. At Lake Shasta, I stopped for a look at the water level, which seems to have dropped about five inches from last Spring’s copious rain.

Lake Shasta

Gradually cresting Siskiyou Mountain and heading downhill, I spotted a sign for Penny’s Diner, in Dunsmuir, and decided to check it out. I walked into a room devoid of humans, save a gentleman who said he was a regular customer, and who was bellowing at the kitchen workers in Spanish. I started to order a meal from the QR Code, and a server came over to hand me a paper menu. The meal was rather good, the server rather blase’ about her work. I mentioned that Penny was my late wife’s name, eliciting a blank expression. Maybe every other person who comes in has a comment about knowing someone with that name.

So here I am, in smoky Medford, thankful for a comfortable room, nonetheless.

The Road to 65, Mile 43: Wild

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Posted by on in Hiking and Nature, Personal goals

January 10, 2015, Prescott-  It has been, and remains, a dream of mine to hike at least one of the great north-south trails that grace our country.  Before the need to replenish my coffers arose, I had a plan to traverse the Appalachian Trail and Pacific Crest Trail in back-to-back years, 2018-19.  For various reasons, this particular pair of endeavours will wait until I am in my seventies- and it’ll happen, along with some other treks, during that decade, unless the Universe decrees otherwise.  Since this change of plans occurred to me in a dream-like state though, several weeks ago, I think it’ll hold.

Last night, I watched “Wild”, with Reese Witherspoon as the wild child who was tamed by the PCT.  As many of my travels have been inspired by visions of my late wife, so was Cheryl Strayed’s time on the Pacific Crest Trail spurred by thoughts of her mother, who had died of cancer, a few years before.  I could identify with her disquiet, on a number of levels.  Though I never had a serious hard-drug problem, and my alcohol abuse was history well before our marriage, the serious lapses in judgement and difficulty with forming attachments that Cheryl displayed had parallels in my own life, and as recently as 2013.  The PCT tamed her inner beast (shadowed as it was by the fox in the film).  Extensive journeys around North America in 2011-13 and the northwest of Europe, as well as across the eastern Pacific, last year, brought my poisonous remnants to the surface and have established more clarity of vision.

Cheryl Strayed found stability afterward, in marriage and motherhood.  My own renewed stability is forming, not necessarily with another intimate relationship, but with the distinct possibility of finally taking charge of, and seeing through, a service-oriented project that will provide a modest and adequate income. Add to that the extra security offered by wellness advocacy, and the six years left of this decade will lend more credence to “Age is nothing but a number”.