episode 2 in a weekend with extended family
Amazing how quickly a yesterday from 60-plus years ago seems like a yesterday from well… yesterday.
Candi, Brother Tim and I were driving the Lassen Park Road – it having opened for the season only a week before – stopping for alpine views, conversations with others and looking for sites for a picnic lunch.
A few miles up the twisting route, we paused at a point to view the ragged rim of the ancient Mount Tehama. Stunted pines, dwarfed by elevation, roots cloaked in patchy snow, clung to basalt. In the distance lay Mill Creek Meadows and, beyond that, the azure, blue pool of Lake Almanor.
A couple drove up on a black Harley Davidson, so I had to engage. A week out from Green Bay, Wisconsin, they were. I told ‘em I was from nearby Chico. “Chico?” the man exclaimed. “We used to have one of your Chico boys in the Pack.” “Aaron Rogers,” I confirmed, “graduate of Pleasant Valley High.” “Yeah,” the man laughed. “He moved on to the Jets so we don’t care about him anymore.” Ahhh. The people you meet on the road.
State Route 89 is the highway that serpentines its way through Lassen Volcanic National Park. My pick for the most beautiful road in California, it runs from Mount Shasta City (Siskiyou County) to Topaz (Mono County) winding through volcanic legacy, high deserts, pristine lakes, tourist meccas and granite outcrops. Beat that anywhere, I dare ya. Annually, from after the first significant snowfall of autumn until mid-June, the road is closed through Lassen ~ the 8500 foot summit too much for plows and blowers in those reaches.
Everything seems so fresh and new just after opening. Two alpine ponds rest just below the summit. Lake Helen and its mate were both crusted with ice, but the parking lot to the Lassen Peak Trailhead was cleared. The cars of at least two dozen intrepid souls rested while their owners braved the mostly snow covered route to the 10,400 foot top. Not today for us.
At Kings Creek meadow we found the footing a bit dicey, so on to Summit Lake where we would pause for some crackers and cheese and fresh fruit. Or would we? The steel gates to the camping area were securely locked. Picnic area unavailable. I turned the Subaru around to retrace our steps. But Candi said, essentially, Not yet. Another U-turn (looking like damned out-of-state tourists) and we pressed a mile or two further.
Beginning on page 151 of “Eden, Indeed,”* in a recollection about my delivering foodstuffs to a fire camp on the Mendocino, a brief back story is offered about a 12-year-old me, on the Twin Lakes Trail in Lassen Park, hiking with Dad.
A ‘call of nature’ prompts me to stray off trail when I find myself peeing into really warm duff. Something wasn’t right and at Dad’s command, I hightailed it down the trail to the ranger’s outpost near where he’d parked his Jeepster.
Almost before I could get the words out about the hot duff, the ranger grabbed a Pulaski, told me a little something about the nature of lightning strikes and raced up the trail. I stood in the vacant ranger station not knowing what to do or where to go until Dad clambered down the trail lugging my Kelty Pack along with his own.
That mile or two further found us at the old outpost. I walked across the parking area to the Echo Lake Trail that now had a wooden walkway crossing the meadow. The place names on the directional sign were all familiar.
I’d hiked to most of them and a carousel of memories circled in my head. The bridge was new. The sign was, too. But everything else was exactly the same.
Almost. Across the meadow beyond the bridge, the pine forest was a collection of denuded stumps and spikes, victims of 2022’s Dixie Fire which started forty miles away over ridges and down canyons.
Standing next to the trail sign I recalled the ranger and his Pulaski and wondered if this might have been the result sixty years before had a young kid not ventured off the trail to pee. Or was that just yesterday?
© 2024
Church of the Open Road Press
* Don’t yet have your copy of Eden, Indeed? It’s still available to order from your local independent bookstore (it's in the Ingram-Spark catalog) or through your favorite online source. (The Church of the Open Road always recommends doing business with the former...)
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