"BUT THE ONLY SUCH REGRET
that has strongly endured is not to have known the land when it was whole and sprawling and rich and fresh, and the plover that whet one's edge every spring and fall. To have viewed it entire, the soul and guts of what we had and gone forever now, except in books and such poignant remnants as small swift birds that journey to and from the distant Argentine and call at night in the sky."
-John Graves, Self Portrait with Birds
1986
Wednesday, January 6th 2021
In Lassen Volcanic National Park, in the parking lot, in the camper of Logan's bright blue Tacoma, sitting cross-legged on the tailgate. Early evening from my journal, first entry of the year:
The words of this poem ring through my head today. As I now sit, sipping a slightly cooling rich Mate tea, pondering the natural world, and accessing the raw beauty and power of un-adulterated wilderness. It seems nearly impossible now, here, where roads and powerlines bring trucks and wifi into even the more remote of wild places.
Speaking of trucks, I am currently listening to the pitter-patter of snowflakes sprinkling onto the roof above. Living out of the camper shell in my Pizza onesie for several days already this week. Feeling grateful and so lucky to be here, as the golden-orange light of the evening peeks through the clouds along the snow covered pine boughs in the distance, reaching up and dissipating the grey-blue mist. It seems I may be the only one in the parking lot this evening, the other camper trucks of backcountry skiers and central valley sledding families have already geared up and headed out, away from this snowstorm, though small it may be, only flurries and a few inches to fill the parking lot overnight.
The trees in front of me are towers, silhouettes to the orange whitewash fading beyond. To the north the shadowy road winds up and around with light just tipping on the marvelous pinnacles and broken jagged peaks of the ancient caldera that was Tehama. My toes are blocks of ice in my hiking shoes, luck to have my flannel blanket around my thighs, and lucky to be sitting here with the entire park to myself.
I think about the wild, the specific nature around me. The smells, and feels. Of me. In this place, and the others all around me. Not alone, I hear the caw of birds overhead in the old-growth evergreen fir boughs. These same trees, the steady lineup along the snow bank I have seen for several years now since coming to the Lassen Lot for solitude and splitboarding. Brown scaly textured bark with patches of white clinging to their trunks, wolf lichen bursting lime green, a glowing neon color so bright and unnatural to the woods, almost. Some trees bent and tilted at the base from the force of the snowpack each season.
Is the bird call a blue jay I wonder? No, more small, white body with black wings as it flits and flies overhead zipping from tree to tree The colors are intensifying as the clouds clear. Deeper and richer as the smell of sulfur wafts down the valley from the bubbling geothermal springs above.
Earlier in the day I went out in the fresh snow to explore and discover a new zone of the park on my splitboard. Known, and specific, now part of me. As I become part of it, we together for just a day, intertwined with the life of these trees, and birds, and even rocks that have so much history around me. That history not just remembered, but felt here, now, past becoming present and forever.
I stare out at these same trees, noticing a specific little evergreen trunk, sprightly and springing up through amongst its elders standing tall and mighty gathered round like a close knit family. These trees really do seem alive - because they are! right!? Unbelievable that these tall things could exist out here in such harsh conditions, standing strong through generations. Birds and humans have gazed upon them, long since passed, their children and grand children now filter through.
Looking back on the day, walking back up the road earlier near the entrance gate. We had descended skiers right along the base of "Friday Ridge" (which I kept wanting to call it "Holiday Ridge" or "Birthday Ridge" or something like that since it felt like a special occasion?). We got to the entrance kiosk, kinda woody cabin-y looking structures made to look old though fairly newly built (thanks O'bama!) and a guy pops his head out to ask "how it went?!" He was a nice man who admitted he was 70 years old (young) and not very "old" looking for that I would've guessed maybe 60's or 50's even. Anyway he was super stoked to be living vicariously through us, with out splitboards walking up the road grinning from surfing the earth. He started going on and on about his 7 years working for the park service, and the magical geology of this place.
He told us about the old "super-volcano" or the Tehama Mountain that once stood here long ago, atop the red fuming hot-spot below, a volcano growing into the sky. He said most people think it was up about 1,000ft from the current Lassen Peak, but he doesn't buy that. "Something more like 2,000ft higher!" he said, "making that old mountain more like 12 or 13k, almost rivaling the sheer size of Shasta to the north." Massive. You can see remnants of the thing, with the old craggy rocky peaks still jutting out from Lassen Peak at 10,400 or so and Diller, to Brokeoff, and some others I can't remember right now.
"You would think the volcano exploded all out like Mount Lassen, the crater up there still fuming and still threatening to burst again. Well that's not the case for big old Tehama, it was erosion" he said. All the bubbling hot spots and sulfur hot springs cause for some super weak rock below, and all that washed out with geological activity and erosion. Wow! I guess you can't exactly see evidence of an explosion like at the Devastated Area to the north where there are massive out-of-place boulders that sheared off and found themselves launched off by the parking lot miles away.
To the point...I asked him about the land-slide slope that slid by the entrance road, right near where our ski tracks ended and we walked up from. A big brown hill cut dropping out of the woods, deposits of bare earth below the lip of snow and trees above. He told us that he drives in to work here every day, and every day he see this one lone tree hanging out right over the muddy edge there, with its roots exposed just hanging precariously perched there but still standing tall. He said that every day as he drives by, he looks up for that tree to see if it's fallen over yet, down the hill like so many of its family before it.
Time. The grand time scale of it is amazing. He thinks that even though he looks every day, it could probably last at least another 30 years, well out of every day of the rest of his lifetime (70+30 years). Wow, well maybe it will go during my own lifetime (32+30 years)?
I thought about the story I'm reading, The Sky, The Stars, The Wilderness by Rick Bass, a gift from my friend Emily Y form a few years back. In the story narrator details her life growing up at 9-years old in West Texas on hundreds of acres of woods and wild land. Running free with the birds, and learning all the trees and real soul of the land. She felt her mother, where she was buried up on a bank of their flowing fork of the Nuces River, and she brought her brother out to explain what she was like, but that he needed to really feel her. By that he had to feel the land, feel the bond, the connection and the oneness with it.
I thought of this, as Gary explained how much different Geologic time moves, and how human life is so short and different in comparison. How big and long and slow and grand the Earth really moves, yet here we are, together, present and crossing paths for this instant, a moment into the blink of an eye.
"Well" I said, "I think we should call it the Gary tree!" His eyes lit up and I will look out for it up on the edge there every time I visit.
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