Blue Highways: Pit River Gorge, California

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapIt's been a long trip.  We've traveled through 154 places and we're at least halfway through the trip, maybe a little more.  It might be time to stop for a moment and enjoy the view.  The canyon of the Pit River might be a good place to put it all in perspective and give us some impetus for the rest of the journey.  Click on the map thumbnail at right to see where you might find the Pit River Gorge, and enjoy a little rest!

Book Quote

"Highway 89 wound among the volcanic dumpings from Lassen that blasted Hat Creek valley about three hundred times between 1914 and 1917.  Scrub covered the ash, cinders, and lava as the wasteland renewed itself; yet even still it looked terribly crippled.  Off the valley floor, California 299 climbed to ride the rim of the Pit River gorge.  I ate a sandwich at the edge of a deep rift that opened like jaws to expose rocks so far below they were several hundred million years older than the ones I sat on.  From the high edge I looked down on the glossy backs of swallows as they glided a thousand feet, closed their wings like folded fans, and plummeted into the abyss.  It was a wild, mad, silent, spectacular descent of green iridescence that left me woozy."

Blue Highways: Part 6, Chapter 1

Photo by ohoulihan on Panoramio. Click on photo to go to ohoulihan's Panoramio photos.

Pit River Gorge, California

The first time my wife and I decided to take a drive down the Pacific Coast of California on State Highway 1, she would shout out "Vue Panoramique" every time we came to a sign that read "Vista."  We'd pull over, and we would get out and look at the view, snap a couple of pictures, and move on.

After a while, I found myself getting a little annoyed.  Did we have to stop at every single vista?  I was thinking ahead toward where I wanted to go, and that we had to be there by a certain time, and that every pullout off the road was making us that much later than we ought to be.

At times, that little story has been the metaphor of my life.  I've been in such a rush to get to the endpoint that I don't stop to appreciate the many panoramas that life offers on the way.  On a journey, if one is on a schedule, one can often be given a break for not stopping to look at a beautiful vista, or pulling over to examine some curiosity.  I understand that.

But what is the endpoint of life?  What are we rushing headlong toward?  There's the perspective that we need.  The final point of our lives is death, plain and simple.  It is the point where we leave this world and, depending on your belief, we either cease to exist or we move on.  Either way, this life offers us many beautiful things, many gorgeous vistas, many odd curiosities, for us to see and appreciate.  I don't know how many times, however, in my headlong rush to get someplace else, I have passed them by.  My mom always tells me that I don't take time to "stop and smell the roses."  That's one of her favorite sayings, and sometimes it annoys me.  But she's right.  I don't take enough time to stop and appreciate the beauty in life.

To be certain, there are cheats and frauds. There are places that don't add up to the advertising.  A favorite movie scene of mine is in the film Rat Race, where the character played by Jon Lovitz is trying to get to Silver City, New Mexico to win a contest and his children and wife want to stop at the Barbie Museum.  It turns out that this nice Jewish family has been lured in by the signs into the Klaus Barbie Museum, celebrating the life of the Nazi known as The Butcher of Lyon.  Greek mythology gave us the Lotus Eaters, who entrap people by offering a flower that when ingested causes them apathy and robs them of months, years and even lifetimes.  We run into these traps from time to time with varying degrees of seriousness and we take away from them varying degrees of pain.

But as we grow older, most of us learn how to avoid the charlatans, and to appreciate the best that life has to offer, I believe.  Sure, there will be some that are always rushing headlong toward the end.  There will be others who always get sidetracked into places where they shouldn't be.  But all of us, at some point, will pull over and enjoy the view from time to time.  Like LHM, we'll sit on the edge of a beautiful vista, eat a sandwich, and watch the birds swoop down into the canyon or off the ocean bluffs in amazing acrobatic feats.  We can think awhile, put our trip into the perspective of our lives, and our lives in the perspective of everything.

The faster that we move in life, in my experience, the faster our lives seem to pass by.  I'll explore this theme in the next post, but here's a preview: when I'm doing more, I appreciate less.  I have gone through periods where I've done so much, I can't remember a couple of days later what event I've attended or what movie I've seen.  There's something not quite right and a little sad about that.  It's almost as if I haven't participated in those events at all.

I'm trying hard to slow down.  Given that the speed of my life is measured out through the passage of time and space, I don't need to try to make it faster.  I need to enjoy what the next second, the next minute brings me.  As I round the corners on my life's journey, or as the waypoints I see ahead get larger as they get closer, I want to try to make sure I learn about them if they are interesting, experience them as well as I can, and leave them when it is right.

The next time you are traveling, and you see a historical marker, or an oddity, or a curiosity, or even better, a vista, stop for a moment and enjoy it.  You'll get to your destination eventually; what's a few minutes to savor the mysteries the world has to offer us.  After all, as far as we know, we're only on our life's trip once and when it's over, it truly is over.  So take time to enjoy the "Vue Panoramique" that life offers.

Musical Interlude

My sister introduced me to this Colin Hay song a few years ago.  I'd only known of him because of the Australian band Men at Work, but I learned from her that he had a whole repertoire of solo, acoustic work.  This song, Beautiful World, captures in many ways the theme of this post.  I can picture LHM on the edge of the canyon with this song.  I wanted to get a video with a vista, but I ran across this one and I must say, I enjoy the doodles that accompany it.  See, I took to the time to enjoy a curiosity!  Enjoy life and this world and what they have to offer because this is as good as it gets.

If you want to know more about the Pit River

California Creeks: Pit River
Pit River Tribe Online
Pit River Watershed Alliance
Wikipedia: Pit River
Wikipedia: Pit River Tribe

Next up: Fall River Mills and McArthur, California

Blue Highways: Somewhere on Hat Creek, California

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapLet's stop for the night with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) and in the morning, after a cold swim in a mountain creek, just get our entire purpose laid out for us by a guy with a Pekingese and a nagging wife in his RV.  Sounds really easy, doesn't it?  To see where all this happens, click on the map thumbnail at right.

Book Quote

"'A man's never out of work if he's worth a damn.  It's just sometimes he doesn't get paid.  I've gone unpaid my share and I've pulled my share of pay.  But that's got nothing to do with working.  A man's work is doing what he's supposed to do, and that's why he needs a catastrophe now and again to show him a bad turn isn't the end, because a bad stroke never stops a good man's work....Any man's true work is to get is boots on each morning.  Curiosity gets it done about as well as anything else.'"

Blue Highways: Part 5, Chapter 12

Photo of Hat Creek in California along Highways 44 and 89. Photo by Steve Breth at MyOutdoorBuddy.com. Click on photo to go to site - photo on a spinner so if it doesn't appear, refresh page until it does.Somewhere on Hat Creek, California

A campsite along a cold rushing creek that cascades down from a volcanic mountain peak is a strange place to associate with work, but here we are.  I'll set up the scene.  LHM drove for hours, and finally pulled into this campground on Hat Creek north of Lassen (I have arbitrarily chosen Hat Creek Campground, which is just off the road and right along the stream).  In the morning, he wakes and refreshes himself in the frigid mountain water.  When he comes back to Ghost Dancing, he meets Bill, a Pekingese also known as White Fong, and Mr. Watkins, Bill's owner.  In Watkins' RV is his wife, who seems to watch over Watkins every moment.  LHM and Watkins embark on a discussion and Watkins asks LHM what he does for a living.  LHM replies he doesn't work, and Watkins responds with the quote above.  LHM, in Blue Highways, says that this meeting with these people changes the the journey, which is an astounding thing to say given his whole trip up to this point.

I have tried to put this conversation in context.  It is not LHM's longest conversation with other travelers and people that he meets and recounts in the book.  So, why does it change everything?  I think it has to do with the fact that since LHM arrived in California, he was trying to decide just exactly his journey was doing.  He started on the trip partially because of woman troubles, but by this point he had lost sight of the "cycles and circles."  He was convinced all was humbug.  And, he'd spent a good portion of the night trying to get over and then around Lassen following a map that seemed to lead him down roads to nowhere.  Then he meets The Watkins.  Mr. Watkins tells him that there is purpose in disappointment, but that good men get up and do the work that they are supposed to do regardless of the circumstances.  What drives them?  Curiosity.  After all, this trip was all about what was to become LHMs work.  He would write a book, and then more.  He would explore place and meaning in all of them.  And it became his job to be curious.  He began the trip partly out of curiosity about America.  In essence, Watkins laid LHMs entire purpose in front of him.

I often wish I had someone who could do that for me.  I've wished that in a moment of revelation, someone would lay it all out for me on a silver platter, such as why I've done what I've done and how it connects with what I want to do.  For example, I'm a political scientist with a PhD.  I don't, however, work in a political science department in a university, but instead I work in a medical school.  There's nothing wrong with that, but it is not what I've been trained to do.  I wanted to be a teacher and mold young minds eager to learn about the mysteries of politics.  Now I teach a class every so often in the evenings.  I thought I wanted to be a member of a political science department, but as I began to interview and saw what I might be getting into, such as department infighting, faculty meetings and expectations that take away from teaching, I began to have second thoughts.  So now, I'm torn.  Do I want to be in academia and deal with all of the extra stuff besides teaching, or keep a job as a staff person in a medical school and teach when I want and how I want?  I'm also extremely aware that, as I am writing this post, the economy is in a recession and may get worse.  Unemployment is at 9.2% and probably closer to 16% if you count people who work part time or gave up looking for work.  A job in this economy, any job, is a precious commodity.

My wife is dealing with similar issues.  She is a journalist but her chosen field is shrinking in opportunity.  Newspapers are merging and closing.  Internet journalism is rising, but making a living off the Web is difficult.  She is the kind of person that feels that a job is part of what defines you.  While she would like to work on her own projects, as one of two full-time reporters in at her paper she holds herself to a high level of responsibility and professionalism in keeping her paper at a high quality.  If the paper looks bad, she feels like she looks bad.  Part of the cost of her responsible nature is that she has not been able to explore, as much as she'd like, other opportunities to augment her journalism skills, such as audio, video and the wealth of opportunities on the internet.  To do that, she'd have to cut down her hours, and she's afraid to do that in this economy.

I have a friend who's an orchestra conductor but who's been out of work.  Unlike my wife and I, he KNOWS what he wants to do and is supposed to be doing.  However, the orchestra that he conducted, one that he built up from scratch and which was well-regarded, fell apart in a spasm of infighting and dissolved some years ago.  Now, he's an aging musician in a world where such jobs are extremely hard to come by.  Each day he sends out applications to this orchestra or that symphony.  Each day he faces more disappointment, and it eats at him.  He's battled depression.  Yet, I admire him because not only does he get up each day and do it all over again, but he also has recently put together a proposal to create a new orchestra despite the fact that money is tight and people are not giving to the arts as much as they used to give.

For my wife and I, the prospect of having a Watkins come up to us and lay it all out for us is very tempting.  We'd learn the goal, and we could move toward reaching it.  For my other friend, who knows the goal, the fact that he had it once and lost it, and that now it seems to be floating beyond his grasp, is akin to torture.  So what's best?  I suppose, that when I think about it, I'd rather be where I am.  I have a job, and since it's a public bureaucracy I have a feeling that losing it would take a herculean effort on my part.  My wife is at more risk than I am, but at least if the worst happens to her, one if us is still employed.  And I'd hate to be in my conductor friend's position.

What do other people do in these bad spots?  They go back to school.  They learn new skills.  They find ways to survive.  People are resilient.  But that doesn't mean that facing these downturns is easy.  From somebody in Watkins' position, retired and getting harassed by his wife, such revelations have come after a lifetime of ups and downs.  In retirement, he's in a good position.  He's earned the right to say such things.  And he's mostly right.  But for many of us, especially those who are scrabbling for jobs or trying to live on too little, it's hard to focus on what you want to do for happiness with what you need to do to survive in conditions of uncertainty.  It's easy to tell someone, like my conductor friend, that "a man's never out of work if he's worth a damn" when he is scrambling to get some kind of income on a daily basis.  We should always keep trying, and perhaps we should keep always try to keep smiling, but if you look closely, during times of hardship there's a lot of fear and worry behind those pearly whites.

Musical Interlude

The Godfather of Soul puts another spin on what happens when you don't have a job.  You don't eat.  Enjoy James Brown and Marva Whitney's rendition of You've Got to Have a Job (If You Don't Work, You Can't Eat).

If you want to know more about Hat Creek

There are a lot of articles on fly fishing in Hat Creek, which is evidently one of the premier fly fishing rivers in the United States.  I'll include one of the articles here:

BeTheFly.com: Hat Creek
Wikipedia: Hat Creek (stream)

Next up: Pit River Gorge, California

Blue Highways: Viola, California

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapWe're tired, hungry and thinking that we are lost with William Least Heat-Moon, and hoping to find a place to stop in Viola.  Boy, are we going to be disappointed, but that disappointment is going to make for some more reflection in this blog post.  Be sure to click on the thumbnail to the right to find Viola on the map.

Book Quote

"Travelers are supposed to ask directions, but I believed, as usual, that I could find the way.  Encouraged by a sign pointing to Viola, I tried another road.  I had only to follow.  Sunset vanished as the pavement again went into the woods; it narrowed progressively to a pair of wet troughs, and pine boughs screeched against Ghost Dancing.  Having backed away from two roads already that day, I wasn't retreating again...If a tree lay across the trail, I'd be locked in this blackness - this home of Sasquatch - for the night...Why did I get into things like this?  I wasn't going to get to Viola - give up on that.  Maybe I wasn't even going to escape the woods unless I walked out.

"But things got no worse...Ten minutes later, I reached what must have been Viola, a few darkened houses.  (Note to mapmakers: without a gas station, cafe, water tower, and stoplight, you don't have a town.)"

Blue Highways: Part 5, Chapter 11

Photo of Lassen Peak from Viola, California by Marcel Marchon (lazytom) at Flickr. Click on photo to go to Marchon's photostream.

Viola, California

When the realization of a goal doesn't quite live up to expectations, it can certainly be a letdown.

LHM, tired from being on the road and just wanting to find a place to settle down, has his hopes set on Viola.  After all, the map says that there is a town there.  Certainly there has to be a motel or a campground or someplace where he can park, get a bite to eat, and go to sleep for the night.  He is traversing on back roads, and in the darkness he's worried he won't make it through.  He even mentions Sasquatch as a fear lurking out there somewhere in the blackness.

I can relate to the Sasquatch fear.  Back in my youth, when my family used to go out to a piece of property we own in the Northern California wilderness to camp for weekends, at night after the generator ran out of gas, the forest would be strangely quiet for just a moment after the loud motor shut off, and then a cacophany of crickets and other insects would break out, as if they had only been waiting for the generator to stop so that they could get their voices in.  Sometime in the night, occasionally the crickets would go quiet for some moments, and in my imagination, something large lurking about in the darkness was to blame.  I imagined Sasquatch, or Bigfoot as I knew him from TV and various reading materials, was watching me in my sleeping bag out there, waiting for an opportune moment to grab me.  It didn't even have to be night for me to be scared.  In the dusk, when the trees went from green to gray, I often imagined seeing a large figure moving about just beyond my vision.  Even in the daytime, a glimpse of something out of the corner of my eye in the woods might set my heart to pounding.  Secretly, I hope that one day they discover that Sasquatch exists, so that I can say that I had a reason all those years to be afraid.

Along with his fear, when LHM finds Viola, his expectations don't match up to reality, and then he gets angry and frustrated.  Why did they put the goddamn place on the map if it doesn't have a "gas station, cafe, water tower, and stoplight"?  How I've been in that place.  Every one of us has faced times where our expectations exceeded the reality.  As a kid, I ordered the x-ray glasses that would allow me to see through walls, and more importantly, through girls' clothes.  How disappointed was I!  I still have an expectation that there will be flying cars before I die, but I'm not holding my breath.  I've been to restaurants that have been hyped, and gone away feeling cheated.  I've seen movies and productions where I was truly excited (think of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace) and afterward verbalized "what the hell was that?"

It's worse when people don't match up to the expectations you have of them.  You meet someone, and in that initial encounter they seem interesting, witty and fun, and then, either quickly or slowly, they are revealed to be at best boring, at worst people who have problems or people who are downright malicious and cruel.  If you get pulled into such relationships, it's hard to get out of them especially after you've invested emotionally.

I suppose disappointment is a facet of human life we can't escape.  One probably can't find a person who has never been disappointed.  Perhaps disappointment is needed so that we can contrast it with those times when we have been genuinely brought to joy and happiness because our expectations have been met and exceeded.  Again, to use the Stars Wars story, the first time I saw Star Wars (Episode IV, A New Hope) back in 1977, I was so blown away by the movie that I don't think I'll ever have such a moviegoing experience again.  If I'm out in nature, and I wander across an amazing vista, or if I am visiting a place and find something completely unexpected, the joy that I experience is genuine and more than makes up for those times where I have been disappointed.  I may have been disappointed by people who can't live up to their hype, but I also have met people who live up to everything that they appear to be, and I have met people who didn't seem like much at first but who have astounded me with their honesty, caring and generosity to me over long periods of time.

A friend of mine who is an out of work orchestra conductor has been trying for a couple of years to float a proposal for a new orchestra now that our established one has gone bankrupt and out of business.  He met with a businesswoman and friend of his to present his proposal to her, and went in with such high expectations that he was disappointed when she didn't simply write him a check.  In his telling of the story to me, I was clear to him from my perspective that the most significant thing was that she didn't say no to him, but she just didn't give him a commitment at this meeting.  She still might.  From our different vantage points, what was disappointment to him was a sense of hope to me.

Life is a balance.  Joy and happiness must be counterbalanced by disappointment and pain for us to truly appreciate all of them.  I think that mostly life is truly in balance, but our perceptions depend on our state of mind and we can tip the balance of what we notice toward more joy or more pain.  In other words, we see what we want to see.  If I want to live in a state of constant disappointment, I'll somehow make sure that it happens.  Sasquatch may or may not be lurking in the shadows of the forest, may or may not exist, but I will certainly convince myself that the dark patch under that far off tree in the corner of my vision is him if that's what I want to see.

Musical Interlude

This song, No Expectations by The Rolling Stones, just might capture what happens when reality just doesn't add up.  A man, disappointed.

If you want to know more about Viola

Sorry, I could literally find nothing about Viola.  LHM didn't foresee Wikipedia, but it is so small, it not only doesn't qualify as a town but it doesn't even have a Wikipedia site!

Next up: Somewhere along Hat Creek, California

Blue Highways: Manton, California

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapIn a volcanic landscape at dusk, William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) drives through a wonderland that put him into a whimsical state of mind.  If you're willing to let your mind wander, to rip off Dr. Seuss, Oh The Places You'll Go!  To see where we are located, please click on the map thumbnail over to the right of this column.

Book Quote

"I took a road not marked on my map toward Manton. Nowhere was the way straight, but the land it traversed looked like an illustration from a child's book: a whimsy of rocky shapes, a fancy of spongy bushes, a figment of trees.  Two loping deer could have been unicorns, and the fisherman under a bridge a troll.  The only reality was that somebody owned the land.  At three-hundred-yard intervals, alternating signs hung from barbed wire:  NO TRESPASSING.  PRIVATE PROPERTY.

"Wonderland stopped at Manton..."

Blue Highways: Part 5, Chapter 11

Manton general store. Photo by David O. Harrison at City Data. Click on photo to go to site.

Manton, California

Sometimes, landscapes seem almost too mystical to believe.  LHM experiences this on a rainy, dusky evening as he drives through landscape shaped by volcanic forces.  Often, landscapes that look ordinary at certain times suddenly take on magical proportions in certain lights.

Once I was with my wife and a friend, hiking on Mount Tamalpais just north of San Francisco.  It was winter, and the huge amount of rain that had been falling at the time turned the rivers coming off the mountain into cascades down the steep slopes.  Everything was wet and looked mysteriously primeval.  Huge ferns grew by the trail and put me in the mind of pictures I had seen in books about the dinosaurs, where giant dragonflies were snapped up by dinosaur predators.  Large toadstools made me think that at some point, a gnome or leprechaun would dance out into the open, laugh at me and disappear.  The gloom under the trees, the crashing water, and the almost jungle-like quality of the scene (even though it was a forest of conifers) made it possible that I wouldn't have been surprised had I rounded a corner and found King Kong eating the bark of a cypress tree while keeping an eye out for Fay Wray, or Jessica Lange, or Naomi Watts.

The wonders of Pandora in James Cameron's Avatar touched people precisely because the world was presented as a utopia where its people, noble savages, recognized their connection to their planet and had essentially become one with it.  Those scenes, as amazing as they can be on the big screen, evoke the passion about the wonders of our world which, though under assault, still manage to surprise us, especially when viewed through a slightly different perspective.  I still remember vividly, when driving for the first time into the Yosemite Valley just after graduating from college, the jaw dropping vista that appeared as the valley opened in front of me.  I still dream of that day when I climbed Half Dome and stood upon the edge, my senses filled with the grandeur of the Valley and the Sierras beyond.  Now I read that it's wonders are under strain from budget cuts and the increasing numbers of people that visit.  However, the images in my mind still linger.

Even as a child, I was quite aware that the world we see in the daylight changes with nightfall.  Places that meant one thing to me in the daytime often took on different meanings at night.  Our barn, a place of coolness and comfort during the day became a place to be afraid of in the dark, with many corners where bad things could hide and get me.  The ocean, roaring and often blinding as it reflected sunlight during the day became docile, placid and quieter at night, and giving my soul a soothing salve.  Redwood trees, so beautifully green during the day, became tall, dark and vaguely threatening figures at night - the forest that they sheltered, so wonderfully beautiful, alive and nurturing during the day often became a place of fear at night, where one would not want to be caught else one might be eaten by a wild animal or carried away by Bigfoot.

Of course, these feelings might have simply mirrored my life, because things were very different for me personally between day and night.  I used to dread the nightfall, because at night my father would become a different person.  The masks he wore during the day came off.  On the best nights, alcohol would make him sleepy.  On the worst nights, alcohol made him more interested in me than a father should be in his son.  I learned at a very young age that as the appearance of the world changed, so too did the appearance of many of those around me.

My wife recently showed me an old series of advertisements for the London paper The Guardian.  They made some of these very points.  In one, a skinhead is seen rushing toward a businessman from many different angles, and in conjunction with other events, it appears that he will attack the businessman.  Only from the last perspective is it revealed that the skinhead saves the businessman from getting crushed by falling bricks.  I've also read a recent article in the New Yorker by Alex Ross about Oscar Wilde and The Picture of Dorian Gray.  Wilde and his work were as much about appearances as anything else, and how we can be deceived by them if we don't question our perspective.

Yet, I love the change of appearance of the world when we see it at different times of day, or different eras, and if there is deception, I still allow myself to get lost in it.  I enjoy the wonder I feel when I step into what seems like a different world, where something has altered the perspective just enough to make it all seem new.  Perhaps that is why I like stories that present alternate realities, or fantasy worlds, or exotic places.  Maybe, it is why I like to travel, and to read, and to expose myself to different places both real and imaginary.  Ultimately, I am so small, the world is so big, and there is so much to discover.  When I can experience many different realities of the same place, it's even better.

LHM brings all of these thoughts to mind as he drives through a vista shaped by eons of violent volcanic action.  Violence can beget beauty, as twisted shapes and forms take on their own elegance and uniqueness.  Beauty can beget violence, as we endlessly have chronicled throughout human history.  The difference in how we view things may be dependent on something as simple as where we stand, and the time of day.

Musical Interlude

I heard this song by the Green Chili Jam Band the other day on The Childrens' Hour on KUNM.  The show's host, a young woman named Jena Ritchey who was hosting her last Childrens' Hour before heading off to college, played this song that really touched me.  The lyrics touch on all the things that make our world wonderful.  Thank you, Jena, for introducing me to this and other beautiful songs on your show, and have a wonderful time making new discoveries about our world in college.

If you want to know more about Manton

Monastery of St. John of San Francisco
Shasta Search: Manton
Visit Manton
Wikipeida: Manton

Next up: Viola, California

Blue Highways: Lassen Peak, California

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapWe attempt an impossible task with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) by once again trying to scale a mountain, Mount Lassen, only to roll back down again.  If it seems pointless, it may be, or it may be a way to reach a deeper understanding of ourselves.  Either way, it's straight out of Greek mythology.  To see where this sleeping giant rumbles away in slumber, click on the thumbnail of the map at right.

Book Quote

"When I got to state 36....I took the road across Lassen Peak, a sharp ascent that disappeared in clouds.  Halfway up, snowflakes the size of nickels dropped out of the cold.  Cedar Breaks.  Then a sign saying the road was closed for winter.  I inched the van back and forth until turned around, all the while cursing a sign not at the bottom of the mountain.  Arriving again at the foot of Lassen, I started around it.

"Rain fell as I moved toward the valley, but on a ridge road between deep volcanic canyons, the showers stopped and a rainbow arched the highway canyon to canyon.  The slopes were strewn with shattered 'thunder eggs' ejected from Lassen, a volcano last violently active only sixty years before."

Blue Highways: Part 5, Chapter 11

Lassen Peak. Photo at Footloosewanderers site. Click on photo to go to site.

Mount Lassen, California

Sometimes, reading Blue Highways, it seems as if LHM's attempt to drive over mountains becomes Sisyphean.  Sisyphus was a character in Greek mythology, a king who because of his trickery, deceitfulness, and hubris was punished by Zeus with an impossible task.  Sisyphus must roll a boulder up a mountain.  However, as soon as he gets near the top of the mountain, the boulder gets away from him and rolls back down to the bottom and he must start all over again.  Accordingly, a task or an objective becomes Sisyphean if it seems pointless or impossible to complete.  If we imagine that Ghost Dancing is LHM's boulder that he continually tries to get over mountains, the analogy is appropriate.  How many times has LHM tried to cross a mountain only to be defeated or, even if he makes it, to have such a harrowing journey that it almost leaves him with scars?  He mentions one, the Cedar Breaks, but there were others in the Appalachians where he wonders if he is going to make it.  Mount Lassen is only the latest in a string of mountainous defeats that LHM endures.

We all take on impossible tasks.  We all do pointless things.  Our goals sometimes do not match up with reality.  Yet one of the amazing things about people is that we still attempt things that we may know aren't feasible.  It may be in personal relationships, where we get into those situations where we try to help someone who won't be helped.  It might be the tasks we take on at work or goals we set for ourselves that turn out too high.  Sometimes, people accept an assignment even though they know that they will not succeed.  War movies often show this dynamic in its most stark life-and-death terms - the mission that cannot succeed but must be undertaken anyway.

Even though there may not be overt deceitfulness or trickery about us, perhaps there is some.  Perhaps we trick ourselves into believing that we can change that person, or accomplish that those goals.  Perhaps in those war movies some of the characters trick themselves into believing that they can accomplish anything.  In some ways, the awful tragic truth is that we can't accomplish everything we want.  The odds are too high, the deck stacked too much in favor of the opposite conclusion.

Camus wrote a work on Sisyphus, which I've never read but heard about, which uses the myth to reflect on the absurdity of life.  LHM is certainly on that theme in this chapter as he reflects on "humbug."  If life is one big mountain that is pointless, there isn't much hope in any meaning whatsoever.  I'm not sure that I agree with Camus on this point, because I think that we create meaning - if something is meaningful to us, it orders the universe away from absurdity and pointlessness.

If we don't take on impossible tasks on occasion, we don't stretch our inner and outer frontiers.  We don't get out of our little cocoons.  It is important to take risks once in a while.  We may get hurt.  We may even (in the case of the war movies) die in our attempts to reach the goal.  But often, the rewards of attempting impossible things pay off in ways other than we expect.  We may not reach the top or cross the mountain.  Instead, we learn our limits and with that knowledge, we know how far we can push ourselves and what is realistic for us.  We become better able to serve and help others within those limits we've discovered.  We may even create the conditions that can change lives, or even change the world.  I'm convinced that there are ripple effects to our actions that affect others and eventually come around to effect us.  I am used to saying, when someone feels like they owe me for doing something nice for them, "don't worry, what goes around comes around."  Often it does.

So, LHM's labors lead at first anger and frustration as he is not able to complete the task of crossing the mountain.  He is angry about having to take an alternate route.  Eventually will come self-reflection and the idea that doing things a new way, taking another path, isn't such a bad thing after all.  That will lead self-actualization, a process of realization that allows for true growth.

Unlike Sisyphus, who is stuck for eternity obsessively pushing the boulder up the mountain toward , we don't have to be stuck in that ever occurring cycle.  If we learn something from our experience, we can break free of the need to go over the mountain and instead, feel just fine about navigating around it.

Musical Interlude

I just this song again on the radio.  I originally heard Guy Clark sing it in concert, but had forgotten about it.  Sometimes, getting where we want not only involves taking on the impossible, but also making a leap of faith.  I think that The Cape really captures the spirit of adventure that we have when we are young and would be wise to maintain a connection with even when we're older.

If you want to know more about Mount Lassen

Lassen County Times: Lasen Park delights visitors, hikers, campers
Lassen Volcanic National Park
Sunset Magazine: Lassen Peak
Volcanic Legacy Byway: Lassen Peak
Wikipedia: Lassen Peak

Next up: Manton, California