Gumboot

Friday, after finishing clinic site visits in Mt. Shasta, we headed up to Gumboot Lake. The next day we searched in vain for the Pacific Crest Trail. We made widening loops where we thought it was, as we thought it was on our side of the drainage until dusk when we ventured up to the Gumboot trailhead. By that time the pleasant warmth, that had even been cosy for the gopher snake, had been followed by snow flurries. Unfortunately, my beautiful photos just look fuzzy. You can barely make out the snow, which continued until we left today to come home for Touch of Chico, a massage benefit for KZFR community radio. We did get to hike the PCT last night as well as this morning, in the blowing diamond chip wind of the ridgeline.

I was thinking about the Ken Burns National Park series we'd been watching all week. How the National Forests are given such short shrift due to the terrible multiple use policies that has caused such species loss.. Still, the high country is exhilarating. Not transcendent, as the flowery language about the parks goes on about. (Isn't transcendence an experience of wholeness, available anywhere?) It's just that in nature I know my emotional heart swells with delight.. I equate this with joy or bliss... I don't want to go all flowery myself but it's just not the province of National Parks.