10.03.2006
and next, on my cheap trick blog is an email that I started writing to Tim, and then just really got in to. I don't know if I would feel sad if an email that a friend wrote to me ended up as a blog entry or if I would be impressed, but I think that all of you whose emails will end up on this blog should feel happy, because it is you who inspire me. You inspire me when just writing to an empty blogoshpere doesn't and hasn't for almost a year.
I hope this works.
So, to Tim tonight I wrote:
"we went first to the Trinity Alps in northern Cali (I worked on a ranch there one summer in between high school and college - yes I got caught swimming in the lake at night and snuck off the grounds with some other girls and two hunky young Oregon cowboys and they bought beer, and I had a sip, and we counted shooting stars all in a red Jeep Wrangler). It is where I fell in love with California, with the West. It is the reason that I am here right here right now watching Mat cook dinner and drinking a great cheap Cali Riesling. We stayed in this precious little town called Weaverville the first night and got our packs ready and talked to a ranger and took off the next morning off on a one night backpacking trip.
Only there was a huge forest fire in the area (HUGE), and it was gorgeous, but very smoky and hazy where we had planned on going, so we kept on driving until it was clear. then we found a ranger station, filled out a permit, looked at a map and decided to hike up and camp beside Big Bear Lake, the largest alpine lake in the Alps and at elevation about 6500 feet. It was a hard hard hard hike, and at the top we were able to see Mt Shasta! I hiked to the top of Mt. Shasta one of those summers on that ranch, and I love her like a bohemian sister living in a red velvet covered apartment in Arcata, California that I never had. I love this mountain. So we could hike and then look south and see her.
we came out of the woods onto slanted granite slabs, surrounded by high craggy granite walls on three sides, Mt. Shasta to the south. We walked around on these gorgeous rocks and popped out onto Big Bear Lake. It was breathtaking. Look at Mat's Flickr pictures, but as you know pics cannot do anything like that justice.
and we had it to ourselves!! We were the only ones there. the "season" is over up there just because it's gotten a little cold! We stayed warm, looked at the stars, and slept through the night warm (after waking up in the middle of the night and jumping out of the tent and pulling the rain fly onto the top half which we had left exposed so we could look at the stars as we fell asleep -- our tent is just see through mesh withouth the rain fly on it.).
I got up early early early in the morning (facilitated by the fact that we were in our sleeping bags at 8:30), and it was cold, but not bad at all. I got out of the tent and scrambled around all around the southern and eastern shores of the lake, all on the rocks and stared at the lake and at the granite walls as they slowly got lit up by the sun - white rock, yellow sun, the most gorgeous light you can imagine, reflecting off of a giant bright blue Alpine lake, the craggy craggy walls just looking surreal with the brilliant blue sky in the background.
It was amazing. Words cannot ever ever explain what it felt like to trod and sleep and scramble on that land.
That's how the first few days were! and there's so much more because we were gone for a week and a half, and the whole trip was like that. we went to Crater Lake, the Rogue River Gorge and Rogue River Valley in southern Oregon and Redwood national park and Humboldt County, the city of Arcata (oh my God I cannot believe it exists, the perfect, old-fashioned small town in a gorgeous place, the land that time forgot - I never wanted to leave).
10.01.2006
I often write really good things in emails to people, but I never blog anymore, so maybe I will just start taking excerpts out of those emails and posting them on this blog. I am lazy.
From an email to my brother this afternoon talking about a road trip we just got back from. We threw some maps and our backpacks and tent and sleeping bags into the car and drove to the Trinity Alps in California (where I fell in love with the west while living and working on a ranch in the mountains up there close to Etna years and years ago) and went backpacking (my pack was ultra ultra light and my back did fine), slept by an alpine lake at about 6500 feet elevation, had the whole thing to ourselves, lake surrounded by tall jagged granite slabs on three sides and with a view of Mt. Shasta (whose summit I have dragged my body up to in the past, a northern cali fourteener, she is beautiful and breathtaking), spent a night in Ashland, Oregon, drove to Crater Lake and camped for two nights (one night in a snow storm) and hiked to the tallest peak there, Mt. Scott, only about a little shy of 9000 feet and walked down to the water itself and looked up all around us at the surreal setting, spent a night in an extremely rustic cabin at another little mountain lake, backpacked in the Rogue River Gorge area in southern Oregon and slept by a raging river, hiked miles and miles of ancient redwood forest in Redwood National Park, touched trees that were over 1500 years old and walked along the Humboldt county shore. I wrote this to Lee today, and it is how I feel--
"It felt really good to just be on the road. I swear I feel like I am destined to be a traveler. A vagabond, nomad. I am happiest when all that I have is what is carried on my back or shoved into my trunk. Maps. Campsites. I feel like it's all I need. We met a guy who is just a traveler, lives out of his ancient Toyota Corolla. He has nothing but is very rich. He made us cowboy coffee and shared his beers - everything he has - around his campfire and our campfire. Living in Crater Lake for a while, will move on out to somewhere else when he has had enough of that. I envy him. Really. With all my things and stuff and obligations and people to call and write and clothes to wash and bills to pay and dust to sweep up. I just want to be back in southeast asia, Rawanda, Uganda, somewhere in the desert, stoking my fire in the predawn cold and thinking only of what I will put in my body, put on my body, or lay my body under at night."
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