Memories of a solstice. This time last year I was in California. I stayed in San Francisco for several days visiting my friends James and Komoot. It was great to see my old friend James again and to meet his partner Komoot, she is a wonderful person.
Then on this day a year ago I boarded the Amtrak Coast Starlight and traveled overnight to Dunsmuir in the far north of the state. I took a bus to the nearby town of Shasta then a cab to the Bunny Flats trailhead on Mount Shasta itself. This is a popular starting point for routes around Shasta, particularly for mountaineers heading up beyond the treeline. I walked off into the woods to pitch my tent and do some hiking.
In 1874 the pioneering naturalist John Muir said of Mount Shasta:
"When I first caught sight of it over the braided folds of the Sacramento Valley, I was fifty miles away and afoot, alone and weary. Yet all my blood turned to wine and I have not been weary since".
Right on John! I first saw it at dawn framed by a window on the Amtrak as the train made its way through mountains and valleys- truly an extraordinary sight.
I camped at about seven thousand feet. A thousand foot higher (about an hours walk uphill) the snow still lay thick on the ground. I particularly wanted to see an area known as Panther Meadows; partly because it is a notable example of an alpine flower meadow and partly because this was my nearest source of water (strange to be in a hot, dry environment in sight of gleaming white snow).
The first day I visited the meadows they were covered in snow. I had come to see flowers but I could not be disappointed to be in this pristine place. And then I saw a miracle of life unfold.
I went back the next day to get water from the bubbling streams. The snow had half melted and brown and green shades of vegetation were exposed. I went back the following day: the snow was mostly gone and the first flowers were starting to bloom!
This carpet of petite alpines had been under snow for nine months but they wasted not a moment in showing their colours. This is characteristic of snowbound regions- summer is brief and the flowering intense. In September it starts to snow again.
Had I arrived a week later I would have seen the meadows in full flower, then again the week before there had been two and a half feet of snow. The timing of these slender margins varies each year but those days of seeing the meadows emerge will stay with me always.
Lower down where I camped beneath the pines among flowery shrubs I have to leave the last words to John Muir. In his essay Shasta Bees from 1875 he wrote:
"In June the base of Mount Shasta will be as white with honey as the summit with snow. Follow the bees and be showered with blossoms; take a baptism and a honey-bath and get some sweetness into your lives".
Right on John!