It’s All About Perspective
A blur of vibrantly green pines hung over California’s rolling State Route 89, framing the hulking stratovolcano in the distance. The entire skyline turned to the faded white of summer snow. I’m not usually one to appreciate roads, but whoever built this section of the Volcanic Legacy Scenic Byway must’ve been an artist in another life.
Between patches of cell service, we’d skimmed Indigenous rumors and folklore surrounding Mount Shasta. The molten mountain has been a sacred site in nearby Indigenous cultures—a place for rituals, it’s alpine snowfields inhabited by deities. Legend has since morphed to claim a mythological city, Telos, inhabited by advanced beings, exists within Shasta’s volcanic tunnels.
In the hazy, blue-tinted light that warps things far away, the conclusion that Shasta’s distant slopes held spiritual significance seemed obvious. As usual, that awe-inspiring aura dissipated a little once we were up close. The parking lot teemed with more people than I imagined could fit into this one area, even given the long holiday weekend. Little lines of hikers wove their way upwards like worker ants returning to their home mound.
We awoke the next morning with the very first birds, before the rising sun. Six hours and almost 8,000 vertical feet later, my head throbbed. Pushing through the crowds to the summit with a pounding headache, the mystical appeal of the mountain felt lost entirely. On the descent, I searched for that feeling of awe in creative lines and the occasional airplane turn, but to be honest, I never found it.
A couple of hours later and a couple of towns away, I peered back up at the conical peak, ice cream cone in hand. At a comfortable elevation and distance away, that grandness returned. Perspective, it seems, was all I was missing.
—Liam
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