August 23, 2016 Mile 1416.5-1444.8 28.3 Miles Loamy soil, augmented with decomposed pine needles, makes for a warm, soft bed. Some dirt just feels better. I don’t want to get up, but our conversation last night touched on how many miles are left, and how little time, so I need to do another big day. I pack up in the pre-dawn light, which is softened by the tall pine canopy. Habit is stirs and starts to pack up just as I finish. We wish each other well, quietly so as not to wake the sleeping siblings. On the way out I stop to photograph Burney Falls. It really is spectacular. Water spills from a split channel at the top and hundreds of smaller waterfalls pour out of the cliff walls themselves, as if from a colander. According to a nearby sign, the water seeps down to an impermeable layer of stone. It travels there underground until it reaches these cliffs, where it finally releases into the air in a dramatic spectacle. The world is strange and wonderful. The morning starts with a big climb. I hike for about an hour, then stop to make breakfast in a pine forest. It’s all been pine forest this morning. Some rustling startles me, but it is only a doe and her fawn. I eat my oatmeal and silently watch them graze. If they notice my presence, they show no sign of it. I have a stillness to me, I realize, that I could never have managed a few months ago. The trail has tamed my impatience, my constant craving for something to happen. In this moment I have no desire to be entertained; I have no need for status; I am not scurrying toward a goal or avoiding something unpleasant. In fact, I do feel a small ache in the way I am sitting, but I don’t feel a particular hurry to fix it. It will resolve itself eventually. I just notice the discomfort and acknowledge it. Watching them wander and pick among the grasses, I am surprised to notice that I don’t feel a sense of unity or a shared brotherhood. I am watcher and they are watched—there is a clear hierarchy of power here, and I could startle them away at a whim. Yet nor do I feel that they are here simply for my enjoyment. They have intrinsic worth that has nothing to do with me or any other human, and my power over them does nothing to change that. If anything it ties me more powerfully to them, for my power comes with a responsibility to them and to the ecology that makes their lives possible. To treat them extractively, as something for human enjoyment, is a great sin. But to deny the existence of a differential in power effectively shirks responsibility and soothes us into complacence as those who with no compunction about their greater power—and who erroneously believe that power gives them greater worth—would extract economic gains from the forests, hills, and rivers without regard to the lives contained within. I finish my breakfast and leave the deer behind. The last bit of rise is over quickly and I begin the descent to the Pit 3 Dam at Lake Britton. Water jets out of a massive pipe below the dam, then settles to become a slow river that flows down the gorge, where it wanders between layers of mountains carpeted in a dark green. Eventually the river will find its way to Shasta Lake, and from there it will either be diverted for irrigation or join with the Sacramento river to make a long trip down to San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. This is knowledge that will come later, though. Right now all I know is that the noisy, violent force of the hydroelectric dam seems at odds with the calm power of the river. It is an opposition that one can intuit even without knowledge of the Salmon population that has been decimated, or the marshland habitats that are being poisoned by the ocean marching inward at Suisun bay, hundreds of miles south, no longer opposed by the freshwater flows from this and other tributaries of the Sacramento River. After the dam, another steep climb through the forest. Up and down, winding, meandering. The miles pass. The hours too. There are logging roads and sections of razed land, a sort of patchwork forest. One moment I am in deep forest, another in full sunlight with toppled logs and other organic wreckage scattered about. I turn a slope and a monolithic white mountain explodes into view, far closer and larger than I could have imagined. Shasta! It is a boost to the spirit, a tangible sign of progress. The late afternoon is easier, with occasional glimpses of Shasta. As the sun approaches the horizon I make plans for camping. There’s a campsite just past mile 1440. It’s close to water and it’ll make for a 24-mile day. Not a big day, but good enough. I’m approaching the campsite just after sunset when I hear big cracking sounds off to my right. I freeze and look up at a ridge about 70 yards away. At first there’s nothing except the noise. Then a bear crests the ridge, running full speed, parallel to the trail. I watch wide-eyed in awe and fear for a moment before it turns downhill, straight toward me.
Terror. Paralysis. I do the only feeble thing I can think of. I plant my feet in a lunge and lift my trekking poles like bull’s horns in front of me. They are certain to snap at the first impact of the bear, but what else can I do? It closes the distance. Forty yards away now. Thirty. Twenty. I shout. “Hey! Get out of here!” And improbably, the bear changes course. It runs past me, so close I could throw one of my poles and have some chance of hitting it—but of course I’m much too scared for such a stupid show of bravado. It continues running, past me and down over a steep slope. I wait until the crashing sounds have receded and then I try to call Lindsey. I need someone to acknowledge the crazy thing that just happened. Miraculously, I have cell phone service. “I just got charged by a bear.” “What?!” I tell her the whole story. When I get done, she’s silent for several seconds. “Did you have to tell me?” she says. “What?” “Now I have to sit here at home worrying about you all by yourself out there,” she says. Oh. I guess I didn’t think about that. “Sorry. I’m sure it’s gone now. I’ll be fine.” But I know she’ll be worried anyway. “Be safe out there,” she pleads. I assure her I will. After we hang up, I think again about camping. Not here, I think. I’m sure the bear is gone, but that doesn’t mean I want to stick around for it to come back. Besides, I’m too shaken to just make dinner and go to bed. I decide to make dinner, then hike until I can find someone else to camp with. It gets dark almost immediately after dinner. I’m a little nervous at first, but somehow it seems less frightening than camping by myself. It starts to feel more comfortable after a few minutes. The dark tunnel in the trees is comforting, like a cocoon. I know that things out there can come crashing into the beam of my light at any time, but it seems like as long as I keep making noise and moving, everything will only want to avoid me. If I were lying in my sleeping bag I would be imagining bears and mountain lions at the rustle of every squirrel and bird, but out here I can see some of what’s around me, even if it’s confined to the narrow beam of my weak-ass headlamp. An hour goes by with no sign of people. Adrenaline fatigue is starting to set in, on top of the natural fatigue that comes from hiking twenty-plus-mile days. I decide that I’ll camp by myself if I don’t see anyone by the time I reach the spring ahead. Lucky for me, there is a tent at the spring. A light shines out from it as I come into the clearing. “Just a hiker,” I say. “I’m gonna camp over there.” The light goes out. I set up my tent, relieved for safety in numbers, and climb into my sleeping bag. The second my head hits my inflatable pillow, I hear rustling near the other tent. A woman’s voice shouts “Get out of here, you fucker!” Shit, I think. A bear. I don’t want to deal with another bear. “What is it, a bear?” I ask. The woman yelps. The man responds “no, just a mouse.” Just a mouse. I settle back down and fall quickly asleep.
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Nick is a teacher, writer, and amateur adventurer. Archives
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