God's Country - final summer fling

At the conclusion of last Friday's pre-school year staff meeting, I jumped in the car and continued north to the Mount Shasta area. A friend of mine from college is a cross country/track coach in Redding. He holds a running camp every August for his cross country runners, and he enlists the help of some of his friends and fellow former cross country/track mates. I happen to be one of them.

So, let's start with the best. Saturday night after dinner, I drove up the road to Castle Lake and snapped this early evening picture of Mount Shasta and nearby Black Butte:

That is my favorite shot of the trip, but there were others worth posting. The night before I took the above shot, I went down to the beach at Lake Siskiyou and snapped this photo:

I actually worked at Lake Siskiyou on that very beach, just a few yards from where I am standing. It was the summer of 1990, and I rented out pedal boats, kayaks, and canoes. My favorite part of my workday was right around this time - 8:30 to 9:00pm - when the lake was calm, the air was warm and still, and I could hear the sound of the water lapping against the dock where all the boats were tied up.

After I took my pictures on the beach, I went back to our campsite just in time to catch the sunset. I have this thing about evergreen trees being silhouetted against the sky. Here is an example of why I like it so much:

On Saturday afternoon, the coaches and runners drove to the parking area for a 20 minute run to Cliff Lake, which is one of many alpine lakes located in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, which is west of the mountain. In fact, Cliff Lake isn't too far away from Little Toad Lake, which I chronicled back in mid-July. Cliff Lake is one of those classic glacier-cut lakes with lots of great jumping rocks on one side. Here is Cliff Lake:


The water is like a swimming pool. Even when you swim out to where the water is 30 or 40 feet deep, if you stick your face in the water and look down, you have no problem seeing the bottom. Eventually, when it gets deep enough, you can no longer see the bottom; only a greenish blur.

After leaving Cliff Lake and running back to the cars, we drove to the campus of College of the Siskiyous in nearby Weed, California. I attended CoS in the early 1990s, along with my friends who were coaching this running camp. We all attended high schools in the local area, and we all ran together on the CoS cross-country and track teams. That was almost 20 years ago, and we still make it a point to see each other every year, so the bonds we forged while attending that school were obviously strong ones. College of the Siskiyous is probably one of the most beautiful campuses you will ever find. The whole campus is dominated by views of Mount Shasta. For instance, here is the view from their baseball field:


We came to the campus to run our old home course, which is called Bear Trail. It rings the campus, and many local runners also use it, along with CoS staff who often walk it during their lunch breaks. During races and practice, I ran Bear Trail so many times that I could remember every detail of it in my sleep. No matter how hard the race or the practice, I never stopped noticing the beauty of the trail:

I was a so-so cross-country runner (best 4-mile time: 23:45). Where I excelled was on the track (400m/800m), and CoS has a beauty of a track and football stadium. I can't think of a more beautiful place to run a track meet.

Being from the area, I raced on this track many times in high school, and then ran on it a lot more while attending CoS. Track practice usually lasted about four hours a day. Gosh, how many times did I come down Lane 1 during all those races and workouts? The best races were when that lane was empty just as you see it now, because everyone else in the race was behind me!

On Saturday night, after I had taken the first picture on Castle Lake Road, I hightailed it to back to Weed, which is just several miles away and went to a trail on Ant Hill, which is above the town and above the CoS campus. When I ran cross-country, doing repeat runs up Ant Hill was probably our toughest workout. What I loved about the trail was the unobstructed view of Mount Shasta. I tried to make it to the trail in time to get a shot of Mount Shasta's alpenglow, but the sun went down a little quicker than expected, and I couldn't get a decent shot of the mountain with my camera - better luck next time! However, I did compensate with this sunset opportunity:


This picture is looking north-northeast. The lights you see are the town of Weed, and if you look at the center horizon, you can just make out the Cascade volcano, Mount McLoughlin, which is actually in Oregon. And of course, there's another evergreen tree silhouetted against the sunset!

That wraps up my final visit to God's Country for the summer. I never get tired of going to the Mount Shasta area. If someone asks me if I could live anywhere in the world, where would I live, my immediate answer would be: Mount Shasta!

Good Day to You, Sir