Mt. Shasta | Gladsome Lights

I’ve been with the family of my daughter “Pippin” for a few days, several hours farther north in California from my home; they live in the forest in the mountains, where the air right now is infused with the scent of pines and manzanitas and all the other woodland plants warming up and drying out after a wet and late winter. Every time I leave the house or get out of the car and smell it afresh, I take several breaths as deep as I can make them, trying to get the forest into my body.

There have been many opportunities to whiff aromatics in the forest and out of it, as we’ve visited higher mountain meadows and streams (Tamarack Flat), the botanical garden in Dunsmuir, the McCloud River and waterfalls, and a hilly spot from which to watch how the setting sun colored the sky above a volcanic mountain (Mt. Shasta).

I’ve gushed over the dogwoods and peonies, and marveled at the names of plants new to me, such as scorpionweed (Phacelia) and biscuitroot. We saw swaths of the carnivorous California Pitcherplant, wild onions, and the wildflower called Pretty Face.

It’s been too much for me to process, truly! Especially when every morning brings new experiences — and I haven’t even mentioned the bird songs everywhere. Pippin introduced me to a new app called Merlin, that listens to your space and tells you what birds are talking or singing nearby. And the children are older, and staying up later now in the summer, so I am spending more time with them, and not on my computer. One book we read together was Owls in the Family by Farley Mowat.

So I won’t be identifying these photos right now, but if you have any questions about them I’ll be happy to answer in the comments or in updates once I get home again. For now, I just wanted to share a little “whiff” of my adventure with you, and I’m sorry I can’t send you the birdsong and the scents. But I hope you are discovering some of those wherever you are. Enjoy!

On our last day in Oregon we woke up in a little old room in a lodge by a lake. Lake O’Dell, where Mr. Glad had come a couple of times as a child and where we thought we might row or paddle around on the glassy water in the morning. But I was impatient, knowing we had a long day of driving ahead of us, to just get on with it and get to Pippin’s.

The night before, we had sat on the deck and continued our reading of The Hobbit. Then we retired to our rustic room, likely designed for a fisherman type who doesn’t read in bed or need a nightstand for anything. The fisherman doesn’t have any bottles or jars or pillboxes in the bathroom, either, so it’s o.k. for him that the floor is the only horizontal surface other than a narrow windowsill.

It was kind of sweet, actually. The room smelled just normal, not like disinfectant or stale cigarette smoke or fake deodorizer. Maybe partly because the windows were letting in the fresh air from the forest, into a room that mostly houses just plain folk. We could see the lake through the trees, and hear the birds.

A well-dressed tree trunk by Lake O’Dell

Nothing and nobody woke us out of our good sleep, not even a motorboat of fishermen going out on the lake in the wee hours of the morning, as Mr. Glad had predicted. But we did wake and get on our way, south toward our home state. It would take the better part of the day, by way of long straight roads in the high and dry eastern side of Oregon.

Forest, forest and more forest, with “fields” of short lupines in bloom along both sides of the highway, thickest out in the open between the road and the trees.

When we were still at least 200 miles away, I got my first glimpse of the top of Mt. Shasta, that volcano that stands by itself over 14, 000 feet high as a dramatic landmark an hour’s drive south of the Oregon-California line. And then I really got excited, like a horse on its way back to the barn, and it struck me how much I love that mountain for telling me “Welcome to California!” and “Welcome home!” while I was yet a long way off.

It’s summer, and summer in the West means the highway department is repairing the roads, so this trip was marked by many many extended stops waiting for the flagman to let us go on.

The last of these roadwork episodes was near Weed, California, and I was driving, and could roll down my window and snap this picture of the mountain from a normally impossible spot. “It’s my lucky day!” I said, as once again we were sitting motionless on the blacktop.

But only a few minutes later we were playing with the grandchildren and eating strawberries with our dear ones. The Oregon loop was lovely, but not more so than the feeling of home.