Transcendence in the Promised Land

On the third day of my new life, I crossed the border into California, and everything felt instantaneously better, sharper, clearer, righter. My uncertainty melted away as I rolled down my windows and inhaled the aroma of sweet sagebrush. The air was crisp and cool, the sun setting behind miles of rolling hills and dry desert. For a moment, my future felt like it was unfolding effortlessly in front of me. I asked the wind if this was where I was supposed to be.

She responded with a whisper, yes.

Mt. Shasta was not the original destination or plan when I ventured into the Promised Land in my beat-up 2008 Tacoma. But once I caught a glimpse of Her, She put a trance over me. Some inexplicable magnetism that sucked me in, and I couldn’t bear to leave or even look away.

None of this was the original plan: dropping out of medical school, selling all my belongings, and heading down the coast with my climbing gear and skis and a cooler full of granola bars. I was a cliché, your typical lost 20-something-year old in love with being outside and desperately searching for some meaning, some remedy to her loneliness and purposelessness and isolation. A wanderlust soul seeking some inner guidance, trying to tune into some intuitive and ethereal broadcast that would make life worth living once again.

And Mt. Shasta seemed to somehow offer this, Her massive and spectacular presence looming grandiosely, emitting some energetic radiance I could sense miles away. As I neared the base of the volcano, I knew I had to get to know Her more intimately - explore the long, exposed ridges, feel the sun-softened snow, dare I say even touch the summit, as long as She was willing to let me. I intuitively knew that She held the answers I was looking for.

That’s how I found myself skinning up the Avalanche Gulch of this glorious volcano at 2:30am, alone, listening to the huffing and puffing of my breath, the wind gusts swaying the tree branches and reverberating off the mountain, the gliding of my skins on the frozen snow stuck in its perpetual spring freeze-thaw cycle. 

She permitted me to continue my way up for seven hours in total. At around 10,000 feet, I ripped my skins, strapped my skis to my pack, and began booting, the crunch of my crampons in the ice with each French step. The sun slowly rose, casting a lavender haze halo around the bowl I was ascending. Scrapples of ice occasionally shook loose from Her surface, hailing down on me, sounding like little crystals being poured down the drain.

At Thumb Rock, just under 13,000 feet, I knew I was close. I forced myself to eat a few pieces of chocolate, having been too deep in the throes of sacred and cerebral awe to notice the somatic and earthly sensation of hunger. I kept walking, one foot in front of the other, methodically plunging my ice axe through the frozen snow for the last 1000 vertical feet. 

And at the top, I cried, bawled, my salty tears streaking my zinc-oxide covered face. She was so lovely. And I was so lovely. And she was me, and I was her, and I was everyone everywhere and everything. And every rock, every tree, every cloud, every gust of wind zinged with aliveness, every drop of snow, every breath felt like a tether to something bigger, a stream of life I was flowing through.

And there it was, this feeling of déjà vu, of rightness, some synchronicity. Despite the aching in my legs, the raggedness of my heavy breathing, this was exactly as it should be. The sensation stayed in my soul for the entire ski descent, a smile glued to my face for all 7000 vertical feet down. A sense of not only accomplishment, but of connectedness. Of unity with the universe, with the time-space continuum, with the mysteries of quantum physics and human biology and plant ecology and cosmology and love. 

“What’s next?” they asked me.

“Whatever She tells me.”

“Who’s She?”

“The mountains, of course.”