Explosion of Green

 I flew back from California May 24 and drove with Jim to my 45th college reunion two days later. Never has the Mass Pike seemed so verdant, so lushly green. Mile after mile the hills were packed with tall deciduous trees in every direction. In Main Line Philadelphia stately maples and ancient copper beeches graced the countryside.

California was lovely. I’ve never visited in May and didn’t expect so many roses in gardens and wild flowers along the highways. Northern California, Oregon, and Washington presented majestic evergreens. But for sheer volume of delicious, deciduous green in rolling hills, nothing matches the East Coast.

I returned home just in time to enjoy a glorious season of rhododendrons. I’ve made a study of them over the years. They always bloom in the same color order. Right now, the earliest color, a light purple, can be seen all over our town.

What did we expect?

 Maggie and I are on a two-week Sisters' West Coast Road Trip. I flew into LAX and the next day, after a tour of John’s amazing Orange-County garden, we headed north. We planned to drive the Pacific Coast Highway, California Route 1, north through Big Sur to Monterey, but it is impassable due to mudslides. So we toured the Hearst Castle instead. Driving the southern portion of the PCH that is open, we walked along a boardwalk and watched female elephant seals lie on the beach. They looked quite lazy, but out in the deep ocean they dive 2000 feet in search of food.

Yesterday as we drove from Berkeley to Crater Lake, I continued my love affair with Mt. Shasta. I first saw it with our kids, in 1995, when Maggie helped me drive from southern California to Seattle. We camped near Mt. Shasta and I was smitten. Why had I never heard of it?

This time around we stopped in Weed, California (prominent citizen Abner Weed settled the area around 1900). We took a few pictures and then headed north on US 97. As Maggie drove I watched my beloved mountain, and we stopped a few times for a picture from yet another angle. At the Mount Shasta Scenic Viewpoint we saw the mountain in its full glory. A informational sign included John Muir’s initial reaction to Mt. Shasta in 1874:

When I first caught sight of it over the braided folds of the Sacramento Valley, I was fifty miles away and afoot, alone and weary. Yet all my blood turned to wine and I have not been weary since.

In the evening we made our way west on Route 62 and entered Crater Lake National Park. Neither of us were able to use our new Golden Eagle passes: the entrance booth was unmanned. Many small piles of brush were smoldering along the roadside: a prescribed burn. The buildings of Rim Village were barely visible among the 20-foot snowbanks. The lodge was the end of the plowed road. Rim Drive, which encircles the lake, was completely snowbound.

What did we expect? A pleasant and scenic drive around the caldera. A few hikes in the woods.

What did we get?  A lot of snow on the ground. Hikes on the asphalt between the lodge and Rim Village. What did we not expect? An afternoon of snowshoeing and time sitting on the veranda watching the lake mirror the surrounding caldera. A friendly grey bird.