South out of Ashland, Oregon on the 5 freeway, Mt. Shasta celebrates and sings itself to all travelers. Its size warps one’s vision, and it takes several looks to get your eyes and mind around this thing that is so immense that it dominates the open skies of the west, so tall that it rips through the clouds that constantly surround it, so sacred that even interstate travelers on their way back to San Francisco or Los Angeles are given pause by it. Passing on the west side, you imagine what it is like at the top where snow remains year-round and spirits dwell as they have for thousands of years. If you were to drive further south and turn around and look at Shasta, you would see it as one of many peaks, the tallest and most majestic to be sure, but one of many and less imposing than the first view. Your perspective has changed over miles and over time. As Heat-Moon says, travel is a measure of change.

Mt. Shasta

Change indeed. The sacred journey began in Boston on a wet and sad day in May. It ended in southern California nine miles from the San Andreas fault. Now the journey begins again. Like Mt. Shasta from the north, the end of my journey here blotted out everything else on the horizon. All I could see was California and my new job and new life as an ending and a beginning. I’ll admit now that I also saw it as a reward for the suffering I endured in Boston, a promised land where dreams would be fulfilled and the past left behind in the perpetual sunlight of this magical place. All that happened to be sure. But the journey continues, and the end is now a new beginning. Looking back, the monumental Shasta is put into relief. It is now part of other mountains.

Once again I will be taking to the open road. Once again, what moves me forward is loss, and as before I will leave out the details because this is a blog about the sacred journey not the mundane or profane. The details are ugly and well-known to people who live, love, and work. What matters is how we move on. Whitman:

“Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog with linguists and contenders;
I have no mockings or arguments—I witness and wait.”

Mt. Shasta from the South