mt. shasta

i woke up on sunday morning thinking that it would be our first non-sunny solstice in 15 years of life in northeastern california... i decided that it'd have to be a day for a BIG campfire instead. but late in the morning the sun started to peek through here and there, so we decided to go to mt. shasta, hopeful for the presence of sunshine. the pic above was taken about half way there. incredibly beautiful clouds and sky stretching to the horizon... sun was visible!!


at the far end of the road is where mt. shasta sits, but it's still hidden in clouds. i'm hopeful though...

usually we stop at the 'seven suns cafe' for coffee and the worlds best scones when we get into town, but they'd closed early for father's day (what?!). so onward we went to the food co-op, where we bought enough treats to last us the rest of the day. the main delicacies were a piece of chocolate cake from the deli, a pint of ice cream, veggie rice rolls, and a micro brew -- they had so many!!


a gorgeous label wins every time, right?

after further messing around in town doing stuff like buying prayer flags and listening to the quartz bowls at the crystal shop, we headed up the mountain with our portable feast.


we can almost see the top!


the road is still closed at 'bunny flats', so we walked from there.


oh what a view this home has...


we got off the road at panther meadows, which was under a couple feet of snow in most places. the snow melts in patches, and in places you can see streams of snow melt racing to the bottom of the mountain. the gurgling of the water echoes under the snow (the water is under the snow in the upper part of the pic) and sounds loud... panther meadows is a lovely, lovely place, sacred to several native american tribes in northern california. it's a place where one walks very quietly.


i left a flag near the meadows... that's the silhouette that karin sent me, in action again.


now we're headed back down... this is the very top of the mountain and it's completely clear. sooooo quiet and beautiful.


we drove a ways down the mountain where we'd have a view of the sun while we ate our supper (the ale was damn good). we sat in the car because it was getting cold -- i took this a little after 8 p.m. and the light was brilliant. i'd gotten out of the car to take a pic of the light on the trees, but this pic of the car turned out best!


now we're back in town getting gas -- no clouds in sight!

of all of the wonders of the day, drawing the lid of the ice cream container provided the greatest revelation. first i drew the rim of the lid and then started on the writing. well, duh, the writing's not gonna fit in that space, but i kept going. afterwards i thought about how crazy it is to start a contour drawing by drawing in the boundary first -- good grief! you limit yourself right off the bat! this was followed by the even greater realization that this is what we do when we define our lives by the boundaries that we already know, or what we think we want, instead of living each day from the present moment -- from the center...

to the beautiful mount shasta, i give my heartfelt thanks...

XO