Mount Shasta
engraving from Pituresque America, New York, 1870 by Appleton & Co.
The Old Man of the Mountain
excerpt from Once Upon a Gold Mine
by Byron Grush
Mount Shasta, September, 1855
The Hudson
These same Indians held Shasta sacred. She figured in their creation myth. This tells that the mountain is the Great Spirit’s wigwam with a smoke hole at the top; that the Great Spirit sent his daughter up the mountain to speak to a storm that had come in from the sea; that she was to tell the storm to be more gentle or else the mountain might be blown over; that the storm caught her up and tossed her down the mountain; that she was captured and raised by a family of grizzly bears; that the bears, who walked erect on two legs, married her to their eldest son; that from that union came the Indian people; that the Great Spirit did not approve of the marriage and sent the children, the Indian people, into the wilderness. Thus the mountain became sacred to the Shasta.
It is a peculiar thing about mountains: as you approach them from a distance they seem to diminish in size. By the time you reach the foothills they have vanished altogether. You may find yourself walking through a basin formed by lava flows and strewn with pumice and volcanic ash, devoid of vegetation. Or you may trek along the hardened layers of alluvial mudflows dotted with basalt carried along by melting glaciers tens of thousands of years ago. You may follow a stream bed up a ravine and climb to a meadow surrounded by hemlock where fields of heather offer a welcome splash of color to eyes dulled by the browns and grays of the basin.
You could follow flocks of butterflies to the edge of a robust forest where knobcone pine and incense cedar skirt the dominant stands of ponderosa and Douglas fir. At this elevation, the forest is carpeted with chinquapin, thimble berry and greenleaf manzanita. You might find an old game trail through the brush.
As the incline becomes steeper, the understory thins and a dense forest of Shasta
James followed a ravine that had been cut by glacial melt eons ago. The stream bed was dry, a harbinger of autumn’s cooling temperatures and winter’s ultimate freeze. Still, sweat rolled down his forehead and into his stubby beard. Although tradition called for a long beard and clean-shaven upper lip on Brethren men, James had never affected facial hair. Now it seemed to him to be part of some natural process of his assimilation into this mystical mountain’s domain.
He had gained the tree line. Here a few stunted fir trees and wind-twisted cedars hung onto the edge of an overlook. In the valley below tall pines reached upward toward a cerulean blue sky where eagles soared, riding updrafts. Gusts of wind roared through the trees like freight trains: James could follow their passage by the sound moving across the valley.
There wasn’t a trail or a path, only an apparent way. The way led James along the rim toward a field of boulders long ago fallen from thousands of feet above him. An upward glance revealed conical structures and fissured walls of dark-colored rock. He scrambled across the boulders to a talus slope. He could see that the way led across this steep incline of loose scree to a flat, open area beyond.
Immediately upon stepping onto the talus James began to slide. He backed away, puzzled by this seemingly mundane obstacle that could hurl him into the valley below in a cascade of rubble. He returned to the tree line.
Here he found a fallen limb, straight as an arrow and thick enough to support his weight. He trimmed off the smaller branches and made himself a climbing staff. In a spiral that wound down the length of the staff he carved his name, the date, and the single word, “SHASTA.” He lifted it skyward and pointed it toward where he believed the summit to be. “Here I come,” he said aloud. Thus armed with a climbing aid he returned to the talus slope.
James probed the rocks with his staff, finding areas where a slide was less likely. Gingerly he walked through the talus and reached the other side where he collapsed, breathing heavily and sweating in spite of crisp, cool mountain air.
The flat area he had reached was the fan-like terminus of an ancient lava flow which had originated upslope at a gaping fissure. Shear walls of stone converged toward the apex of the flow creating a canyon. James saw that he could climb around the edge of this new obstacle on a ledge barely the width of his foot. He found crevasses in the rock wall where he could get a finger hold and inched along the ledge.
Had he been willing to leave behind his climbing staff the traverse of the ledge would have been less precarious. The wall he clung to curved away giving him little view of the terrain ahead. How long was this ledge? Where did it lead? Was the ledge narrowing?
The ledge suddenly ended. Before him was an expanse of four or five feet of rock wall which soared straight up and plunged straight down, smooth, flawless, and absolutely vertical. Beyond this was a nearly level shelf of rock. Beyond that, the way became a series of flat outcroppings strewn with boulders but clearly surmountable: an easy climb to the glacier. All he had to do was jump…
James tossed his climbing staff to the shelf. It rolled but stopped before the edge. He took several long deep breaths and tried to relax both his body and his mind. As much as the narrow ledge would allow him to do, he crouched, then leaped out across the abyss. His feet touched the shelf, then slipped out from under him and he felt himself sliding along the smooth surface, dangerously near the edge. He raked his hands along the rock, seeking whatever purchase he could find to slow his progress. Feet first, he slid slowly toward an unavoidable death.
Something gripped him by the wrists and pulled. Scraped and shaken, he was now on the level top of the shelf. Whoever or whatever had stopped him from falling had disappeared. He struggled to his feet and retrieved the climbing staff. “Hello?” he called. “Anyone there?” But no answer, save the echo of his own voice, reached his ears.
The next hour of climbing the rock terraces was exhausting. Although not as treacherous an ascent, each vertical foot he gained necessitated traveling horizontally for several yards on an uneven surface. He stopped to rest and look out over the horizon. There the peaks and crags of distant mountains seemed trifling and inconsequential. The vast hinterland surrounding him belonged to Shasta alone—Shasta, lonely as God herself.
Ready to continue, he rose and turned and was startled to find before him the ungainly bulk of a figure backlit by bright sunlight. At first he thought it to be a grizzly and began to back away slowly. But then it spoke: “Careful near the cliff edge, young’un,” it said.
The long full beard and shoulder-length hair were well kempt, not at all scraggy or disheveled. The hair parted into two long tresses that were tied by dark red ribbons. The clothes were buckskin, brushed and decorated with painted symbols, none of which James recognized. The red sash around the waist held a long sheathed knife of some kind and James was reminded of his friend Red Jack, the mountain man.
“Hello! You gave me a fright,” said James.
“I would expect no less. Didn’t think anybody’d live up here did you?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Well then, you can come with me to my cave for a sit down and some conversation, can’t you? You can always climb another time!” The man turned and scurried across the rocks so quickly, James was fearful of stumbling as he tried to keep up with him.
The man led him through a fissure in the rocks that James hadn’t noticed during his climb. This dissected the cliff face forming a small canyon which contained a pool of fresh water. Melting snow dripped down in a miniature waterfall from the rocks above. At the end of the canyon was an overhang that created a shallow cave where the man apparently lived. A cot and a makeshift stool stood at the back of the cave and various cooking implements surrounded a smoldering fire.
“I would give you some tea. That is, I would if I had any.”
“I brought some coffee in my pack, Sir. Would you like some?” asked James. “My name is James Grosh. I’m climbing the mountain.”
“Somehow I kind of thought you might just be doing that very thing.” The man accepted the bag of coffee and set about to boil it in a battered old tin pan. “The Wintu call me K’tyem’ilah tamoy ke lasto’t, which they say means ‘Old man with long hair,’ but I think it means more like ‘Crazy old coot.’ As to my real name, well…just call me George.”
“George, you remind me of a friend of mine. Red Jack Kerrigan. Ever hear of him?”
“Can’t say as I have. Mountain man?”
“Yes. And trapper. And scout for Frémont. Knows Kit Carson.”
“Nope. Well, so much for the introductions. Where do you hail from, son?”
“Illinois …uh, Pennsylvania
“Never heard of that either. But it seems an appropriate appellation for the times.”
“How long have you been up here?”
“Well, let’s see. Probably since just after the last time the mountain erupted. Oh, I don’t know. I’ve been here a while.”
“You a mountain man? A miner? Sorry to be so curious. It’s just that I didn’t expect…”
“Alright. My story. Baltimore
“In ’49? You were one of the first ones?”
“Heavens no, son. The first gold rush. New Mexico Ortiz Mountains south of Santa Fe California
“So, did you strike it rich in New Mexico
“I did. Wrote back for Alice
“Gambling!”
“You sound like you understand.”
“Oh yes. I’ve been bitten by that same bug. And drink.”
“That’s right. Sort of drifted. Got to like mountains. Climbed up in Colorado Rockies ! Found my way to the Sierra Nevada . Fell in with the Wintu Indians for a while. They told me about Bohem Puyuik, their sacred mountain. Shasta. Warned me away from it.”
“Afraid of demons, were they?”
“No. They just don’t want white men up here. Only the medicine men come up. They come to visit with Brother Bear. And talk to the Little People.”
“Little People?”
“That’s another story. But you’ll be wanting to get back to your climbing before it gets dark.”
“Well, anyway, I want to thank you for saving my life back there. When you grabbed me before I fell.”
“What’s that? I didn’t grab you.”
“I was slipping over the cliff edge and somebody grabbed my wrists. Pulled me to safety. I didn’t see who it was. But I thought it was you.”
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