SHEDDING
LIGHT ON THE MOUNTAIN
A
Traveler Confronts a Mystery on Mount Shasta
©
1997 Tor Pinney - All Rights Reserved
"Lonely
as God and white as a winter moon!"
Joaquin Miller, "the poet
of the Sierras," on Mount Shasta
I’ve visited many strange
and beautiful places in my travels, but never have I
encountered such a fusion of majesty, mystery and magic as
is vested in this mountain called Shasta. At 14,162 ft.,
Mount Shasta dominates the southern Cascade Mountains in
Northern California. Its snowcapped peak is sometimes
visible from as far as 200 miles. At the base of this great,
dormant volcano, the City of Mount Shasta, population circa
3,700, hosts a colorful New Age community. Spiritual seekers
and teachers are drawn to the mysterious alp like moths to a
light, beckoned by a spirit that seems to have as many
personalities as the pilgrims themselves.
Indigenous Native Americans
have long considered the mountain holy. Depending on who you
talk to around town today, Mount Shasta is simply a natural
tourist attraction, a place of unique beauty, or it’s one of
the earth’s main spiritual energy vortices, a UFO re-fueling
base, a channel to the spirit world, the abode of saints,
angels and Lemurians, ascended descendants of the ancient
civilization of Lemuria, the Pacific’s variant of the
Atlantis legend. These highly evolved beings are said to
live inside Mount Shasta and materialize or dematerialize at
will, occasionally appearing to worthy devotees on the high
slopes. Unexplained lights and eerie sounds are common up
there.
|
|
I myself
encountered a very peculiar light on Mount Shasta.
Ultimately, it led me to some surprising
discoveries about this mountain, the people around
it, and myself.
I’d been traveling
cross-country in a small motor home with my
12-pound canine companion, La Rosa Española de
Sevilla - Rosa for short. Soon after we arrived at
Mount Shasta, we were van camping in the
upper-most parking area on the mountain, a little
more than half way to the summit where the road
ends at around 7800 feet. The broad ledge blocked
my view of the town below, but I enjoyed a
stunning vista of the peaks and valleys beyond,
and a close look at the high slopes of Mount
Shasta above me. This was before the first autumn
dusting of snow, and I discovered some fine
day-hiking; wildflower-studded alpine meadows with
clear, cold springs, glaciers of hard-packed
snow/ice, evergreen forests rustling with
wildlife, and everywhere stark mounds of shattered
stone. But it was after dark that the singular
light first appeared. |
The many strange tales
I’d been hearing about the place were fresh in my mind when,
on my first night on the mountain, I observed a pale,
bluish-white glow flashing quickly across the mountain face.
It repeated itself at what seemed to be regular intervals. I
timed it with my watch and found it actually pulsed every 5
seconds, precisely. Although it seemed to be coming from a
point higher up the hill where there is only barren rock and
ice, the source puzzled me. The angle of the light didn’t
make sense when compared to the topography of the slopes. It
was as if it emanated from inside the hill itself.
The morning after seeing
this apparition I scoured the slopes, hiking as high as the
lower glaciers with the hope of locating the light’s source.
I found no surveyor’s beacon, nor any hint of what might
have generated that unearthly loom.
The second evening, I
enjoyed some music and camaraderie down at Panther Meadows
campground. Panther Meadows 1s the highest National Forest
camping area on the mountain, named for the local Indian
legend of a spirit that manifested as a great cat at the
nearby springs. A small, informal group gathered around a
campfire the night I visited, an eclectic assortment of
travelers, seekers and campers. We sang songs and talked of
universal mysteries and one ancient, white-haired woman
“channeled” some wise and nameless entity, making startling
and accurate observations about several individuals in the
circle. It was, I surmised, not uncommon in that place. By
the time I returned to my campsite at the uppermost parking
area, it was nearly midnight. As soon as I doused my
headlights, I could again make out the strange, pulsing
radiance on the mountain face above, but I was tired and
soon fell asleep watching.
|
During the next
few days, I asked numerous locals, pilgrims and
forest rangers if they had any idea what could
have caused the phenomenon. Answers varied from
lights at the distant ski resort (impossible in
that landscape), to passing aircraft (nope!), to
the ubiquitous UFO’s and Lemurian mountain
spirits. Hmmm.
I left the
mountain for a couple of days and when I returned,
I resumed my post at the top of the road. So it
was that on my third night up there, I awoke at
1:00 a.m. and lay in my bunk watching the strange
light once again. This time I thought I also saw a
faint surge of light on the 2½-second count, in
between the 5-second shimmer - but not every time.
And there! Wasn’t that an odd, diagonal beam of
light bursting momentarily from the hillside in
the midst of it all? |
|
It was too much to take
lying down. I decided to investigate, to solve the mystery
of these lights once and for all. I climbed out of bed,
donned hiking boots, jeans and a sweater (it’s chilly up
there at night) and grabbed a powerful flashlight. I also
brought along a camera, just in case I had an opportunity to
capture a UFO on film for the National Enquirer. I also left
a note on the kitchen counter in my camper explaining where
I had gone and leaving a friend’s telephone number back East
so that, should I inadvertently be abducted to Alpha
Centauri, someone might ship my little dog, Rosa, to a safe
place.
|
|
I set out with
some trepidation, climbing slowly up the steep,
dark slope. My mind teemed with the myriad myths
of the mystic mountain. I imagined aliens,
Lemurians, black bears and big-foot himself, all
lurking just beyond the shadows. A million stars
blinked indifferently as the flashing loom
beckoned me onward. Picking my way among the rocky
debris by flashlight and breathing heavily in the
thin air, I made my way higher and higher. |
Eventually I found myself on
a level ridge above the tree line. I stopped and switched
off the flashlight, which left me instantly night-blind.
Nothing moved and the silence was deafening. I suddenly felt
very alone way up there on the spirit mountain. Gradually,
my eyes regained sight. The irregular white outlines of the
glaciers reappeared; then the star-lit rubble of the steep
slope. And finally the vision of the loom returned with
maddening persistence, splashing its ghostly pallor across
the mountainside. From here I could see most of the alp’s
south face and should have been able to spot the source of
the light, but I could not. The way the light illuminated
the upper slope of the mountain made no sense. It seemed to
defy the laws of linear travel, unless…
I turned around almost
casually and gazed southwestward, down into the valley
toward the town now visible far below. There, miles away yet
plain to see from my high vantage point, as regular as a
metronome, was a large but otherwise ordinary revolving
spotlight, a promotion, perhaps, for a local automobile
dealership, or a grand opening for a shopping center. Even
at that distance its powerful beam swept across the mountain
face, momentarily bathing the slopes every 5 seconds with a
faint, ethereal glow. And in between, its backside beam
provided a mini-burst of light at the 2½-second count.
Standing there shivering at 9,000 feet in the wee hours of
the morning, having braved unthinkable perils, I had solved
the mystery of the loom of Mount Shasta.
I retreated to my camper,
relieved and humiliated. I had gone forth to confront the
aliens, and instead had experienced a close encounter of the
first kind, coming face to face with my own childish
impressionability. Rosa discreetly held her tongue as I
pulled off my boots, put away the camera and crawled back
into my warm bunk. But surely, the ancient Lemurians were
laughing it up inside the mountain that night.
~
End ~
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