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 away as 200 miles. At the base
of this great, dormant volcano, the City of Mount Shasta
(population circa 3,700) hosts a considerable New Age
community. Spiritual seekers and gurus alike 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 whom you talk to around town today, Mount
Shasta is simply a convenient tourist attraction, a place of
unique beauty, or else it’s one of the earth’s main
spiritual energy vortices, a UFO re-fueling base, a channel
to the spirit world, or the abode of saints, angels and
Lemurians. (As I understand it, Lemurians are the ascended
descendents of the great, ancient civilization of Lemuria,
which is the Pacific’s variant of the Atlantis legend.
These highly evolved beings are said to live inside Mount
Shasta. They can materialize or dematerialize at will and
occasionally appear to worthy devotees up on the mountain.)
Unexplained lights and eerie sounds seem to be a common
occurrence up there, as well.
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|
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 8,000 feet.
The broad ledge on which the parking lot perches
blocked my view of the town far 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 to which I refer first manifested itself.
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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
appeared to be coming from a point higher up the hill (where
there is supposedly nothing but barren rock and ice), the
source baffled me. The angle of the light didn’t make
sense when compared to the topography of the slopes. It
almost seemed to emanate 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. But I found no surveyor’s
beacon. Nor did I uncover any hint of what might have
generated that unearthly loom.
The
second evening, I enjoyed some music and camaraderie around
a campfire down at Panther Meadows campground. By the time I
drove back to my campsite at the uppermost parking area, it
was past 11:00 p.m. 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 I soon fell asleep
watching.
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During
the next few days, I asked numerous locals,
campers, 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?
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|
Well,
this was becoming 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. And I 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 haven.
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|
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 Bigfoot
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.
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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 10,000
feet in the wee hours of the morning, I felt more than a
little foolish now that I had solved the mystery of the loom
of Mount Shasta.
So
I retreated to my camper, simultaneously 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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