Full (Budding Trees or Pink) Moon turning Waning Gibbous Moon
Last Monday, vaccinated with subsequent waiting period fulfilled, blessed with a State of California economic stimulus check, I elected to begin stimulating Hertz Rent-a-Car, Inc. and a myriad of breakfast joints from the Oregon border to Yosemite National Park. It was the least I could do for my homeland.
I climbed into a nifty little Nissan Versa and blasted North on Interstate 5 to Weed, CA, where I had a delicious breakfast at 3 in the afternoon at the Hi-Lo Cafe. It's a wonderful establishment, exactly as old as I am.
From Weed, I angled toward Klamath Falls on Hwy 97, part of the Volcanic Legacy Scenic Byway. I had never driven, walked, or ridden on this piece of road. What a show! I pulled over just west of Mount Shasta to look in awe at its cloud hidden majesty. This mountain is the geographic hub of far northern California, normally visible for miles in every direction. Just to view its base and imagine the snow covered peak above it made me shiver. The whole drive to Klamath repeated scenes like these, as the previous week's cold front retreated back toward Alaska.
That night (below freezing) and the next morning (sunny and warming up) I stimulated the economy of southern Oregon at the prestigious Motel 6 and the iconic Black Bear Diner in Klamath Falls. I am sure the ripple effects of my generous transactions were felt at least as far as Weed, if not Yreka and the rest of the State of Jefferson.
The main reason to go in this direction, however, was not to feed Oregonians. It was to turn around and re-cross the border into Modoc country and the Lava Beds National Monument. Since my bike trip through the park two years ago I have read a lot of the history of the Modoc Wars of 1872-1873 and of Kintpuash, the chief of the Modocs, aka Captain Jack. I highly recommend Hell With the Fire Out: A History of the Modoc Wars by Arthur Quinn if this time period and subject interest you. Kintpuash was a complex character and a reluctant hero. His story is both sad and inspirational.
Last summer's terrible fires burned through much of the park lands, including Captain Jack's Stronghold, so several park features were fenced off. Lucky for me, I got to explore the Fleener Chimneys (spatter cones and associated vertical lava conduits), Black Crater, the Merrill Ice Cave, and Petroglyph Point.
The Merrill Ice Cave sent chills up my spine. I was very hesitant to do something as crazy as to venture into a deep dark cave alone with a $2.99 LED flashlight. I waited at the entrance for about fifteen minutes, feeling around in the cave of my mind for a signal on how to proceed. That's when a carload of people showed up: Dad and two pre-teen boys, along with Mom and Grandma. The women were smart, determined to wait at the surface with the car keys while the three male humans, also sporting $2.99 LED flashlights, grimly started to descend the metal stairs that lead to the large, dark hole in the ground.
I asked if I could follow along behind them. They saw my $2.99 LED and my fairly obvious clueless malehood and waved me along. I figured that if an Albino Gollum sort of creature popped out to snack on them, I had a pretty good chance of escaping while Dad busied himself with saving his sons or at least their flashlights. I kept a safe distance just in case.
For a place that was completely unsupervised way out in the middle of charred nowhere, the railings, stairs and walkways were top-notch, heavy-duty, high-quality things you could cling to while going straight down into cold, panic-stabbing darkness. Soon I could only see the tiny bit of space in front of me that the LED mostly failed to illuminate, a smoky tube of light maybe a foot or so ahead with a radius of two inches. Not bad for $2.99. I could hear the muffled voices of the Dad and the boys somewhere way down there. Invisible voices in the dark, my favorite.
Soon a pattern developed. A metal ramp leading steeply down to a metal staircase leading really steeply down. Cold steel railing sweating and slick. Uneven overhanging ceiling hard and, like the voices, also invisible. The footing unsure. I found myself forgetting to breathe and I could no longer hear voices.
After about fifteen minutes of repeating the ramp/staircase/handrail/head bump/toe stub/gasp for breath routine, I noticed three round bobbing circles of light moving toward me from the general direction of way down below. Either the Dad and his boys were coming out or Gollum had eaten them already and he was tricking me with the LED circles. I stopped with the toe stub thing and waited to find out which one it was. That whole notion of turning around and hurrying to the surface was out of the question.
"Friend or foe?" I asked, seeking solace in what passed as humor given the circumstances.
No one laughed or otherwise answered my query.
As the lights came closer, the somewhat solemn Dad (pale, I imagined) explained that at the end of a steep staircase, they had come to a vertical tube with a metal ladder attached to one inner side, leading straight down. The two-part question that came to his and his sons' minds was this: how deep was this hole and did the ladder go all the way to the bottom of it? I understood their concern.
They had decided to scram in the up direction, muy pronto, leaving my next move entirely up to poor lonesome me. Naturally, I wanted to see Gollum's Hole in person, who wouldn't, so I hedged my way ahead to probable, if not certain doom. A couple more curving pathway/staircase sequences later, there it was. You could literally step straight into it or trip over the top ladder rung across it or simply be snatched into it and never be seen again - the hardest thing of all of the possible things to do was to stop at the end of the staircase, turn around, and using the ladder inside the hole, lower yourself backwards into oblivion. You would have to pocket your $2.99 LED flashlight and hold on to the cold clammy ladder rungs with both hands. Staring at the invisible, slippery ladder. In the dark.
Well, I did not even consider proceeding any further. Whatever impossible-to-see cave structure was down there did not hold my interest for one nano-second. Without fall protection, gloves, lights, and a minimum of three large, strong EMTs trained in Gollum warfare, I was not setting foot into that hole. I turned and began to scramble in earnest for the surface.
When I finally saw Sunlight beaming into the opening, I started to calm down. Everything was okay. I climbed out and headed straight for the Whitney Butte Trail for a few miles of normal hiking on the honest-to-God dirt. The Sun felt so great.
Peace, Love, and Personal Protective Equipment,
Jim
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