4 wheeling

Yesterday, we wanted to visit friends up at Panther Meadows on Mount Shasta. But, on the way I asked my friends if it would be okay to go to McGinnis Springs where I had sweat with a medicine man that my friend and I had studied with in the early 1980s long ago now. They thought it would be a good idea because this is a very pristine area and without a truck or 4 wheel drive most people don't go there over the volcanic dusty dirt roads and rocks. Also, the first part of the dirt road at 7 mile curve on Everitt Memorial hiway out of Mt. Shasta is also a part of the last part of the Bunny Flats to 7 mile curve I like to ski sometimes in the Winter. It is a several mile run usually available with enough snow (you need about 5 feet) from January often through about May (but not this year) because they had early snows but early meltoff because there weren't enough late snows to maintain it late in the year.

So, we drove to McGinnis Springs. My friend said, "Hey. Do you want to walk overland to Wagon Camp meadows?" I thought about it and finally said "Yes." He said, "A Tibetan Lama has built a Tibetan Stupa there as well. I was pretty surprised about this but knew if my friend said it it was true. So, when we made it to wagon Camp meadow sure enough there was a Tibetan Stupa which reminded me of many I had seen in Nepal high in the Himalayas while trekking there with a backpack with my 3 older kids and now ex-wife in 1986. A Tibetan STupa is a cement structure usually painted white or near white and about 9 feet high usually containing the ashes of one or more Tibetan Lamas who are conscious reincarnations coming back to bless all mankind. It is a similar idea to bone relics from Catholic Saints that are put into the larger Catholic churches of the World to bless everyone that comes there. So, I felt the stupa before I even saw it and when I saw it it was a very amazing experience to see this with Tibetan Flags hung from it in such a remote place on Mt. Shasta. I did the traditional prayer form of walking around it clockwise while praying three times as is traditional throughout the Himalayan Regions of Nepal, Tibet and Northern India and some other regions around the Himalayas.

After this my friend wanted to visit his mother's ashes by driving up a dirt road that quickly became more of a 4 wheel driving road. At times I had to shift into 4 wheel drive low range which allows me to travel at 1 mile per hour or less over really rough stretches without damaging my truck. This was really fun for me because even though I often go into  4 wheel drive high range in the snow during ski season up here on Mt. Shasta or Lake Tahoe area, I hadn't had a reason to go into low range before. Soon, we were up to the desert which has Panther Meadows Creek running down into it. So, we walked over to the creek to cool down and I walked around the "Desert" barefoot and felt my feet healing from the experience. Just being on Mt. Shasta is for me a very spiritually and physically healing experience almost always when I come to this mountain physically. The road had finally completely ended about a mile from panther meadows because big Shasta Red Fir trees had fallen across the dirt road within the last 10 or 20 years too big to move without a large chainsaw. So, we parked there and walked over to the Panther Creek running out of Panther meadows about a mile up on the mountain from where we were. We also, could look up to Grey Butte which has a road to the top of that site as well from the back. I used to ride my off road motorcycle up there in the 1980s sometimes. So, many of these dirt roads I had ridden alone on my 1974 Honda 250 XL which was a great dualsport bike of that era in the 1970s and 1980s there around Mt. Shasta.

I was pretty tired by the time we got back to the paved road as 4 wheeling takes a lot of concentration so you don't lose your vehicle in some places where rocks are partially blocking the road and you might be in danger of rolling your 4 wheel drive off a precipice sideways. So, I seat belted up for that portion of the road and told my two passengers to get out for safety. But, it was very beautiful out there so remote on Mt. Shasta both at McGinnis Springs where I first went into a Native American Sweat Lodge all the way up to the 4 wheel drive roads we slowly drove over at slow speeds of 1 mile per hour or less in low range.