Trinity Veggie Alps

This has been a work trip and I’ve done trainings for the Cancer Detection Program in Weed, Yreka, Happy Camp and Weaverville. If you know that loop you know the I-5, Shasta dominant part of it then following the Klamath to the Trinity and back around to close the loop at Redding but you don’t know about Michael’s enthusiasm for obtaining veggie oil. This old tanker truck is currently carrying 110 gallons that he picked up along the way!

We are at the trail head for Long Valley in the Trinity Alps. Yesterday we hiked straight up for four miles until the forest parted and we were in the spring emerging meadow below the pass, surrounded by snow patched peaks and cruising clouds.
I realized why I can’t write well about our experience on the Veggie Voyage is because I don’t have a relationship with the shifting day length anymore. When you live mostly inside you miss the fawn wandering around without his mom. How he is deviled by bugs and flips his ears and tail as he wanders around on his colt legs until Sasha wakes up from her dust lair under the VV and scares him off.
It’s the little things, the strategy of the wild iris to bring bugs to itself, how the yellow lupin celebrate light against shadow, how a cloud can look like Miss Piggy onstage. I just can’t pull up the details of that long journey. I see the map and the places and it all gets blocky and stiff. (See the archives for the original story that I’m now haltingly trying to assemble into a book.)

As we did my work loop we camped at a pass above Greenhorn Park high above Yreka and the second night in a mosquito-rich glen along a feeder creek of the Trinity River. After that we camped at a boat-in camp ground along the Trinity Reservoir. The red earth of the scoured tub ring cut deep to the lake far below. Then last night we were here at this trailhead. We never saw another vehicle or another person until some souls came in this morning. Tonight we’ll be home in the heat with the laundry and unpacking and a new week staring down at us. While one should never complain about Riparia Farm it still isn’t the high country or the wild country.

Having the time to mull, to walk a very long way and feel the ache of it, to be amidst diversity and up where the dogwood is still blooming… and to get there on veggie oil. It’s a good and complete feeling. Now it’s time to go look for a swim.