green fire, the hills swimming in chloroplasts, a vibrant force of life stretching out of sight. St. Elmo, that arsonist, must have washed up on California’ s beaches and had a field day. If the mountains have their secrets, as Leopold thinks, then surely they must write them into the trees, growth rings reading like a diary of every fire, the record of every lean year, buried in the hearts of the solemn pines.
Marina, the schedule keeper, pads up behind me, her small wiry frame dappled by sunlight filtering through the needles.“ We’ re packing up and leaving, now that the sun isn’ t so high. It’ s all downhill from here.” I breathe a sigh of relief and follow behind her. Jacob is twirling his thin bandito-style mustache as he swings his long, gangly legs over his bike frame. Time to hop on the aluminium horse and stick it to California: Oregon is just through the tunnel.
Different state, different mountains. Same bloody sun. Luckily, Oregon’ s trees like to crowd right up to the road and shade it from the heat. It’ s many days later, and we’ re climbing up the Cascade range now, gaining altitude above sea level at a racing snail’ s pace. Next stop is Crater Lake National Park, which is apparently still snowed in, even on May 16. Right now we have stationed ourselves outside a gas station in Prospect, the last town before private land dissolves into National Forest. This little collection of civilization is 2,000 feet past sea level, which leaves us with 5,000 more feet to go until we’ re on top of Mount Mazuma, the mountain that preceded the explosion which created Crater Lake. To put that into perspective, humans have never built a building past the Tokyo Skytree’ s meagre 2,080 feet. Perhaps another way to think of it is that we still have 430 flights of stairs to go. I massage my calves as I think about this. After we finish gnawing the fruit that we bought inside, we hop onto our bikes with vigor and delve into the forest, passing giant trees with pinecones the size of infants.“ Do not pick up any cones,” reads a sign pinned to a tree.“ These trees are part of a genetic experiment.”
We grab three for kicks and souvenirs, and ride, giggling, up the road. At midday we reach the huge sign declaring that we are entering the national park, and we bring out a worn and crinkled map to trace our progress for the day. Thirty miles and two thousand five hundred feet closer to our lofty goals. By four in the afternoon Jacob’ s stomach begins to growl threateningly, and soon it becomes a unanimous gastro-intestinal decision to pull off at the next rest stop and make dinner. Soon the road begins to follow a huge gorge named Castle Creek, and as an outhouse appears around the corner, we park our bikes and busy ourselves with preparation for dinner. I gather firewood as Jacob lights some twigs in our hobo stove, a metal coffee can with holes poked in it for ventilation. Dinner tonight is a one-course meal – instant mashed potatoes with a can of creamed corn, eaten on the most comfortable looking log that is out of sight of the road. With a touch of garlic salt, the meal tastes passable. With a handful, it tastes like ambrosia laced with LSD. We discuss our options over and between mouthfuls of dinner. It’ s forecasted to be a cold night, and we don’ t want to set up camp in the darkness. Crater Lake will have to wait for tomorrow. That’ ll give us most of the day to enjoy it before we hightail it out to continue our thousand-mile loop that started in Seattle.
We walk to a big map near the road, temporarily abandoning the pots and bowls behind us. Marina volunteers to bike ahead to scout for campsites, and Jacob and I watch her until she’ s out of sight. As she disappears around the corner, Jacob slowly turns towards me and says,“ I think she just stuck us with the dishes.”
Sharing a chuckle, we hurry through the chores, load the bikes, and amble over the road to
Superior Surf by Jon Martin