Indian Head is a prominent landmark visible from virtually every corner of northern California’s Indian Valley. Above, Indian Head as seen from a valley apple orchard. Photo © Jane Braxton Little.
Alaska’s Chugach National Forest
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From a distance, the outline of California’s Keddie Ridge looks like the profile of a sleeping man. According to Mountain Maidu Indian legend, the rocky brow, prominent nose and craggy chin belong to Worldmaker, who lay down to rest when he finished creating the earth. From my perch on the tip of his granite snout, it’s easy to see why Worldmaker was tired. His work is a spectacle of timbered mountains and lush valleys radiating out from the spot where the Sierra Nevada meets the Cascade Range. In the valley 4,000 feet below me, Indian Creek meanders southwest through a grassy meadow before plunging down a canyon to join the Feather River, the Sacramento River and the sea. The hummocky heaps of Sierra Buttes are a faint hodgepodge on the horizon southeast of Mount Hough. Twisting a little on my roost, I can see Lake Almanor, a sheet of blue stretched across the base of Lassen Peak. Worldmaker’s feet must be buried out there in the lava rocks where the great tilted Sierra block disappears under the much younger Cascades. Mount Shasta is farther north, covered in the clouds that flit over the volcanic craters beginning their fiery arc around the Pacific Rim. A California tortoiseshell butterfly flutters past me, an astonishing bright orange presence on this barren gray outcropping. A bald eagle catches a thermal above the rocks to the west, circling higher and higher in the chicory-blue sky. The wind delivers the faint rumble of a Burlington Northern locomotive lumbering up Wolf Creek canyon toward Westwood, Bieber and Klamath Falls. Climbing Keddie Ridge onto the Indian’s nose is an annual ritual, an escape that requires little planning and no permits. Most of the twelve-mile ridge is federal land, Lassen National Forest to the north, Plumas National Forest to the south. Only a gravel road enters the edge of this 5,000-acre roadless area, and the U.S. Forest Service plans to close it to protect sacred sites where the Maidu train their spiritual healers. The only trail that leaves the road descends to Homer Lake, then skirts along the south shore through a thicket of deer brush and waist-high corn lilies. Past Homer Lake, the trail hugs a steep slope with heart-stopping glimpses of Walker Lake and Mountain Meadows Reservoir 3,000 feet below. Pacific fishers and American martens live among the conifers and manzanita, but I have never seen either one. Down the trail, a spring gushes out of a fern-shaded cleft in the hillside, spilling clear water onto flat rocks surrounded by delicate columbines and golden monkey flowers. In August, the air here is sweet with the hint of gooseberries, spine-coated fruits that can be turned into a tangy pink jelly, well worth the pain of the picking. The trail leads on to Hidden Lake, a round and rock-rimmed jewel where I led my kids on their earliest hikes and ventured alone on my first solo backpack. Today I ignore the trail and head up the slope through a stand of sugar pines and Douglas-fir. Crunching over patches of snow stained pink with algae, I zigzag between clumps of scarlet fritillary, bright red Indian paintbrush and the last of the lavender spring shooting stars. When the trees give way to rocks, the trip becomes more of a scramble than a hike. I wink at bits of ginger-colored lichen glinting from the rocks mere inches from my face, grateful for the distraction. A Clark’s nutcracker scolds me at eye level from the top of a pine tree whose roots are 200 feet below. After the final ten-yard clamber over weather-polished boulders, I rest in the sun on the peak, eyes closed. The ground sends a comforting warmth through my legs. The butterfly pauses on my knee. I wonder if the ancient Indian asleep beneath me feels this same peace. A stone shifts near my boot. Is it Worldmaker stirring? Maidu elders say that when he awakens, it will mark the end of our time on earth. |