Dawn on Mt Shasta

When you wake up before dawn in a motel room on your way home, there's not much else to do than get up, get dressed and hit the road. But wait, there is one essential stop first--coffee. Ashland boasts an excellent coffee place called Noble Coffee. The beans are roasted on the premises in full view of the customers inside and passers-by on the street. I've put pictures of the window lined roasting room and the "latte art" on top of my coffee in Blipfolio.

The drive between Ashland and Mt Shasta City in Siskiyou County is like slipping into another existence, a time warp sometimes found in isolated high desert country like this. But there is always the imposing bulk of Mt Shasta, rising 14,180 feet above the wooded hills to the south and the brush covered high desert plain to the north. This morning, ground mist rising to meet the dawn sky, the effect of the mountain, almost completely bare of snow, was somehow both lonely and ethereal, compelling and evocative of the sacred regard in which it is held by the native people.

The northernmost counties of California are sparsely populated, wide open, and havens for survivalists, evangelists, extremists, adventurers, crackpots, opportunists. and towns with names like Weed. Gazing across the deserted brush strewn fields, dotted occasionally by a barn or a farmhouse, it is not difficult to imagine shootouts standoffs and showdowns. There's not enough cover to grow pot, not enough soil to support farm crops, not enough grazing for cattle and not enough money to go around. There's not much regard for the establishment and a strong movement to withdraw and form a new "State of Jefferson".

The row of jewel tone painted snow removal trucks parked in a corporation yard by the highway is a reminder that modern day life goes on....