Poetry on the Peaks

Mt. Shasta

John Muir on Mt. Ritter

After scanning its face again and again,
I began to scale it, picking my holds
With intense caution. About half-way
To the top, I was suddenly brought to
A dead stop, with arms outspread
Clinging close to the face of the rock
Unable to move hand or foot
Either up or down. My doom
Appeared fixed. I MUST fall.
There would be a moment of
Bewilderment, and then,
A lifeless rumble down the cliff
To the glacier below. My mind seemed to fill with a
Stifling smoke. This terrible eclipse
Lasted only a moment, when life blazed
Forth again with preternatural clearness.
I seemed suddenly to become possessed
Of a new sense. My trembling muscles
Became firm again, every rift and flaw in
The rock was seen as through a microscope,
My limbs moved with a positiveness and precision
With which I seemed to have
Nothing at all to do.

Gary Syder
The Gary Snyder Reader (Norton)
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Mount Shasta is the dominant mountain of Northern California, and is the second highest mountain in the entire Cascade range, behind Mount Rainier (14,410 ft.). It is a dormant volcanic cone, rising in isolation to a summit that is 7,000 feet above tree line, with a young smaller volcano emerging on its western flank. Its five glaciers descend from its upper northern and eastern slopes. There have been no certain historical eruptions, although an eruption in 1786, witnessed from sea, is generally believed today to have been Mount Shasta.

Also of interest, Tule Lake, located roughly sixty miles northeast of the mountain, provides refuge to the largest concentration of migratory waterfowl on the North American continent. The nearest town is Mt.Shasta City.

Mt. Shasta

The reading on Mt. Shasta was conducted by Yasmin Uribe, Glenna Luschei, and Tom Luschei reading from Solo 4.

Gary Snyder was born on May 8, 1930 in San Francisco, California. Snyder received a degree in literature and anthropology from Reed College in 1951. After briefly studying linguistics at Indiana University, he completed three years of graduate work in Asian languages at the University of California at Berkeley. He also worked on the docks in San Francisco, read Buddhist philosophy and wrote poetry. During the 1950's Snyder became involved with the San Francisco Beat movement. After Snyder and Jack Kerouac climbed Matterhorn Peak in the northern Sierra Nevada, Kerouac used Snyder as the model for Japhy Ryder, the itinerant mountain-climbing poet of Dharma Bums (1958), a man who took his Zen practice beyond the confines of formal study. In 1956 Snyder moved to Japan. For 12 years he studied Rinzai Zen Buddhism, worked as a researcher and translator of Zen texts, and traveled throughout Asia, including a 6 month sojourn in India where he met the Dalai Lama in 1962. He also worked for 9 months in the engine room of a tanker visiting various ports in the Pacific and the Persian Gulf. In 1969 Snyder returned to the United States and settled on the mountain farmstead in the northern Sierra foothills where he lives today. Snyder has published 16 books of poetry and prose. Turtle Island received a Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1975.