MOUNT RAINIER CALLS JOHN MUIR, ME, AND YOU TOO

 

“The mountains are calling and I must go,” said John Muir.

If go you must, then go prepared.

Most important is going with the right people. Or person.

It’s not a marriage, but there are some similarities with a good travel partner.

Can you take it if they make fun of your driving? Make fun of you food choices? Have a hard time changing plans?

If you have a few hundred thousand miles under your wheels, work on a healthy diet, and live life more on the spontaneous side, so should your fellow traveler.

The second most important thing is your destination.

In an announcement to the rest of the travel hardy world of adventure, if the mountains call, answer.

Unfortunately you’ll get a short call from Mt. Rainier

It used to be 75,000 feet tall, or 16,000 feet tall 75,000 years ago?

The answer isn’t 75,000 feet tall which made me look silly explaining that new information to glazed over faces.

People looked at me like I was crazy when I said Mount Rainier was once almost three times taller than Mt. Everest.

It’s not. What it does have is topographic prominence. Instead of s small uplift, Mount Rainier dominates the skyline in terrifying splendor.

This mountain feels ready to fall on travelers from every vantage point, ready to reach out and get them.

“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine into trees.”

Mount Rainier is hard to miss, but just in case.

The closer you get, the more deadly this mountain feels.

We in the Northwest long enough know the deadly mountain st0ry.

Mt. St. Helens told one in 1980. A few of them, but the first blast got fifty seven non-believers.

Do not camp on an active volcano. I’ve know that since the first time I saw Bird of Paradise with Dolores Del Rio and Joel McCrea.

Hawaii doesn’t have campsites near flowing lava for the same reason. It’s not hot mud to wash off.

People melt in lava.

Even at this distance Mount Rainier look lethal.

Here’s one route of destruction:

This is a channel of mud flows from the low bridge.

From this gentle beginning Mount Rainier rises.

“How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains! To behold this alone is worth the pains of any excursion a thousand times over.”

I shared the mountain with a few others.

They felt like a Grand Canyon crowd, a Sedona group, one that shows up on a bus, grabs a memory, and goes.

Not a John Muir romantic in the lot of them? Maybe.

“I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.”

Driving up to Paradise and finding the American flag flying high?

Perfect.

“This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor ever rising.”

If you support the efforts of boomerpdx and other bloggers getting out for the story, the post, the experience, they’ll do more of it.

Me? I’ll keep going. I find it too fascinating to stop.

From the Rocky Steps in Philadelphia to the John Muir Steps in Paradise, the message is clear.

Step up and move.

Get out in it and drag as many people along as you can.

They’ll thank you later…or never speak to you again.

Be sure and pack a wide angle lens for the John Muir Steps on Mount Rainier.

By the time you leave Mount Rainier National Park you’ll have seen the drama of Yosemite, the depths of the Grand Canyon.

And you’ll get away with the sense of ducking a bullet.

That mountain looks hungry.