San Gorgonio High

San Gorgonio Summit,
in my dreams and on the web

The highest mountain in Southern California somehow escaped the childish yearning and adult childishness that have led my boots to most of the peaks near it.  I can’t explain such an oversight, but set out last Tuesday to correct it.  The hike was also training, for both you and me—an exercise for desert happiness coming in October. 

Long before last Sunday’s storm, I requested a permit to hike the San Gorgonio Wilderness above Redlands, California.  No one could have predicted that my allowed day of entry would fall two days after the worst thunderstorm to hit those mountains in many years.  Six inches of rain fell in two hours last Sunday sending torrents down all the canyons and dry washes.

To get to the trailhead at the edge of Mill Creek, I had to drive across several outwashes of rocks and debris.  As seen in this photo, the trail ascends a hillside; but first I must cross the creek.  Imagine a dry wash two-hundred-feet wide flowing five feet deep.  That is what deposited the rocks you see in the picture.  But today at daybreak, I crossed without getting my boots wet.

Soon the steep trail entered dense brush on its way up to a ridge at ten-thousand-feet which leads to San Gorgonio Peak at 11,502 feet.  Washed out in several places, the trail was hard to find and not easy to hike where it crossed gullies and debris from Sunday’s rushing water.

High above Mill Creek, hangs a verdant valley of a creek called Vivian where monsters live.  This incense cedar might have lined your closet with boards of fragrant odor, repelling moths, had it not lived out of reach, and now protected from such incessant lusts.  

Ponderosa pines so fat and tall

the first limb two-hundred-feet above the ground

a forester’s dream

untouchable now

except by lightning, fire, and earthquake—

all minor threats indeed

Old Ponderosas and incense cedars know the pain of fire and the joy of persistence after injury.

Farther up Vivian Creek

in full morning sun, stands a group not crowded

not competing, respecting neighbors’ space

each giving its share of resistance

the group requires against the wind

What do you do

when lightning

lobs your head off?

die like the ones beside you?

or raise an arm

make a face

with your hand  

Up and up the rocky trail ascends

wounded by the storm, worn down

as the entire mountains wear in time

unless the opposition wins

the earthquake risings

that brought these mountains up

opposing erosion

Thrust up and worn down

the earth’s granite writhes

in geologic quickness

a speed we sometimes see

but usually find extinct

Lodgepole pines, you may remember, die in droves in the Rocky Mountains, so vast their demise that I called it “Fall of the Lodgepole Empire.”  But here a different subspecies does not succumb to the mountain pine beetle, does not die in youth, but grows old and gnarled in the San Gabriel Mountains.

Trees become small near timberline, on the last ridge at ten-thousand-feet, a ridge leading to the top.  I looked along it toward the summit, which was still out-of-sight behind a lesser peak.  Had I not lost the trail and not climbed over so many storm-strewn rocks and fallen trees, the clock might have shown enough time to reach the summit and return before night.  Or that might be an excuse for being too tired.  I turned back here and completed the descent before darkness.

This heady dose of wilderness was just what I needed to cause you to worry again, those of you who don’t quite understand yet.  It stilled the mind in a way productive to poetry, happiness, and a better-feeling body.

Despite having bailed out before reaching the summit, I found the experience both memorable and metaphorical.  I hiked some twelve miles of trail and washed-out trail, most of them rocky and steep, while climbing a mile in elevation, all of them beautiful to both eye and mind.

Map of the trail I hiked