by Gwagwagwe
As we learned and lived within this place, amongst these gods, an adventure with deep history presented itself to us. Among the deep canyons and dark green rivers of this place leaver people, the Yurok, Tolowa Hoopa, crossed these great mountains for generations. Trading, evolving, enacting the stories of mankind for a lifetime of the species. Here the shamans traveled many miles to visit the difference that we shall speak of. The trail is a hidden rock path at the end of a superhighway going nowhere. It’s switchback entry, hidden in groves of hemlock and Doug-fir. As you reach what takers have called Peak 8, the majesty of this place, these gods becomes apparent. Nestled between two mountainsides is a 600 ft boulder, so great it must have shook the ground for hundreds of miles. This monster, dripping and stained black and green from years of snow and moss, is Bad Medicine. A place to think evil of your enemy, and enact a mystery a thousand years old. And one thousand feet above sits it’s sister, towering eight hundred feet above the mountain top sit Doctor Rock, we don’t now either leaver title, but we know each can be seen from the other and above the mountain, around its jagged treacherous walkway, you find ancient burning platforms, and rock piles. Each with a meaning we may never again understand. Burrowing yellow jackets and thickets of spines guards the path to Doctor rock, it’s precipice cleaved by a huge cave, large enough to consume a hundred men. This is one place, created by one angry god, who sits and broods over his broken mountain, and it’s duality of meaning. For the bison to call home, at least for a little while.
Thanks you manzanita, huckleberry, oak, thimbleberry, gray squirrel, white crane, kingfisher, American dipper, brother yellow jacket, fox, raven, and eagle people for keeping us company, offering their lives for our nourishment, and entering our dreams.