The Upper Panther Meadows is located on Mount Shasta (4322m), towards the end of the metallic road leading to the summit trail, on the tallest mountain in Siskiyou County, Northern California. The meadow is fed from spring-water arising from Panther Spring, in the upper reaches of the volcanic slopes where it emerges at source from the snow-clad slopes of the mountain. As spring beckons, the weather warms and the summer flowers bloom unashamedly.
On the day that my family and I were there, the snow had just been cleared and the roads re-opened a week earlier for that brief summer interlude. This was in early August, well into the height of the northern hemispheric summer.
Why was it magical? Could it be merely collateral mysticism from the none-religious New-Age ‘spiritual’ label pinned onto the place by naturalistic believers?
I would say the place was a delight because it was a breathe of surprise, of freshness and life, a surprise amidst the predictable brown cinders of volcanic monuments at higher altitudes, on a hot dry North American summer, as we increasingly experience them. An unexpected joy.
As we ventured along the narrow stone-paths that demarcate the boundaries for homo sapiens to leave nature undisturbed, one can only burst into anthems of alt-religious spirituality that such natural beauty can only inspire:
Spirit of God (Miriam Therese Winter)
Spirit of God in the clear running water
Blowing to greatness the trees on the hill.
Spirit of God in the finger of morning:
Fill the earth, bring it to birth,
And blow where you will.
Blow, blow, blow till I be
But the breath of the Spirit blowing in me.
Down in the meadow the willows are moaning
Sheep in the pastureland cannot lie still.
Spirit of God, creation is groaning:
Fill the earth, bring it to birth,
And blow where you will.
Blow, blow, blow till I be
But the breath of the Spirit blowing in me.
I saw the scar of a year that lay dying
Heard the lament of a lone whippoorwill.
Spirit of God, see that cloud crying:
Fill the earth, bring it to birth,
And blow where you will.
Blow, blow, blow till I be
But the breath of the Spirit blowing in me.
Spirit of God every man’s heart is lonely
Watching and waiting and hungry until
Spirit of God, man longs that you only
Fulfill the earth, bring it to birth,
And blow where you will.
Blow, blow, blow till I be
But the breath of the Spirit blowing in me.