Waypoint 2.1: To Gain the Wider View
From Chapter 2, The Soul's Ascent
“Expectations are the greatest impediment to living. In anticipation of tomorrow, we lose today.”
— Seneca
The fresh fall air of mid-September — for fall does begin early at this elevation, now more than 9,000 feet above the Central Valley floor — was crisp, cool, and it grew slightly thinner with our tortoise-slow ascent.
Already enthusiasm had worn thin as a butterfly’s wings — powdery, delicate, easily torn. Still we climbed.
The whitebark pines grew thinner, scattered, patchy, twisted. They had endured stoically many a season’s deep snows, many a ritual burial, and many a discontented winter’s longing for spring’s rebirth.
Another switchback, and presently our patience stretched nearly to a snap. After our long journey to get here, my son’s imagination grew for a moment thin, and he proclaimed the trail to be “boring.”
The trail had not lifted this young kite so high as his idealized expectations. He had been strung tight with expectation, like a kite anticipating some divine gale or gust to lift him to new heights. But such airy expectations are thinner than a lunar breeze, insubstantial as any Platonic shadow, and incompatible with any apprehension of real and present beauty.
But it wasn’t only my son’s expectations that tugged at the future. We had all been fixated on the summit — and in that fixation, we nearly missed the moment beneath our feet.
The lesson, perhaps, is not that we must lower our expectations, but that we must climb above them. And so we did — to gain the wider view.
More than half way up to the peak, we began to notice now and then a stray California Tortoiseshell Butterfly, or Nymphalis californica, as the Latinate precision of scientific English would have us call them, when we’re in our more elevated and scientific moods.
Others, more down to earth, prefer to call these little nectar-loving nymphs “Torties” — another Latinate whisper.
Airy words, like butterflies, float and migrate.
As it turns out, our party had missed the mass migration of these kites by only a week or so, when millions of them, often mistaken for monarchs, had caught high western winds over the Sierras and Cascades.
Each year, in late summer, kaleidoscopes allow themselves to be lifted to Lassen Peak, where they fly from eye level, up to the tops of trees, driven by hunger, and the search for a place to overwinter. Getting caught in a flurry is almost mystical: The volcanic grey peak flitters a fall-pumpkin gold.
The Torty’s wing-tops glow all a-golden, bright like life’s fire, complete with black spots and dark borders. Their bottoms resemble dead and fallen leaves.
One side always entails the other.
Their wings lie with evolutionary cunning, unintentionally confessing a mortal truth. Deception helps them survive — to mate in May, and complete the circle.
Of course, not all escape predation. The ravens who circle on this high-altitude wind keep the evolutionary pressure on. These black-winged messengers welcome the migrating flurries -- fluttering morsels, skyborne offerings.
But California’s air carries more than corvids and butterflies. It carries the breath, the memory, and the layered spirit of its many histories. It carries the fire-lit myths of first peoples — the incantations whispered long before the conquistadors offered their first prayer on California’s Diablo winds.
These winds still carry stories: some in Yokuts and Chumash, some in Latin hymns, and others borne northward on old Nahuatl winds — all layered in smoke and song.
Borders are fickle things.
Even California’s capital whispers the secrets of its colonial past: Sacramento — the Spanish word for sacrament — carries a faint echo of sacrifice and the Last Supper.
Header image: Tortoiseshell migration at Lassen Volcanic National Park, 2005. By DotPolka (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
🥾 What’s your “mountain trail” story?
Tell me about a time you were chasing a goal — only to realize the real gift was something unplanned, halfway up the climb.
Comment below! I’d love to hear from you.
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