Falling Through the Ice. John D. Hiestand
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the expansive fields and farms, heading straight for the Blue Mountains in the distance. I spotted a Conoco station near Hermiston, and we got off the freeway to gas up the car and get a little snack. We sat for a few moments at the picnic table chained to the concrete alongside the little store, and soaked up a little sunshine while we ate our doughnuts. Finally Alan spoke.
“You certainly got quiet there for a while. Too much Zen for an early morning car ride?”
“Too much past. When you start wandering around on one path from way back when, it’s hard not to find yourself looking down others.”
“We agreed we’d only talk about stuff that can explain to me your puzzling new career in ministry, so I don’t want to hear about paths that lead to all the girls you chased in your misspent youth.”
“Ah, but there must be something deeply spiritual about chasing girls?”
“Well, in your case it would probably be a pretty short chase. So, c’mon; were you really thinking about girls that whole time?”
“Actually, I was thinking about forests and mountains. All of that stuff involving Zen happened in our home in Los Altos, but we had another home in the mountains where I spent all or part of every summer until I was in my thirties. Since I never practiced Zen, I would have to say that it is in those mountains that I had my first real, tangible experiences with the spiritual world.”
“Cool!” Alan exclaimed. “Let’s hit the road, and you can tell me all about it!”
We climbed back into the car and sped east towards Pendleton. I found myself again on another journey I had taken repeatedly as a child, and I wistfully wondered if there was any other metaphor that could be used for my life, but couldn’t immediately come up with one. Life on the road, I guess. It seemed like an appropriate place to start, anyway.
“If you travel up Hwy. 108 for about thirty miles east out of Sonora in California’s Gold Country, you’ll see a turn off marked for Pinecrest Lake. Drive another mile down this road, and you will suddenly burst upon the shores of a blue-green jewel set in a bowl surrounded by pine and cedar forests and a backdrop of dramatic Sierra granite. In 1957, when I was 1 1/2 years old, my father rented a cabin on Pinecrest Lake for a two week vacation for himself and his young family. Thus began for me an association with Pinecrest that lasted thirty-two years, and a lifelong relationship with the sacred beauty and power of creation.
“Pinecrest Lake is a misnomer: it’s actually a reservoir, which was constructed in 1914 to provide water for downstream communities and serve as a control dam for the hydroelectric plants located farther along the south fork of the Stanislaus River. Before being dammed, the river ran through a meadow that was used in the summer by the Miwok Indians, and was covered in several feet of snow during the winters. The road into the lake ends at the western shore: a sandy beach area that is the remnant of the glacial moraine, the effluvia left over from the glacier that carved through the surrounding granite to form the valley now filled with pent up water from the spring runoff. Looking out east from the beach you would see most of the small three hundred acre lake, and towering over the far shore the dominant feature of the area: a thousand foot wall of granite, sheared away by those ancient glaciers, looming over the lake. I don’t know what this feature is officially called; we referred to it simply as Little Yosemite, and it’s a powerful testament to the primal forces unleashed during earth’s formation.
“The Forest Service allowed cabins to be built along the shores of the lake, and eventually a lodge and marina grew up at the end of the road on the western shore. A unique feature of the cabins built on the lake is that nearly all of them were (and still are) inaccessible by road. The only way to reach these cabins was either by boat or by hiking in along the lakeshore trail. The trail wound close to the lake, which was surrounded by forests of mixed conifers and the occasional aspen grove near the water, and interspersed on the steep hillsides with granite outcroppings. Cabins further east along the north and south shores were consequently quite isolated, a condition that was amplified in the winter when boating was not possible on the frozen lake and the lakeshore trail became treacherous. The Stanislaus river entered the lake at the east end, and a dusty trail ran along the south shore of the river, passing through a Boy Scout camp until it dumped out into a granite and scrub valley beneath Little Yosemite called—you guessed it—the Boy Scout valley.
“In 1957 Dad rented a place on the South Shore that was the last one reachable by road, then for the next two summers he rented a different cabin on the North Shore that was not reachable by road, which allowed him the excuse to purchase what he really wanted anyway: a brand new yellow speedboat with a Johnson outboard motor. Finally, in the fall of 1960, Dad purchased our cabin at 204 Lakeshore Trail. The cabin was just a few cabins down from the one owned by Win and Helen Wagener, who had introduced us to Pinecrest at about the same time they were introducing Mom to Zen. Now, instead of spending two week vacations at the lake, the entire summer was spent there. We would pack up and leave our home in Los Altos as soon as school let out in June and drive across California to the lake. These trips across the Central Valley were epic, and I particularly remember the fruit and vegetable stands along the dusty farm roads; but even more notable was the A&W root beer stand in Oakdale where we would always beg Mom and Dad to pleeeeeease stop. We would stay at the lake all summer until Labor Day and the beginning of school. Dad stayed in Los Altos during the week to work, and would drive up and stay with us at the cabin over the weekends.
“It would be a gross understatement to call these summers at Pinecrest idyllic. I spent three months of every year as a child wandering around in a mountain paradise, mostly unsupervised and unrestrained. I frequently had friends come up and stay a week or two and we spent most of our time sailing, swimming, hiking, and reading the paperbacks that Mom always brought along for our ‘down’ times. My Uncle Bill and Aunt Maggie were also frequent guests, along with their three daughters, my cousins. It was a place of family bonding just as if we were a normal middle class family. There was no television, and radio reception was iffy at best, so we spent hours playing Scrabble or Monopoly. The cabin had enough amenities to keep us comfortable—electricity, a phone, running water (usually) and indoor plumbing—but was isolated enough to keep us cut off from the outside world unless we actively sought it out by going over to the lodge.”
“You were a privileged kid!” Alan exclaimed. “Not many people got that kind of experience.”
“Yeah. I was privileged, though I didn’t know it at the time. Most of my attention was focused on goofing off and having fun, yet I was aware even at an early age of a sacred presence around me. Today I would call Pinecrest a thin place, a phrase used in the Celtic tradition to describe those regions where God’s presence is palpable. It’s a place that exudes mystery and divinity, and I had experiences that underscored that sense every time we went to Pinecrest.
“Along with my brothers and sister, or with a friend, we would often take hikes from our cabin around to the east end of the lake and up into the Boy Scout Valley. The trail in the valley scoots along the south bank of the river, which is dry and dusty, winding between gently sloping granite slabs. Along the north bank of the river, and visible from the trail, lies a green and lush meadow, dotted with aspen groves and teeming with birds, squirrels, and other wildlife. We were always separated from this meadow by the river, so my unrequited desire to walk those green pastures helped to magnify its mystery. I was convinced that it was the Garden of Eden and that God lived there. I have no idea how I even had heard of the Garden of Eden in my Zen/atheist home, but I could sense a sacred presence even if I couldn’t really articulate it. Finally, as a teenager, my friend Jim and I managed to cross the river and enter the mysterious meadow. I assumed, as we waded across the depleted river, that I would be disappointed and would discover nothing more than a mountain meadow. But as we climbed the bank and crossed the meadow into one of its aspen groves, I was struck hard by the thought that God really did live here! The previously imagined sacred presence became real and palpable as we quietly listened to the quaking of the aspen leaves and smelled the fecund dampness of the meadow floor. The rotting carcasses of fallen trees provided ample sustenance for the grasses and flowers of the meadow, as well as cover for beavers, squirrels and a myriad of other wildlife. The mixture of sugar pines and aspens provided safe haven for hundreds of