It was better than anticipated.

Dust and Tribe puts a lot of time into thinking about, building, and facilitating wilderness itineraries that function to bring believing people into connection with creation. This is the best way we know to inspire respect, love, and reverence for our Creator.

These are outdoor adventures with a number of variables well outside any illusion of control. We’re pretty good at rolling with the punches, and we generally expect to get punched.

By God’s Grace and Facility, there were no big hits. Just good times with great people across a volcanic wonderland.

D&T Kin: Wheels of Fire! was this year’s summer family roadcamp, a week-long car-camping experience through the Cascade Range, taking us through the volcanic geology and history of the Pacific Northwest. There were just over 20 of us traveling as a caravan of adventure seekers, each with an awareness of where we would start and end our day, but with the freedom to choose how to spend the time in between. Considering the weather, road conditions, trail status, and participant autonomy, there was little more than trust and whatever camaraderie we could build keeping us together.

And together we stayed, marveling at the magnificent and dynamic landscape that told a dramatic story of friction, heat, pressure, fertility and rebirth.

Our first stop was Lassen National Park, an encounter with the steaming fumaroles and roiling mudpots that hinted at the turmoil bubbling just beneath the wild country’s surface. Frozen lakes and persistent snow at elevation limited our hiking opportunities, but we were able to picnic on a picturesque overlook before continuing to our campsite for the night.

From Lassen, we headed for Mount Shasta, stopping in the hamlet of Dunsmuir. The little town is remarkable for a municipal water supply that passes through the lava layers of the Shasta Cascades, obviating any further need for filtration or treatment. We drank from local fountains before coming together for a day hike to Hedge Creek Falls.

Waterfalls were abundant throughout our journey. Indeed, it is the ubiquity of waterfalls throughout the area that gives the Cascade Range its name. The uneasy and complimentary partnership of fire and water in the shaping of this most inspiring of landscapes could be seen everywhere.

Mount Shasta is an iconic peak, a place of lore and legends. We met a couple who told us about the lost continent of Lemuria, its residents tall and regal, their crystalline capital of Telos located just under the surface of the mountain. Some have described Mount Shasta as a new-age Mecca, drawing seekers from around the world to discover her secrets, whether supernatural, historical, or elemental.

Our next stop was Oregon’s Crater Lake, the deepest freshwater lake in America and one of the most pristine on earth. It was formed after the cataclysmic eruption of Mount Mazama. The ejection of lava from her magma chamber resulted in the collapsing of her dome, creating a vast crater that has since been filled with nearly 2000 feet of snowmelt, rain, and glacial runoff. The lack of inlets minimizes the intrusion of coarse foreign sediments allowing for remarkable clarity and a deep blue, almost indigo hue. We drove around the crater’s rim before stopping for lunch at a trailhead that allowed some of us to hike down to the water for something of a volcanic baptism.

We spent the night in the Umpqua National Forest before making our way to Silver Falls State Park and the Trail of Ten Falls. This was a full day of hiking from waterfall to waterfall, some streaming in ribbons over rock, others cascading over caves eroded into the granite walls over centuries, and many offering the opportunity to venture behind the falls for a unique vantage point from the other side of the streaming froth.

Our next destination was the site of the most recent eruption in the lower 48 states, Mount Saint Helens. All were taken by the fresh sylvan landscape with its verdant, young forests and meadows dotted with wildflowers. Only 43 years ago, this was a Martian hellscape, obliterated by the apocalyptic spewing of rock and ash from the mountain, an event that ended at least 57 lives.

Our final stop was Washington’s North Cascades National Park, among the least visited parks in America with about 30,000 people stopping by every year. By way of comparison, Yosemite sees about 3.5 million annual visitors. The turquoise waters of Lake Diablo and the alpen vistas of the park’s interior were perhaps the highlight of our week in the wilderness.

Our itinerary took us through towns big and small, and we enjoyed stopping at quaint little coffee shops to sample local roasts and pastries along the way. There are some truly great cafe’s hidden beneath the shadows of the Cascades.

In the evenings we would gather for conversation and reflection. Among the participants was a woman who, struck by the beauty of the landscape, was challenged to realize the violence and destruction that brought it all into being, “I’m used to thinking about God’s Mercy, but His Might and Terror is something that is everywhere apparent.”

Lassen’s last eruption event took place over a three-year period spanning 1914 to 1917. Mount Saint Helens blew out her dome in 1980. Geologists tell us that we can expect an eruption somewhere in the Cascades about once or twice every century. From this we learn that a dormant volcano is not dead.

Rather, our volcanoes are sleeping and will wake.

Even now, steam rises from vents as liquid rock bubbles up from deep inside Mount Saint Helens as she rebuilds her devastated dome. Tectonic plates converge and slip over and under one another generating nearly unimaginable levels of friction and pressure, reducing the rock to molten magma where it collects in chambers deep under the earth, rising bit by inevitable bit.

We carry on with our lives, blissfully ignorant of the forces that conspire even in this moment to destroy us and everything we’ve built.

O believers! Whoever among you abandons their faith, God will replace them with others who love Him and are loved by Him. They will be humble with the believers but firm towards the disbelievers, struggling in the Way of God; fearing no blame from anyone. This is the favor of God. He grants it to whoever He wills. And God is All-Bountiful, All-Knowing.

Q5:54

Truly, there is no safety except through Him.

And this is why we gather. This is why we call to others, inviting all to join us, to bear witness to His Might and Mercy, to leverage our legacy as nomads and outlanders, to travel together as a caravan of light as we ponder and pray in these places.

We thank God for keeping us safe, returning us to our families, and for giving us a forum to share our experience.

We’ve got a few spots left for our Desolation Wilderness backpacking trip! Looking forward to seeing you out there, insha Allah.

---

Leave a comment below for posterity or join us in the D&T Chautaqua Discord to discuss this post with other adventurous spirits from around the world.