Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.
--- John Muir
Patty and I set out to heed John Muir's well worn advice in early July, taking a gentle trail shaded by a mixture of firs and hemlocks up to the summit of Quartz Mountain, a 5,129 foot sub-summit of Mount Spokane on Washington's eastern edge. We had reserved the refurbished fire lookout on its summit for a few days to relax in comfort with a 360 degree view over parts of four states and one province.
There's just something about being on a mountain top......
For me there was the inevitable flashback to my first employment with the National Park Service as the lookout on Desolation Peak in North Cascades National Park in 1981. Arriving there after a grueling hike up the five mile trail (and an ascent of 5,000 feet) hauling a pack of 80+ pounds of food and gear, I quickly set about making it my niche. Thumbing through the NPS Handbook for Fire Lookouts (1958) I learned that:
One of the first things you should learn is the correct names and location of all topographic features and landmarks that are visible from your station. This means learning the names and location of all streams, ridges, buttes, lakes, meadows, roads, trails, old burns, clearings, or any other landmarks which may be of assistance later in determining the location of fires. Each should be definitely located on the map.
37 years later on Quartz Mountain my instinct kicked in as I giddily circled the lookout catwalk, identifying the surrounding peaks and valleys with the aid of binoculars and a printout from Peakfinder.com. The view was truly astounding on a bluebird day, early in summer before wildfires and agricultural activities dilute the clarity.
Dominating the skyline directly north was the bulk of Mount Spokane with its subalpine balding summit spiked with the detritus of communication towers. Following the azimuth of the horizon 70 degrees east I saw the glaciated peaks of Montana's Cabinet Mountains Wilderness piercing the sky above the shimmering waters of Lake Pend Oreille. Focusing in on a spot at 119 degrees southeast, I identified Idaho's Mount Pulaski, namesake of the forest ranger famed for his heroism in saving the lives of his crew in the Great Fire of 1910 and invention of the staple wildland firefighting tool. 190 degrees southwest was the conical form of Steptoe Butte, geologists' iconic isolated protrusion of Paleozoic quartzite surrounded by a sea of Mesozoic basalt. Northwest at 290 degrees the dome of Moses Mountain rose clearly above the Colville Indian Reservation nearly 100 miles away, recognizing the pragmatic Chief Sulk-stalk-scosum by his missionary-bestowed name. Closer at hand, the foothills were graced with a necklace of azure lakes -- Newman, Houser, the Twins -- sparkling in the midday brightness.
The breadth of the view from this place is due in large part to Mount Spokane's prominence and isolation. The concepts of prominence and isolation quantify the inherent significance of a mountain's presence in the form of elevation difference and distance from other mountain peaks. Mount Spokane ranks high in both measures. Rising 3,503 feet from the lowest contour line encircling it but containing no higher summit, the mountain ranks 30th in Washington for prominence. Situated over 33 miles from the nearest higher land, Mount Spokane ranks 10th in Washington for isolation. Pro tip for hikers -- peaks with high prominence and isolation tend to be the highest points around and are likely to have extraordinary views.
It all begins with the bedrock structure of Mount Spokane. The mountain is part of a larger regional structure called a metamorphic core complex. Accretion and compression of the North American cordillera in the Age of Reptiles (Mesozoic Era) thickened the Earth's crust here. Heat and pressure at a depth below the surface modified some rocks and magma melted or recrystalized others. The gravitational instability of that pile of material ultimately resulted in the lateral spread of the lump, peeling back the layers to reveal the deeply metamorphosed rocks at the core of the pile. The most dramatic representation of that pulling apart episode is the Purcell Trench to our east. The trench, bounded by faults, extends from Coeur d'Alene north into British Columbia where it merges with the even more massive Rocky Mountain Trench trending north all the way to the Yukon.
The prominence and isolation of our perch atop Quartz Mountain Lookout made it the perfect place for hours of "arm-waving geology" as a former geology professor termed it. This spot sits near a significant nexus in the geologic story of North America. Named the Pacific Cordilleran Orogenic Margin, it represents the edge of the continent prior to the accretion of numerous fragments of crustal material (terranes) that originated on other parts of the Earth, brought into place by the inexorable march of the planet's crustal plates. Eastward from here---the old rocks of the ancient continent, westward--the new frontier of bits and pieces of rocks from all over, under our feet--a mountain split open under its own weight.
The rocks underfoot (Newman Lake Orthogneiss) reveal some of the story too--a close inspection reveals crystals of mica in a foliated pattern indicative of the metamorphic pressures the rocks underwent at great depth below the surface. The lookout's name gives a big hint about its story--before this parcel was folded into Mount Spokane State Park, the now-reclaimed quarry here yielded 50 million tons of quartz silica for industrial purposes. Another mineral of consequence in these rocks is uranium-bearing autunite. Just outside the park boundary below the lookout, the Mudhole Prospect was a source for museum-quality specimens and the Daybreak Uranium Mine just west of the park produced over 13,000 tons of ore at 0.25% uranium oxide in the 1950's cold war uranium boom.
All of this information and data just served to bind me even closer to the place. I had never been here before, yet within a few hours of arrival, scanning the view, making connections to the landscape, I developed a sense of belonging in the landscape.
In A Reenchanted World, James W Gibson details the lives of people preserving or rediscovering spiritual connections with nature. Quoting Marx and Engels' observation that "all that is holy is profaned" by industrialization, Gibson poses a question: cutting down a grove of trees to produce lumber for housing construction and profit can be seen as a rational act, but what if the grove is inhabited by forest spirits who would be destroyed, with consequences for the destroyers? Gibson's treatise focuses on people such as John Muir, whose writings evoked the sanctity of wild places, and prompted others to see them as sacred too.
Perhaps by quantifying the prominence and isolation of mountains, we are only trying to recapture their holiness, distilled into numbers and concepts that fit in to our modern capitalist paradigm.
For us, our days atop Quartz Mountain were a revitalizing respite, filled with re-connections to wildness and to each other.
--David
Geologic block diagram courtesy of Spokane County Parks, Recreation and Golf Department