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COPYRIGHT 2003 Ehlert Publishing Group
Spring has sprung. Greenness is everywhere. But don't be fooled. This is not the Anderson Valley. Rather this is another place known as Big Valley, located on the mile-high plains of Northeast California.
Out my kitchen window 60 miles to the southwest is Mount Lassen, an 11,000-foot volcano that's even more ominous than Shasta because Lassen went off in 1927. A few old-timers remember the carpet of ash and they say the hay crop was particularly good that year. That's the Nietzsche deal with hay that grows in the high mountain valleys of northeastern California where winter can be six months long and where the hardpan has broken many a plowshare; what doesn't kill it makes it stronger.
Right now in early April, however, the mountain looks anything but hot. In fact, it looks like a white half-buried axe blade with plenty of winter still frozen on it--the roads definitely not rideable yet, and probably not rideable until June, but the roads around it are rideable and we need to ride. And so we do.
Before we ride across the Pit River bridge beyond the Bieber city...
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