While spring is busting out, don't forget to take a trip to Lake Shasta

You can't stop it, even if it isn't officially spring. The signs of the season are everywhere. Tree buds are bursting out with color in different parts of the community you live in. And, depending on the actual elevation and constant temperature, you'll notice some types of foliage, whether it's a tree or shrub, is more prolific in one area versus another part of the valley.

When I was a kid, my dad took us to Shasta Dam's famous Vista Point overlooking the dam itself, the blooming red bud in the foreground flanked by river below as well as Lake Shasta and that spectacular snow-laden mountain looming in the distance behind the dam. It is a scene many photographers and artists have painstakingly duplicated from time to time. Some of this artwork and photography is hanging in government offices, medical clinic offices and other places where the public gathers and can enjoy it.

But the real deal is going up to the site that, unfortunately, this year will not yield a total spectacular visual. Well, it's all there, the river below, the snow-covered mountain in the distance, but the scene lacks a full Lake Shasta. In fact it is a very sad-looking Lake Shasta.

If by chance we do get torrential rainfalls between now and summer, let's hope to heaven the Bureau of Reclamation won't dictate dumping it for fear of flooding. People who live on the river should accept total responsibility for living there. I, personally, wouldn't choose to live anywhere near a flood plain.

Hopefully, somebody in the BOR has learned something about our area and the needs of those who supply the vital day-to-day needs of our society. I find it difficult to think that smelt fish in the delta waters are vital over feeding the troops. There is a cycle of life that has and will include extinction of some species. I'd rather not see it be us; he, she and thee.

Let's step back to the effects of spring and a brighter subject.

When I was a kid, in the early spring I used to ride my horse up to the "Cove" at Lake Shasta and swim my horse. On the way up the road, red bud was blooming profusely alongside the pot-holed shortcut to the lake and Fisherman's Point above the Cove.

At the dam area the hillsides around the grass lawn areas were full-blown with the color purple. It has always been a sight to behold.

I used to take my horse to the old Beltline Road section that had long been overgrown with Manzanita brush, leaving only a trail on the crumbling, aged asphalt.

The bees were the only thing left buzzing busily at work, harvesting newly budding Manzanita bushes that from a distance resembled splashes of pale pink on an artist's canvas.

I lived for those moments of near solitude. Other than myself, the bees and my horse, nothing much else existed. I rode and rode as far as he space between bushes allowed. Today, I imagine that the segments not developed into homes, is a mass of Manzanita bushes that pushed through the cracks in the asphalt and now dominate the ancient road itself. Oh, by the way, the Beltline Road was once the pathway for shipping gravel to the building site of Shasta Dam back in the 1930s.

Each time I visited it, I'd recover some ancient, rusty piece of historic significance, small items of iron that connected some of the machinery used on the Shasta Dam project. Today these items would be showcased in museums. But, back then, to a high school kid on a horse, it was a treasure to drag home and show my Dad, who could analyze it and tell me how it connected to the past.

Some of my best finds were spotted from the back of a horse in the springtime. This time of year is one of my favorite and prettiest times to hit the trails and let go of life's tedious day-to-day issues that can become cumbersome. I lose sight of them for a while as I commune with some of God's beautiful creations - red bud, Manzanita and Scotch broom blooming profusely along the trails.