But there are also more traditional spiritual seekers here. Mount Shasta’s weather system forms lens-shaped clouds around the dome that look uncannily like flying saucers, clouds that believers says are meant to hide the alien mothership. The mountain was worshipped for millennia by the Wintu and Hopi and other Native American tribes, but over the last century and change, they have been joined by believers in aliens, UFOs, Bigfoot, and lizard-people. Mount Shasta is a center of mystical, paranormal and metaphysical activity like no other in America. That intimacy, perhaps, explains why so many here feel like Shasta is more than a mountain, that it almost has a personality of its own, that actively calls them to live and worship in its shadow.

There’s something about its gradual slopes that gives it an accessible, intimate feel. It’s not foreboding like Himalayan mountains, and it doesn’t loom with a stern, steep face like the Eiger. This 14,162ft cone of an extinct volcano is half the size of Everest, and because it stands alone, it looks more like Mt. I was driving on highway 299 about to join the I-5 North at Redding, CA, 70 miles and more than an hour away from the mountain’s foothills. I was right around Whiskeytown at the edge of the forest when I got my first glimpse of Mount Shasta.

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