Crater Lake National Park

After dropping my two college friends off at a small airport in southern Oregon, I was by myself again and on my way to Crater Lake National Park. This is a place that I had been really excited to see and have been thinking about for quite a while. I must admit that I didn't know much about Crater Lake before I read one of my favorite books, Wild by Cheryl Strayed, a few years ago. I was curious to see how it would feel to be there, staring this lake in the eyes, something that has been on my mind since Wild. For those of you who haven't read Wild, it's a memoir about Cheryl Strayed who hiked 1100+ miles alone on the Pacific Crest Trail (like the Appalachian but on the west coast) when she was twenty-six. It's a spirit trek of sorts, walking herself back to healing, after the loss of her mom at twenty-two. The way Cheryl describes Crater Lake is so eloquent and one of my favorite parts of her story, showing what beauty can come from such destruction. I knew I needed to stop on my way to Seattle.

When I first layed eyes on Crater Lake I was stunned, somewhat similar to seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time. The lake is so clear and blue, the bluest blue I have ever seen, it looks unnatural. The story of Crater Lake is 7,700 years ago or so it used to be a towering mountain that erupted and the heart of the volcano blew out and created this empty bowl. It took hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years to fill this bowl, by the melting of snow and ice. There are no waterfalls or streams or any way for water to seep in, it's all from snow and ice. Crater Lake is the deepest and clearest lake in the US, measuring at 1,932 feet, and seventh deepest in the world. Crater Lake is staggeringly beautiful and I was in complete awe.
I think Cheryl Strayed said it best: "This was once Mazama, this was once a mountain that stood nearly 12,000 feet tall and had it's heart removed. This was once a wasteland of lava and pumice and ash. This was once an empty bowl that took hundreds of years to fill. But hard as I tried, I couldn't see them in my mind's eye. ...There was only the stillness and silence of the water: what a mountain and a wasteland and an empty bowl turned into after the healing began." 

This is not the sky but the lake, so so blue!