CHILDHOOD MOUNTAIN MEMORIES

Thoughts of my childhood take me back to fishing on Battle Creek with my dad while staying at a cabin in Mineral in the 1950's.   It was an exciting drive up California highway 36 after leaving the Sacramento Valley at Red Bluff, passing up through the foothills of oaks and the rocks that were blasted out of Mt. Lassen in 1914, then the first sighting of pine trees and finally entering the mixed forest of firs, cedars and pines near the mountain community of Mineral.   Just outside Mineral was the headquarters for the Lassen Volcanic National Park where there were administrative buildings, personnel housing and equipment shops.   The center of Mineral was the lodge with a restaurant, lounge with some motel rooms and a store.  The Lassen National Forest had a summer ranger station here.   Most of the nearby houses were summer homes.   The Edwards family from Willows owned a house in Mineral, since Charlie Edwards had worked for the Forest Service or the Park Service here before taking a job with the Forest Service in Willows on the Mendocino National Forest.   They would let us stay in this house at times during the summers.   They eventually sold it.   At the age of 7 or 8, I remember walking through the forest behind this house to a split rail fence where a large mountain meadow was with some ranch buildings off in the distance.   After climbing over the fence and walking out into the meadow a bull laying down on the edge of the forest was startled and got up and began coming after me.   I ran back to the fence just in time before the bull caught up with me.   I never crossed that fence again.