From the richest blue skies stretched from beyond the horizon in every direction across the northern Plains, to the vibrant turquoise blues that dominate the coral-filled seas of the Caribbean, to a mysteriously curious set of stormy blue eyes that say so much more than lips ever could – I’ve seen a lot of blues that have held my gaze and captured my imagination, but there is a blue that I never could have believed existed before now.
Blue is set apart in nature as this color that we think is everywhere, but truly isn’t. Yes it is the color of the sky. Of the sea. Two of the most dominating expanses we will ever encounter. But as we soar into the heavens, or dive down into the depths, the blue isn’t there. You can’t cup blue water in your hands, or swing a bag through the blue above and hold that color close to yourself. Considering the multitudes of creatures on the planet, the amount of blue animals are surprisingly minute (and don’t get me started with the Blue Whale – it’s way more gray than blue). Blue plants, apart from the occasional blue flower, are also shockingly rare. Blue may be the color of the connective everything around us but it is rarely ever actually in front of us.
Wait,isn’t this about Crater Lake National Park? That impossibly giant water-filled crater formed almost 8,000 years ago by the eruption of Mount Mazama that is the deepest lake in the United States? Yes, yes but none of that is why Crater Lake is worthy of being a National Park, or why I haven’t stopped daydreaming about it since my encounter with it. That reason has everything to do with the color blue.
Driving through the north entrance gate to the Park doesn’t cause you to enter into anything special compared to the surrounding wilderness of the Cascades. You primarily see tall pines and massive Douglas Firs along the road, as you begin your gradual ascent along a road that doesn’t seem or feel unique compared to all that came before it. Just a gentle slope up through a forest, and the occasional former lava field (which is surprisingly common in this part of the world). Nothing about this road and these surroundings can prepare you for what is ahead. In fact, I want you to know that I can use an absurd amount of colorfully descriptive words to describe what you will see next, and it still will not prepare your eyes, mind, or heart.
Parking at the first lot, you get out and stretch – throwing away snack bags from the journey to get here and look at the steep sandy path in front of you. Alright, you say, “let’s see this lake.”
Those words, reflected upon later, will be the last time you ever speak or think about this place without the reverence that you’ll find you can never properly communicate to another human who also hasn’t been to Crater Lake.
“Oh, damn, never seen that color blue”
Taylor Swift, Delicate
Upon cresting the ridge at the top of the sandy path, your world becomes both massive and shockingly small all at once. My memory of the journey to reach here – the flight, the other flight, the drive, the other drive, the forest, the wildfires, the lava fields – is all just washed away in a wave of the most unworldly blue my eyes have ever encountered. The Queen herself was never adorned with gems as sparkling or as blue as the water before me. It was as though every perfect sapphire was liquified and gathered into this massive five-mile wide basin. It felt as though there was this current electrifying the surface of the Lake, daring you to try and understand how it was possibly real.
In that moment of discovery, I experienced worlds.
Galaxies.
Lifetimes.
I was torn between dropping to my knees to find grounding, and turning around to experience my friend’s face as they first encountered the Blue. I was not disappointed choosing to turn and watch them as they crested the ridge as well. Your face takes on this look that says ,”I have found something that I never dared imagine is true while alive.”
Both of us soon found ourselves seated in the volcanic sand, whispering to one another about the greatness before us. For any outside observer, you’d be tempted to ask, “why are you whispering?” And the answer would simply be: “how could you do anything but?” For anyone who has ever been to a great cathedral, with towering walls and priceless art adorning every surface, you know what it is like to feel as though you must not allow your voice to rise above a whisper – not because it is enforced by man, but because the place itself carries a great reverence in the very atmosphere. This, you know without being told, is holy ground.
To someone who visits the Crater Lake National Parks Service website and looks at the “What to do” page, you may think that this Park doesn’t have a lot to offer compared to other National Parks. There appears to just be a road circling the rim with multiple lookout points to look at the Lake from above. In fact, there is only one trail that takes you down to the surface (a trail that goes down some 70 stories over the span of a mile and is the number one reason that rescue helicopters are sent into the Park). But the Lake and its multiple lookout points are more than reason enough to move this Park way up your list for destinations that you and your loved ones must visit.
There is no doubt in my mind that Crater Lake is beyond worthy of the designation as a National Park and is truly a special place – in ways that redefine the word special and quickly re-rank every other experience that you’ve so sloppily given that word to. The rim of the Crater rises upwards of 2,000 feet above the surface of the lake, and the Lake itself is nearly 2,000 feet deep in multiple spots. I’ve read many articles about why the Lake is endued with such blueness (you’ll find yourself doing the same as your logical brain tries to understand it), and they all point out that Crater Lake is special because water neither flows into it, or out. It is one of the most pure and clear bodies of water this world has. That, they say, is why the blue is so startling to witness.
But I say there is something more.
It is important for us as people to be challenged. To not continue and encounter the same sights day in and day out. We as a species have been given gifts in this world that are designed with the express purpose to compel us forward into the unknown. To expand us and remind us that what we know is a small portion of what is out there for us if we just step off the path that we believe we are contained within into the connective Blue. A Blue that cannot be held with hands, but that if we dive into it we can travel to depths and heights that leave us changed. Crater Lake is one such gift for us.