Angels in Alaska

Summit of West Peak. Douglas Island peaks in the distance

 If I ever see God, I know my words are going to be, “What the living fuck!” I haven’t seen Him and never will but if it any deity comes my way, I learned over the weekend that those words are coming out. As any of the readers of this blog know, I have at times alluded to the wilderness as a source of spirituality, though without digging in detail to what wilderness or spirituality are.  I don't subscribe any religion and I am not starting my own. 

Last Saturday the image to the left appeared out of nowhere while I was standing on the summit of West Peak. It seemed about a 100 feet away and about forty feet tall. It’s two inches tall on your phone. Our phones could be considered an optical illusion. They show us the world but not the world as it really is.

While my vision did not cause me to start a new religion, I am going to talk about a strange and rare phenomenon called a Brocken Specter (Spectre in some countries). Since last Saturday, I dug into what I saw and it fascinates me. A Brocken Specter is a circular prism, like a rainbow, that forms with the viewer’s shadow in the center. It was first documented in 1790 on Mount Brocken in what is now Germany. These specters seem to form sporadically in the mountains.  Wikipedia calls it a type of optical illusion but I disagree… but also agree. The specter looks and feels like a visit from an angel or even God with a halo of many colors. It’s an optical illusion if you believe you saw God and because your shadow is cast much larger than life. You see things that aren't there. These lit apparitions are caused when the observer is backlit in bright sunlight but there is a cloud or fog on the opposite side of the observer. The light creates a prism like a rainbow as it passes through the water vapor in the cloud. The angelic specter (sometimes called a Glory) is the shadow of the observer. It's magnified because the light scatters returning to your eyes. This seems to happen most often in mountains.

The story started when I decided to take my dog Duane hiking up West Peak. I have been up West Peak several times before but it had been a few years. It's a bit of a scramble in places but never technical. I was up and back in six hours and that's with stopping to have lunch. I also thought it would be nice to climb Middle Peak as I have not climbed it even though it’s easy to climb them both in the same day. West and Middle Peaks are some of the most windy places in the Juneau area but the forecast didn’t have much wind. 

Angel of Pride Week

After a couple hours of hiking we got to tree line. It’s still odd to me that the best autumn colors in Juneau come from the alpine where trees are rare. The ground cover turns a kaleidoscope of colors. After a few more hours my dog and I got to the summit of West Peak. The day was spectacularly beautiful and I sat down to take a few photos and eat my lunch, tamales and macadamia nuts. I turned see if the fog to my back had cleared because I wanted to see if the Middle Peak was still in whiteout. Note the photos have intermittent clouds and Middle Peak had been covered. Indeed, it was still covered in clouds. 

I don’t think the Brocken Specter was an optical illusion because things don’t have to have mass to be real. Rainbows are real and only an illusion if you start looking for a pot of gold or convince yourself the Land of Oz is on the other side. Shadows are real even if you can’t weigh or measure them. The specter I saw only seemed 40 feet tall. It was there but it wasn’t really there which why I said it’s an illusion but it isn’t an illusion. The specter didn’t speak to me or direct me to dig up gold plates.

On the way up West Peak. If I ever start my own religion, mine will be superior because I brought a dog.

I got to the top of West Peak my dog seemed interested in something off the cliff behind us and I didn’t want him to jump off. I was just standing there looking to the west and turned around to see a forty- foot personage surrounded by a multicolored halo standing above me in the air. That shadow looked three dimensional and huge.   You can vaguely see a mountain in the background. It’s not a hill. It’s Middle Peak. The angel of Pride Week.

I was seriously taken aback like my eyes were misfiring. Remember the part in Harry Potter where Hermione tells Harry that it’s never good to see things that aren’t there, even in the wizard world. That’s true in the mountaineering world as well. I was looking a forty-foot angel and I had not prayed to ask which church was true. Within a few seconds I noticed the forty-foot angel waved his arms when I waved mine. I did some jumping jacks. Both the angel and I did. I suspect Duane saw a forty-foot dog shaped angel standing in the air with a multicolored halo. He was a little tweaked, though not as much as I was. After I collected my wits, I took a few photos that do not do justice.

My heart slowed down a bit as I realized I was seeing an odd variant of a rainbow. The photo on my phone verified that my tamale wasn’t laced with hallucinogenic drugs though I never worried about that. I have never tried LSD or mushrooms so what do I know? To be clear, I never thought it was an angel, but I did wonder briefly if I was losing my grip on reality.

Recall that the world’s religions generally start with some dude walking into the wilderness which is precisely what I did that day. In ancient days people who witnessed strange things like Brocken Specters thought they had seen or become gods. I didn't see it that way because I have access to a world of information. I have always known about prisms and other tricks of light. Anyone born in the last century knows a hell of a lot more than the people who wrote all the scriptures and it's not the fault of the scripture's authors either.

Most religions started in the wilderness. Hinduism started in monastic retreats in the headwaters of the Indus River in the Kashmir Mountains in what is now the border between India and Pakistan. The Buddha, who was raised Hindu, gained enlightenment while meditating under a giant tree, now called the Bodi Tree. Jesus began his ministry by going to the wilderness to fast and pray for forty days. None of his miracles or teaching preceded his trip into the hinterlands. Jesus had to get His wild on first. Mohammed began his ministry by hiking up the Mountain of Light near Mecca and receiving inspiration in the Hiri Cave. Millions of people have hiked up the Mountain of Light and to the Hiri Cave over the years to honor Mohammed.  Joseph Smith started what came to be known as Mormonism by wandering into a grove of trees. The story goes that Joseph spoke to Jesus and God Himself.  Just so you know, I am not grafting for money or encouraging polygamy. In the old days, people who spoke to God seemed to hear that God wanted them to start polygamy. Judaism started when Adam and Eve were cast into the wilderness. Prior to being cast out of the Garden of Eden, snakes could speak and Adam and Eve  had neither knowledge of good or evil. Since the beginning, the wilderness taught us lessons, including the knowledge of good and evil. It has taught me a thing or two.

View from summit of Middle Peak
West Peak is center, specters vanished in the air

I wonder if a lot of angelic sightings in history were indeed Brocken Specters. I had zero idea that this sort of thing existed and my reaction was, “What the living fuck?” Yet I, and any modern person,  had a wealth of understanding of science that ancient people simply don't have. If you were taught from birth that astronomical events like an eclipse, a comet, or a blood moon could mean omens of war, famine, disease, or an important birth or  death. It could also mean you were to be invaded by a neighboring country or that you needed to invade them. We take for granted a lot of understanding of the world. A person in ancient days would have zero tools to mentally process a Brocken Specter. They saw God or the devil. 

The angel on West Peak did not appear bothered by my foul language. Having read about these specters, I now know Duane would have seen a halo with a huge shadow of a dog in it. The wand chooses the wizard. I leashed him and settled into wondering what was really going on. I had never seen anything like it and I have been on West Peak many times before and have climbed more mountains than I can count.  

I once heard that spirituality is reverence for something larger than you. Embracing that there are things greater than you and things completely out of your control breeds humility in my opinion. Humility is a central dogma of all religions I guess. We could all use more humility, even folks like me who do not believe in supernatural beings. 

When I got back to the trailhead, there were a ton of people parked at Sheep Creek because the coho salmon are in. Salmon have been here for 500 million years and will likely be here long after humans kill each other off. Salmon have brain the size of a pea but they are smart enough to not invent nuclear weapons or cancer causing herbicides. Earlier in the day, I debated going fishing rather than hiking and it would have been a grand choice as well. Fishing is always a good way to spend the day. None of the fishermen saw God or walked on water but many of them caught fish, a spiritual experience in itself.

If you want to join my religion, go hiking or climbing or go out on a boat. Play music, even badly. Be nice to somebody. Play with your dog. I have no commandments and don’t charge a fee.

Because music moves me, there's this. The Meat Puppets. Oh me.

https://youtu.be/ey6acnCIFtE?si=b8s4Ga9tM2AOhIeT