The drive from the town of Mt. Shasta to Castle Lake, a popular spot for camping, swimming, and kayaking, is about 10 km.

About.

The hike up to Heart Lake starts there at Castle Lake (pictured above).

If you’re standing there in the sandy dirt, looking at at the tall cliffs at the opposite end of Castle Lake, just turn to your left and walk a bit . . . and you’ll be on the trail up to Heart Lake.

Round trip, it’s only about 3.2 km up and back down.

For a while, you’ll be in the trees, but it’s a rocky road most of the way.

There are patches of green here and there, all the way. The deer prefer the green patches. Above, they are showing off their big ears. Or complaining about the racket the bipeds make trampling through the rocks.

Before long, Black Butte comes into sight. (We climbed there the next day.)

And then Mt. Shasta comes into sight.

Good views in the distant . . . and good views right at your feet.

Then you’re at Heart Lake. That was no time at all.

Heart Lake is famous for how much it resembles a heart.

Depending on your personality, having heard that it’s shaped like a heart, you might want it to look like a heart when you cross over the little hill and it finally comes into view.

Of course, you’re clever enough to know that it might depend on what side of the lake you’re standing on, or how high above the lake you are, or (and this you won’t be able to do anything about), how much water is in the lake.

How about from here? A heart?

Well, I’ve seen shapes that are less heart-shaped, but the shape of the lake above can only be conceived as a heart if you imagine it as heart-shaped bread dough . . . that has been stretched out and slung across the room, bread dough that has smacked into a wall and then been peeled away and tossed out a window, bread dough that has fallen upon a rocky surface—its current location.

How about from here?

Nope, I don’t think so.

It is absolutely true that shapes in nature can help you feel the unity of nature. You can see the shapes repeated, see patterns forming. And you know that the pictures in wood grains or composed of round amoeba-like blobs of lichen on a big rock can be extraordinarily clear.

But being sure of exactly what you’re going to see before you ever get your eyes on it is probably not the wisest way to see something as it really is.

So beware.

But you have heard from lots of people that the lake is shaped like a heart. And you’ve flown all this way. Driven all this way. Hiked up all this way.

You circle the lake. Make sure you’ve covered all the angles.

Could it be? If you stretch your mind as wide as the “heart” has stretched itself?

Regardless, if you’re lucky, if your mind has not become too preoccupied, too polluted, you might just realize that the water in the lake, from your current point-of-view, is gorgeous, that the view of Mt. Shasta is gorgeous, that the view of the lake, the green all about, Mt. Shasta, andthe hill between the lake and Mt. Shasta, is gorgeous.

If you don’t see that, then your pursuit of your heart vision has been destructive.

And that view of the lake may be so gorgeous, you may just plop your rear end down on a rock and enjoy it . . . and if you do that . . . you might begin to notice a hint of white reflection at the edge of the lake across the way.

And that white reflection may grow . . .

. . . and become clearer. And then a really big smile might come to your face. It might even get stuck to your face.

And stuck smiles like that are meant to be enjoyed there in the moment. So please do.

Forget about the “heart.”

If you continue on past Heart Lake, you can walk up to where you can look right down on Castle Lake—right there at the right end of that green strip at the top of the photograph, right atop the rock cliff.

Were you to follow (with your feet) the green strip around to the left, you could semi-circle the back side of Heart Lake from a much higher vantage point. Were you to do that, you might get to some point from which Heart Lake does look very much like a heart.

But we didn’t go that far. Just to the point where we could look straight down on Castle Lake.

Castle Lake, mind you, not Heart Lake.

And there you are.