Mount Shasta is an ancient volcano 14,000 feet high, once home (maybe still is) to an ancient civilization called the Lemurians. UFOs are said to drop in for a magnetic energy fix, which makes this mountain a sort of service station for extraterrestrials. Assorted New Agers, Buddhists, and shamans hang their shingles to milk the pilgrims, some of whom never leave.
Shasta is supposed to provide spiritual rebirth, akin to that wooden sign in a North End Boise shop-front: Begin anywhere. Kind of like the 1960s hippie adage: Today is the first day of the rest of your life. (Reputedly coined by the founder of Synanon, a drug rehabilitation program.) A purge of the past, followed by spiritual rebirth.
Everett Memorial Highway curves up and down and up again around the base of Mount Shasta for about twelve miles, leading to the nearest point one can get to the mountain on normal wheels.
Without coffee, and after driving nine hours straight the day before (I-5 is very straight, indeed), everything (including Mount Shasta) looks black and white.
Shasta means "teacher" in Sanskrit. The mountain that takes this name is known by many as heaven on earth. I arrived on a spectacular day, just after a fresh snowfall.
Mount Shasta is a city as well as the name of the mystical mountain that towers over it. Many people go to India to see the Himalayas and walk the razor's edge. When they get there, the natives tell them they should have gone to Mount Shasta.