The Devil's Pulpit

There is a mountain in my world, that is, the place I come from. You can see it from miles away. A dormant volcano from an ancient time that rises up among flatlands and foothills and valleys that flow from it like broken rivers of land. The Bay Miwok lived there before the Spanish. They thought coyote sat upon it and formed the world from its heights.

But when the Spanish priests came to ring their bells and save the heathens, they thought the mountain was possessed by evil. The Miwok would go into its depths and vanish. Spirit apparitions would startle soldiers. Ranchers saw phantom lights. They told stories of eerie winds and empty howls in winter. So they called it El Monte del Diablo—the thicket of the Devil.

There is a legend, maybe it’s true, of a Spanish priest climbing the outer cliffs and to the highest peak. Up there is a red chert formation they call the Devil’s pulpit. I’ve always thought that this is where Satan appeared to the priest in a test of faith.

The story goes that he was drawn to the mountain. He couldn’t turn from it for it knew his name. So, he climbed over rocks and let madrones tear his robes to get to the top. On his way he met a stranger, the enemy of souls, dressed as a hidalgo—a gentleman of birth, but not of wealth. Here a mist enveloped him, and he beheld the pageantry of the past marching away from him. Cavaliers disappearing with forgotten banners. Trumpets echoing into darkness.

He found himself looking down on the valleys as the fog receded back through the gate of the bay. And in the mountain and its deep valleys he came upon waterways. There he saw radiant flakes sparking in mountain streams so thick with these nuggets that the water all but disappeared. Virgin gold in reflective pools. The wealth of powerful men. The desire of the woman who turned him to celibacy.

In its climax, the priest refuses the devil. He holds his crucifix up and rebukes him. His words cause the devil to shrink back. But even as he declares his allegiance to God, he drops the symbol of sacrifice, and he and Satan both reach for it. In the struggle, the devil tears the man’s skin with his long nails and the priest collapses.

When he awakens, he is told he was attacked by a bear, leaving us to wonder if the story is true. But more importantly, it leaves us to question why the priest dropped the crucifix. And I wonder, if it was me, if I would have held on to it and escaped the enemy piercing my flesh.

But I grew up on the south side of that mountain. I didn’t come to it from a fading kingdom. I was born to it. I went to school in small houses nestled in its lower elevations and heard stories of a boy who died hang gliding off its cliffs.

I’ve seen fires on that mountain and never found out who started them. I’ve watched a mountain lion pace through those narrow valleys below the road to the top, and seen rattlesnakes nearly six feet long, whipping across a trail on a burning hot summer day. Slept in tents on Barbecue Terrace where the raccoons stalked discarded food.

Fear has consumed me to the point that I pulled to the side of the road as I ascended. That narrow road that cuts into the cliff of the mountain and seems to hang over its side as the wind pushes you toward the edge.

I moved away for a while. Out on the other side of that great bay to the cold city that’s at the tip of the peninsula. From there, I could only see it from the highest point. And then only the tip of it peeking out from behind miles of the rolling foothills that lead to it.

I only stayed away for a handful of years. The mountain seemed to call me back, much like it did that forgotten Spanish priest. Much like it does to anyone born to it.

Inspired by: Harte, Bret. “The Legend of Monte del Diablo.” Story of the Week, Library of America, 6 July 2012.